History of Display
I moved in 2019 to 488 Stevens Hill in Wilder, KY. Before that, I had my display at 101 Breckinridge Ct, Newport, KY since 2006.
Below is some history on the display. The first part is how I got into the hobby and the others are changes I made through the years.
My First Exposure
Right before Christmas in 2005, I saw a video on the internet that showed a house with lights synchronized to
music. I later found out the display was located in Mason, OH. Since I worked in Mason back then, I took a trip at lunch
to find his house to understand more about it. At the time, the owner was outside working on his display
perparing for a video crew to come in the next day to video his lights for a national tv commercial for Budwieser.
I knew I had to look into how to do this and I did some searching on the Internet to find that people have
been doing this for a long time all over the country. Many people started creating their own control boxes but a
new trend came about that made it easier for someone to join in on the fun with some off-the-shelf controllers
(See Hardware section below).
Future
Add some new songs and some from my old house. Sticking with some Christmas classics.
2023
Remade my arches to use bullet pixels instead of the fragile ribbon lights. Added Bruce Springsteen Santa Claus is coming to town. Updated
other songs with different effects and images for a bell on the Mega Tree.
2022
Made adjustments to existing sequences. May add new song next year in 2023.
2021
I added 1 song this year from my old house and added in the Christmas Vacation clips to the display. I added a 4 foot tall Santa in the yard.
2020
I added 2 more songs this year that I converted from my old house. I may do one more this year before I take them down.
I also added RGB pixels on the porch to the left and right of the door.
2019
The biggest change this year was redoing my display to fit my new house! I only had 4 songs sequenced for this year because I was
delayed getting started with the move. I had to use additional CCP strings to cover the roof line and garage door outlines.
The biggest prop change this year was the Superstar. I replaced the CCR ribbon lights with the CCP pixels. The CCR lights are fragile and I'm
phasing them out. By replacing the Superstar, I now have a few extra strands for the arches when they go bad.
The one glaring ommission this year is the Santa in the winodow! I just don't have a good place to use it with my new house. I know it was a
favorite of many but It just won't work out with my current setup. I'm sad to see it go myself!
2017
I changed out my Mega tree using 16 strands of 100 count RGB lights. They are doubled over to create 32 strings of 50 each.
It is all controlled with one controller called a Pixie16.
I put this on a third network so I could bump up the speed of that network to support the new number of RGB lights that are now being controlled.
You can do many different effects to program the tree and the results are amazing!
With all the RGB
lights I have now, I'm using the same software but they have a new "Pixel Editor" which makes it easier to program. I'll be updating the
sequences so you may see different things as this years show is running.
2015
I added a candle on the left, bows on the porch columns and a wreath on the door that lights up. I helped a friend of mine get
his light display going with the same LOR hardware. He didn't have much time this year but I'm sure it will look nice next year after
he has a year to play with it. Is house is on Vail Ct. in Southgate near the end of the cul-de-sac if you want to check that out.
2013
In 2013, I didn't buy any new equipment but I did add two large arches, and two small arches. I had unused CCR controllers
since I bought the CCP controllers last year and I wanted to use what I had and instead of making the superstar taller,
I made extra arches. I also helped my nephew setup a display at his
house with one of my 16 channel controllers (20 Bonnie Lane, Southgate, KY if you want to check it out).
2012
I dove deeper into using RGB lights this year purchasing 3 CCP controllers each with 100 RGB lights on them. I used
them to outline the roof, garage, and porch. Because of all the channels, I'm running on two networks now but it
still has a hard time keeping up. Hoping LOR comes out with the high speed data connection next year.
2011
Added 3 CCR's for the garage (2) and porch roof (1). I would like to add
lights to the house roof eventually (would need 5 more). Since I had the
channels and lights, I added lights to the trunk of the front tree and made the
individual colors available on the left and right porch.
2010
Added the SuperStar using 3 CCR's folded in half with a set of 3 stars at the top
of it. I used new software to syncronize the CCR's from Super Star Lights. It
makes programming them MUCH easier. I was a little rushed getting the sequences
done so I hope to have time to tweak the CCR effects for 2011.
I also added a Virtual Santa in the middle upstairs window. It is a continuos
play of a video file that makes Santa appear to be checking his list (twice!),
leaving the presents, eating his cookies and waving to the crowd. It does not
show up very well in the video but does look really good in person.
I added one more 16 channel controller (I have 11 of them now) which allowed me
to add all six colors to the left and right column. If I start replacing my
lights with CCR's, I won't need the 16 channel controllers. I just have to save
some money up for additional CCR's!
2009
In 2009, I bought 2 more controllers to create arches for my display. My intent was to create white arches that would leap back and
forth along with other effects. That all changed when I found Light-O-Rama was selling something called a CCR (Cosmic Color Ribbon). If
you look closely, these lights have computer chips inline with RGB LED lights! Each light is actually a set of three LED lights (Red, Blue and Green).
Changing the intensity of each light will change the color that appears on the light string. This sounded right up my alley! Instead of
buying all color's of lights for my display, I could use one light string and change them to whatever color I wanted. The lights are
rather expensive so instead of buying a bunch, I bought two of them to use for my arches in my display. Check out the 2009 videos to see them in action.
Since I had two unused controllers, I decided to add both Yellow and Orange lights to my display. It is hard to see all the different colors
in the videos. You really need to come see them in person to get the real effect.
The other change I made this year was to swap out the lights in my swinging bell to use LED and I didn't use any of my rope light.
Since almost all my lights are LED now so I have over 13,000 lights (13,112)
but I'm only using 12 amps! I was able to increase my lights by 1000 and reduce the amps by 2!
2008
In 2008, I bought 3 more controllers to get my total controller count up to 8. To replace the rope-light, I made a concentrated
effort to use LED lights. I hit the stores for the 2007 50% sales and bought as many as I could. About 90% of my lights
are now LED. I used the new controllers to allow my Mega-Tree to be more flexible and added Blue and White to the tree (was just
Red and Green). The only other changes to the 2008 display was the addition of LED Snowflakes and I used some of the rope light as a sprial around
one of the trees. There are over 12000 lights in my 2008 display but with all lights on, it only uses 14 amps.
2007
In 2007, I expanded my display by adding 2 additional controllers. This was also my first year of trying out some LED
lights (which I love). It also marks the first time I had multiple colors in different areas that I could control seperatly
(I previously had multi-color strings of lights). This created some cool effects when switching from color to color.
My big addition was the 20 foot Mega-Tree I created. A Mega-Tree is a "Tree of Light" (see links below in hardware for link to
Planet Christmas for details on how to create a Mega-Tree).
One disappointment I had with my 2007 display was the use of rope-lights. At the end of the 2006 Christmas season,
I went to the local stores to buy MANY more lights for my 2007 display. They mostly had rope-light so I decided to use
them as a basis for my display. The display looked GREAT with the rope-light and I was very happy with it. The problem is
that some of the rope-light would get a bad section and would not light. Some of them did this after only 1 week in operation.
I made it through the 2007 season but I won't be using rope-light anymore!
2006
During the entire year of 2006, I prepared to see that I could synchronize my lights to music. I started in 2006 with
three conrtollers of 16 channels each. You can take a look at my videos to see what I created for my 2006 display.
I used many of the same lights I had used in previous years but did add some new items (ringing bell, mini-trees and candy canes).
My 2006 videos include closeups on these items.
Pre 2006
I started my new Christmas display in 2006 after a successful test run for Halloween.
Before 2006, I had a small projector that would display
an image on my garage door. It was a rotating filmstrip displaying images of the season. I also had a small box
that had 6 outlets so you could have various light sequences through my display. None of that was close to what
I took on in 2006.
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