There are a variety of commercial systems available on the market to handle the chore of synchronizing lights to music, but we use a home brew solution. From the controller boards to the relays, the floodlights and the future sign were all built in the garage workshop.
Each song is manually choreographed in 50ms intervals so that we can control the finest detail. It takes approximately 10 hours to sequence a minute of music.
This show would not be possible without the contributions from the do it yourself community.
Christmas
2009
Our first show
All of the boards have been built and assembled into functional units. We have our first song completed and the house has been decorated in lights! I converted a simple in-car FM transmitter to extend the range to the ends of the street. The reception isn’t too bad outside the house.
2010
New stuff for 2010
We replaced the original board with boards that allow for fading! Instead of inducing seizures with a board that only provides for the lights to be either on or off, the new boards allow for the lights to fade to off or to hover at a less intense brightness.
The lines of the house have been cleaned up by wrapping the lights around PVC pipe and creating custom fit frames for the windows. Each segment was measured to ensure that the lights were evenly distributed along the frame. This also allowed us to have two strings of lights on each frame which are separately controlled.
Three arches have been added to the show. By taking advantage of the new boards for fading we can produce the illusion of the lights bouncing along the arch.
The 16 trees in the yard originally came wrapped with white incandescent bulbs. These are the only incandescent bulbs we have in the show. To have greater effect we also wrapped the trees with blue LED bulbs.
The radio transmitter has been upgraded to a real unit designed for transmitting over great distances. The purchase was required as our 99.9 FM station was hijacked on December 24th, 2009 by someone with a more powerful transmitter. And they picked the worst music of the 70s too.
2011
New stuff for 2011
In 2011 we introduced our RGB floodlights. By ripping out the contents of a halogen floodlight, I used the durable and element-proof casing to house the RGB floodlight board. This board allows for the intensity of red, green and blue to be controlled to provide almost any colour in the spectrum. The floodlights give the show more depth rather than having lines of lights flashing.
2012
New stuff for 2012
More RGB floodlights are being constructed to light up more of the house. These lights will also be controlled individually to allow for greater freedom in how the colours can be played with.
The construction of an LED scrolling sign is also underway. This will replace the existing static sign for where to tune into the radio station.
2014
Let It Go
Halloween
2016
The ghost canopy
Shrouded figures stretched over the snow, lit red.
2019
The skeleton coach
A skeleton coachman and his carriage, with a black horse rearing beside a burst of flame.
2020
Torches and fire
Torches and flame effects light up the yard.
