Reuse, Replace, Recycle and Restore

When you don't buy new Light Elements, then you have to use what you have or what you have bought secondhand from yard sales, Craiglist or wherever you find them . Buying secondhand usually means it's been used more than you would like. Having bought at least seven yard reindeer from yard sales, it was clear that they also were used more than I would have wanted. But oh well you find what you find where you find it. Hopefully at a decent price. Once you get your treasures home, you start by spending several hours replacing bulbs, straightening wire runs, ziptie-ing parts together, cleaning, repainting and testing. I managed to bring 4 of them back to life and near perfect working order. Shown below is "Prancer", one of the largest reindeer in our herd. A bit of time spent will bring a nice return once the show starts.

Shown below is "Olive". You know, Olive the other reindeer? This is what she looked like when I brought her home. Her previous owner obviously thought the more the better. But sometimes this is just not true. In fact, I was feeling a bit sad about how this poor thing was looking trussed up like a Christmas goose. Putting her on my workbench, I set about correcting her situation.

After about an hour of undoing the proverbial Gordian Knot, shown is what was actually on Olive and yes, those are icicle lights. The green string can be reused elsewhere after some new bulbs are added to it. However, the other 3 white strings will not be reused on Olive because of wire breaks that had been taped up. We might be able to salvage some of them to make other Lighted Elements in the future.

Olive after surgery.

When reusing strings of lights, remember that "SAFETY" is always more important than anything. Wire breaks, broken bulbs, exposed wire, bad plug prongs, wrong, burnt or missing fuses, burnt or melted bulb housings are just some of the things that can go wrong with a light string. Make sure that the strings you are using are in good working order before you install them. Properly maintained lights will insure that shock hazards will be elimanated and not pose a risk to yourself, your family, your home or the viewing public. When in doubt, just pull all the bulbs out and throw away the string.

When in Doubt, Throw it out!!!

Away... in the Manger

While walking along a street near my work, I happened upon a yard sale that had a 3 piece Nativity set for the bargin price of 12 dollars. Seeing that the set was barely used, it was a great deal and I purchased it. Taking it home, it was plain that it needed a bit of dressing up to make it a focal point for our Show. We happened to have some large oak pallets on hand. I decided to cut them up and make a Manger for our three new additions to our show. Also as an additional benefit, it will hide the ugly Natural Gas Meter. Shown is the difference between Night and Day viewing. When it's set up for Christmas, I'll add in some dry grass around the figures to hide cords and make it look more like real straw strewn about. Maybe later, we can find some barnyard type animals or if we're lucky the 3 Kings to go with it. It will stay lit and not flash like the rest of the system. Not all props are the commercial, non-religious type and this prop really brings out the reason for the season as they say.

SSR Anatomy 101

The loyal minions of the Grinches are the SSRs (Solid State Relay) which control the actual off and on of the light elements out in the yard and on the house. Each are made up of a number of individual parts all acting to perform the Grinches' bidding. We built our SSRs from scratch more or less using a pre-etched circuit board from Austrailia. We populated each board with parts bought from USA companies as shown below at center. In the front of the board is the connector coming from the Grinches that leads to 4 smaller circuits which in turn control the TRIACs. TRIACs are electronic AC switches and generate a lot of heat doing their job. To the right is a heatsink made from a carpet step bar using it to draw away heat from the TRIACs keeping them cool. On the left is a power distrubution block made from a pair of standard AC outlets with the neutrals (white wires) sharing a common path to the circuit board. Each socket on the block is independant and each has a hot wire (black wires) leading to the circuit board. On the pieces of wood in the block are pieces of masking tape to identify the job of each socket. As the system evolves each year, each SSR may change its job but pretty much performs the same function.

Shown below is the screen VIXEN uses to display current patterns of the Light Show. Black lines represent items which are being used as props, such as the star, house, trees and fences. Yellow lines represent AC lines running from the light elements to the SSRs shown as a red block. AC lines will connect SSRs to branch lines and then to trunk lines leading back to the panel boxes supplying the whole system with power. Multiple layers of systems acting as one make for a really nice display of blinky flashy. For our first year of computer controlled lights, we decided to only use half the capacity of our system because we didn't have enough resources and time to get everything online before Christmas. With the basic system in place this year, it will be easy to add the other half and upgrade the display with almost double the lights next year! Its amazing that with only 16 SSRs with a combined total of 64 channels, so much brillance can be created to bring joy and wonder to all that see it.

D-Fence! (Part 2)

The Light Fence after final assembly.

Christmas Canon Rock

We thought we were done with testing but we never finished the Light Fence project. So after a few hours of finishing the lights and setting up, a test was in order. This is the result of that test. Sorry about the audio as we didn't put the speakers close enough to hear it clearly. The Light Fences were created to mark the border of the yard so nobody will park along the yard or drive into it. Earlier this year, someone did actually drive into our yard off the hill and ran over one of our cherry trees. The tree is ok with only some scarring of the trunk on one side because its still a young tree and bent over when they ran on top of it. The Fences will be suspended about 2 feet off the ground as not to be in the view of the rest of the show. Because of a SSR shortage, there will only be half of total amount of Light Fence put up which will total 80 feet this year and 160 feet next year.

Introducing....

And now a word from our sponsors...

Actually, its our flyer and audio from the Christmas Light Show Intro combined. Or if you prefer, an InfoIntro.

Christmas Past

By now you probaly have a good idea of what kind of Light Show we will be having this year, but what did the house look like last year?

Almost looks like an ice cream sundae, doesn't it?

Redragonlady seeing her home after arriving from work.

The view from the street.

We think it will a lot brighter this year to say the least. A little bit of hard work will yield great results. We hope that it will bring out the Christmas spirit in even the most Grinchiest person.

Whats The Frequency?

Earlier this year, we got a very nice FM transmitter from a Canadian company. We set it up and tested it with very good results. We selected an unused frequency on the FM band and then thought all was well but..... somehow a few months later when we were retesting it, now there is a radio station on it! Rrrrrrr. We assume that its a new station or thats its bleeding over into the frequency we had chosen. So began another search and selection process and now the frequency is: (DRUMROLLLLLLL) 87.9! So now, you can listen to the music from your car on 87.9 FM. How do you know what frequency you can use? You can tune your car radio listening for faint static between stations or visit this website: http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/vacant
Add your zipcode and it will predict what signal strengths and locations for your area. I found its not 100% correct but will give you a pretty good idea where to look on your radio. By the way, the place where we got the transmitter is at the Canakit company. http://www.canakit.com/
We made 2 signs from plywood and painted them red and white to let viewers know where to tune into so they could hear the music. These will be posted on the front and side of the house.

On The Fence

Some light elements you will have to build yourself. We had this little fence that wasn't being used for anything and being only 6 foot long couldn't enclose much, so we decided to let it fence off the fire hydrant in the corner of our yard. My wife painted the tops of the pickets to look like lights and then I added a multicolor string of lights to accent it. Another cooperative effort between us resulted in a nice addition to our show. It will be attached to another string for power and it will blink on and off as the other string does.

The Craziness Continues....

Tis The Season / Zat you? Santa Clause

After a delicious summer BBQ, we decided to treat our guests to a preview of the Christmas lite show. (Actually, its just another test to check load limits of the SSR's, but don't tell them that ok.) Also it'll be the last test out in the yard until we setup for the show about a week before Thanksgiving. Please note that the light elements are not in their correct places and not all channels are represented but it does give you a pretty good indication of what will be there for Christmas. The results of the test proved that the SSR's could handle the load for at least an hour (the length of time for one Showing) and none of the SSR's showed signs of overheating. YEAH!!! Still a lot more work to be done and now we're sure it'll be completed on schedule.

The Sound Of Music

Finally, after several months of hard work, we've completed all the song programming for this year! We're hopefully going to have one set of non-Christmas Rock n Roll songs for one night of Rocking Out! There are more songs to program for next year, but that will be next year. LOL Below are the songs we've prepared for this year, with the Intro bringing information about the show. Enjoy!!

2010 Song List

00 Intro
01 Get Ready
02 Jingle Bells Techno
03 Winter Wonderland
04 Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer
05 Hallelujah
06 Tis The Season
07 Sled Zeppelin
08 Intro
09 Zat You Santa Claus
10 Santa Claus Is Back In Town
11 Wonderful Christmas Time
12 Linus And Lucy
13 White Christmas
14 Run Run Rudolph
15 Intro
16 Wizards In Winter
17 MusicBox
18 Christmas Canon Rock
19 Santa Clause Is Coming To Town
20 Holly Jolly Christmas
21 Decorations
22 Amazing Grace Techno
23 Silent Night
24 I Want An Alien For Christmas

Getting Organized

Most when they see a really nice light display, they usually think its mostly outside where the action is but what is behind the scenes? Shown is my desk in the alcove of our living room which has the cable modem, wireless router and second tower (to the left not shown). At the time, I'm still contructing more SSRs and sequencing songs, thats when I'm not playing Runescape. In the center of the picture is my energy source, ROFL. However, when its time to run the show, this is where all the action will come from. Halfway up the curtain almost hidden from view is the FM transmitter that will broadcast the audio to be heard in cars driving by. Bottom center is the yard audio system that will be put into the doghouses. Stacked behind the computer tower are SSRs for next year's upgrade. Due to some shortages in matierial, the system will only be at half capacity this year. It looks like a bunch of clutter, but I know where everything is. Once the SSR construction is done it will all be cleared away. Getting everything done the first time is always a messy process and hopefully the end result will be more than worth the effort of getting there. Almost looks like one of those hidden object games, doesn't it?

Christmas Broadcasting System

I Want An Alien For Christmas by Fountains of Wayne

We had to make a number of cables for the SSRs to communicate with the Grinches. Even with a quality Ethernet cable crimper, we still had to test the cables so we set up the Minitrees in the front yard. Also we needed a test of the scheduler of the Vixen program so there wouldn't be any problems later. Combining the two tests, we hooked up the data cables, AC power cords and fired up the Grinches. It took a lot of patience to wait til it got dark and we got a number of weird looks from passersby but at least our neighbors were used to the crazy people at the end of the block (that being us) :) The end result was very cool and we are eager to set the rest of it up but its still August :( Its all good as we still have a lot of work to do on the rest of the system. Blink on my friends! A shout out goes to my peeps at the Adult Lounge on Runescape!