Frequently Asked Questions
Q) Why did you do this?
A) It sounded like fun and offered a challenge. For more information, see the history page
for a full explanation of how this idea evolved.
Q) How much electricity does this use?
A) Surprisingly not as much as you would think. Several of the strands were LED lights and consumed very little power.
Although we had many lights, they were not all on at the same time. On average many of our programmed sequences
only had the lights on for 25% of the time or less. This implies that the lights could run sequences for 4 hours and
only require the energy equivalent to leaving all of them on for just 1 hour. I used a Wattmeter to measure the actual
power and it costs only about $0.40 a day to run the lights for about 5 hours each evening. The 2007 display
requires approximately 15 Amps of current when all 95 channels are turned on at once.
Q) How many lights do you have?
A) I don't know exactly. The display initially had 46 control channels. Each channel had a different number of lights (e.g.
an individual candy cane probably only contains about 20 lights whereas a six foot arch has 300 lights). If we assume
50 some lights per channel, then we started with about 2500 lights. The large 18 by 24 inch letters use an additional 1100 bulbs
and 41 control channels to spell out the individual letters. Some additional elements were also added later, so
something between 3500 and 4000 lights is probably a respectable estimate. There are 95 individually controllable channels
in 2007.
Q) How much did this all cost?
A) Excluding the labor of my wife and I, the inaugural display, which built up 50 control channels, cost about $1,500. The majority of the cost
went towards circuit boards, electronic components, and housing and wires. These expenses were spread out over 9 months
during the design. Most of the wiring and necessary equipment was purchased used off of Ebay to reduce costs significantly.
All of the lights were purchased on clearance after Christmas. Buying the electronic components in relatively low quantities
turned out to be one of the most expensive and unavoidable aspects.
Q) How long did it take to design all of this?
A) The hardware design did not take terribly long. Most of the planning was done casually up front between
January and July before the project really got going. The design of the software consumed a larger chunk of time.
The biggest time sink was building and assemblying all of the boards, controller boxes, and cables. In all
the project took more hours than I can count. I began laying out the circuit boards in August after finalizing
my complete plan for the system. All hardware was built and tested and the software was developed in time
to have it setup and operational by Thanksgiving. This at least gives a sense of the calendar duration, although
the project required many late nights going well beyond midnight day after day.
Q) How do the lights get synchronized to the music?
A) We create our own sequences for each song to define the on/off patterns. This can take anywhere from 1-8 hours per song
depending upon the level of detail. The SyncLights Player software
allows us to define the patterns and store them. It also handles playback of the sequences synchronously with the intended song.
Q) What do the neighbors think?
A) Everyone has been very supportive so far. We have asked that visitors be polite and courteous and not entirely block
the road to avoid blocking local traffic. You can send us your comments via email.
We hope to post comments on this site at a later date.
Q) How can I do this?
A) You can download the software used to control these lights here.
You will still need to design or purchase control hardware. Our design sought to reduce cost and is not easily manufactured
as-is. We decided not to pursue offering the controllers due to liability concerns.
Q) Where can I go to see it?
A) There are videos on the videos page. To avoid disrupting local traffic, we do not want the
address posted on the internet.
Please do not post it on other sites:
Q) How long is the display setup?
A)
We are planning to run the lights from Friday November 27 through at least January 1, 2009. Pending no technical difficulties, they will run from 5:30 - 9:30
on weeknights and from 5:30 - 10:30 on weekends and all nights the week of Christmas.
Q) Where did you buy the letters?
A) We planned and built the Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays letters ourselves. They are not available
commercially. More information about their construction is available on the pictures page.