Jeff's Christmas Lights Thread...

[Moogie]

Wow Jeff! This is simply fantastic! I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next year. How did you get into this hobby? How long have you been at it?

[Bok]

me too. Makes me want to put in the blog addition to this forum just for you....

Bok

[Moogie]

Not a bad idea Bok. I, for one, would love to watch the progress. Of course, I'm a sucker for Christmas lights.

[Shish]

Mebbe post you some shots from around Leam Lane Bok....just to show a load of folks around the home area are in the competition but I need to get outa the house first and we got snow forecast. We just went for 2 nets of led chasers and a Santa Sled this year but Geoff has some serious competition around here with at least 10 houses hiring a cherry picker between them to get more lights up I think there were some pics on the gateshead and South Shields Council websites for you ex=pats Bok.

[Bok]

heh, my brother back in South Shields had quite a few lights I believe, still have not seen the pics yet though...

Bok

[Jeff]

How did you get into this hobby? How long have you been at it?

I used to help my grandfather "light up" my aunts house back when I was 12 or 13. She had one of *the* houses in our area and we took a lot of pride putting up all her decorations(yep, she was the rich one in the family).

Since we bought our house 8 years ago I've been putting more and more up. Each year I'd buy one or two more blowups and a few more strands of lights. Last year seeing Richard Holdman's house(http://www.holdman.com/christmas/) just blew me away. This year seeing how big a leap he made in just two years made me think I could do something similar... then... slowly... a fuse started to blow in my head... **SNAP** Both feet in without another though.

Geoff has some serious competition around here with at least 10 houses hiring a cherry picker between them to get more lights up

Funny you should mention that... the contractor neighbor that lives right next store said I could use his 40ft lift next year(this year). Hell... this year after seeing the house he bought a "Snow Couple" blowup and put it in the lift, then lifted the lift the full 40ft. They looked awesome up that high.

[Digital Parasite]

Holdman's lights are crazy, it says he uses 300A just for the lights. I like his FM transmitter thing so you can hear the music in a car without having to blast it outside. Our house only has 100A coming in so there is no way we could even get close. How much electricity are all these lights going to use?

There was an article about a guy in Canada who has tons of lights as well, cost him about $100/day in electricity and about $5000 over the season. He usually collects about $30000 for charity with them each year.

[Shish]

Sorry Bok, stuck in the house just now and most of them are coming down.
Need to remind me next year and I'll get some pics for the contest as well as mebbe some of the clips from the local tv which always does a feature on 'em.
The guy on the corner also raises money with his lights for the hospice I'm involved with and he does better every year. As for power loads, we're paupers nowadays with only a standard 100A (@230v) plus my added 44A but LEDs are getting cheaper and better year by year. We just got some extra for very little from the next door neighbour who manages a fancy goods importer's warehouse (nearly put an O after the W for some strange reason ) and he says they've had record sales this year on big outdoor LED sets and figures so hopefully, next year, we'll get some up on the new house which at one sub storey and one ground storey is easy for access as I've got a half roof half flat area for sun etc with stair access from inside and a kind of veranda all round. Still gotta have some slopey bits for the combo water and suntrap panels but I'll have a 2 storey house with a roof space and attic in the space of a normal large bungalow with all the convenience of both. I still have lots of friends in the heavy contracting sector so craneage of any kind from 5 to a 1000 tons or platforms of any size upto Super Simons are no problem and we definitely have some plans for a small display next year otherwise the grandkids will be gunnin for me cos I made one of those daft promises which grandparents mostly do.
And I want to get ALL my pension money back so I ain't dyin for at least another 200 Years.

[Jeff]

Holdman's lights are crazy, it says he uses 300A just for the lights. I like his FM transmitter thing so you can hear the music in a car without having to blast it outside. Our house only has 100A coming in so there is no way we could even get close. How much electricity are all these lights going to use?

While I don't doubt if Holdman had ALL his lights on there would be a hell-of-a current draw, I have a hard time thinking about 300A.

We upgraded to a 200A main service a few years ago and I just picked up a 125A sub-panel today that I'll start wiring it up next week. It's a 12 position/24 circuit panel so I should have plenty of room. Even though each controller will be able to draw 40A, I'll bet 75% of mine will be only ~10A(except for the Mega-Tree controller since I'm planning on many, many lights there). I'm planning on 2 controllers per 20A GFCI circuit for all the house frame lights. Mega-Tree will probably be 4 20A GFCI circuits for only 2 controllers.

I also have a 1W FM transmitter coming in from China...
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=180199518393
Stinks because I had a 200mW one from college days but of course I couldn't find it. Oh well tbh, this Chinese one seems pretty damn cool.

There was an article about a guy in Canada who has tons of lights as well, cost him about $100/day in electricity and about $5000 over the season. He usually collects about $30000 for charity with them each year.

$100/day is just plain crazy... no matter how rich you are.

Holdman said last year he only paid ~$60 more because of all the switching of the lights. At any given time he estimated that only 30% of his lights were on. I have a feeling though that $60 estimate was for the wifey... probably more like $160 or $260 more.

[Jeff]

The FM transmitter arrived from China today and I just did a little testing. Seems like 95.5FM will be the home for us from this day forward. Didn't think I'd have a problem picking a frequency but boy oh boy are things crowded. There were only a few places that didn't have some kind of reception on consecutive frequencies. Seems like 95.3-95.9 is pretty much open within a mile or so of the house.

1W is definitely overkill btw... I can receive my station over a mile away if I put the transmitting antenna outside on the ground(which is a horrible spot btw). With the antenna inside the house, it's still pretty decent quality at around 1/2 mile. Better not piss any of the neighbors off next year or I might have to get a different transmitter.

~2000ft of wiring also showed up this week. I have a bit more wire to order but I'm already rethinking how I'm going to wire certain aspects of the show. Putting some controllers actually in the display will save a ton on wiring. They sell weather proof housings with the controller kits as an option so I may just pick up a couple when I order everything during the "Spring Sale".

That's all for now. Next week I plan on really getting into the sequencing software... I have to go to Boston for the week and instead of hanging out at the bar for happy hour, I plan on playing around with the software. Yeah... sick I know.

[Jeff]

Picked up 3,000 ft of "zip cord" from an online surplus store for like half the cost it should have been. Also picked up three dozen male and female plug ends for it.

On the electricity side, I started to wire up the 100A sub-panel today. Well... after I added a new circuit to the mud room and replaced some old(and damaged) wiring going to the old garage that is.

I guess I should also mention that I've nickeled and dimed my credit card down to almost nothing now to prepare for the spring sale Light-O-Rama will have. And I did it in such a way that the wifey didn't even notice... BONUS!

Other than that, I've just been busy with work(loads of OT) and the kids. I can't believe I used to spend 20 or more hours on the computer per week. I barely can fit in 1 or 2 now.

[gopher_yarrowzoo]

Jeff you may think the boss hasn't noticed but she will do at some point and then your BUSTED...

[Scoofy12]

What kind of software are you using for the sequencing? did it come with the sequencing hardware, or is it some sort of custom job or what?

[Jeff]

What kind of software are you using for the sequencing? did it come with the sequencing hardware, or is it some sort of custom job or what?

The software is made by the controller company, Light-O-Rama(or LOR for short). They have a demo of the software to get your feet wet before you actually buy any hardware. It's a nice program for what little I've played with it. After it gets a bit warmer out I'm going to set some stuff up in the back yard to get a real feel for the software.

Here's the software linky...
http://www.lightorama.com/demo.php


BTW, this past weekend I made 7 mini-trees that have 100 red, 100 silver(aka clear or white) and 100 gold lights on them. The trees are only ~23"-24" tall so they look really bright with 300 lights

I also finished wiring the sub-panel. I originally was going for a 100A breaker, but I decided to try a 60A breaker first. There is a $30 difference between the two and after doing some calculations, the 60A should be plenty. In reality if I load the panel evenly, that's basically 60A per phase, or 120A total draw and that should do me just fine.

And finally, from the clearance rack at Lowes I picked up 8 outdoor weather resistant electrical boxes with two sets of GFCI outlets in each. I'm going to run separate 12 gauge wires to each GFCI receptacle on 5 of the boxes and a shared 12 gauge wire on the last three. The 5 boxes will be the ones feeding the sequencing equipment while the other 3 will be for "other" decorations.

So, that's the update for today.