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Sanctuarys Musically Animated Christmas Lights

How do you control the lights?

So to give you some background on what it takes to create an animated show here are some of the things involved.

Our show is a Light-o-rama setup. Their light control flow consists of; light controllers, PC interface, and software. The light controllers are 16 channel dimmer packs that are inside water protective boxes. These boxes are controlled by a PC when the show is running.

In order to connect the controllers to the lights we had to built lots of zip wire extension cords. The cords are built to length with cable that is bought in 1000 foot rolls from a Christmas light supplier called Creative Displays. They are bundled together with electrical tape to help reduce tangling. Vampire type plug ends are easily added to each wire run. All of the runs are labeled at each end of the plug to ease the confusion when connecting things together.

The lights are put up on the house, bushes, and trees. They are connected to the extension cords which then connect to the light controllers. The light controllers connect over a network cable to the PC interface. On the PC the sequence files for each song is run and the lights are animated. It sounds complex but, it's really not.

How do you program the lights?

Each song takes about a week from start to finish to animate. We start with the song file and trim it. Most songs are just too long to play in their entirety so we shorten them by taking the middle out or using the end of the song.

Then they are moved into Light-o-rama's sequencer program which looks like a spreadsheet grid. We find the beat of the song and then try to setup a basic look for the song. Finally adding the bells and whistles like the zig-zagging of the trees. Sequencing the songs for the show is our favorite part of the process.

How do you keep track of everything?

We have created a master spreadsheet that keeps track of the lights, the channels, and the power usage of each controller. In this hobby you have to pay attention to how everything hooks up and how much power everything is using. After all you don't want to have half the show down because of overload circuits and pop breakers!

The spreadsheet is also how we plan the changes for next year's show. We can move things around in the spreadsheet so much faster than trying to juggle it with the wires outside the house. Once the spreadsheet is completed then we can start connecting the controllers to the lights. This process is not difficult, you just match the labeled extension cords to the channel numbers mapped out by the spreadsheet and plug them in.

How does your show get on the radio?

Our show is broadcasted from a small hobbyist FM radio transmitter. This FM transmitter is connected via an audio cable (the same as a pair of PC speakers would be connected) to the PC that is running the show so what you hear on the PC is what you hear on the air.

A radio transmitter kit was purchased with the start of this hobby and assembled with the soldering iron. The Ramsey Electronics FM25B transmitter was chosen because of its reputation for being a reliable hobbyist broadcasting tool. And the well written walk-thru directions Ramsey provided with the kit made it an easy build.

The signal strength of this transmitter is strong enough to push the signal outside of the house. In fact the signal actually reaches a few houses down the street which is really good for a transmitter this size. Broadcasting the music is a great way to get the songs to the listener, because a car stereo does a much better job at reproducing high quality sound than having speakers in the front yard.

How did you pick your FM radio frequency?

Since we use a low power transmitter it is important to pick a frequency that is not in use, or else our broadcast will get its signal squashed. The Radio Locator website does a great job of listing all the best options in your area by zipcode. For example here is a listing from their site for what vacant frequencies are available in Orangevale.

Where did you get those songs?

I purchased the music from Amazon either in the form of downloading a MP3 file or got the album CD and ripped it. Here is where you can find them if you're interested in purchasing your own copies. Don't ask me to share them with you because I don't do that, its against the law, you-know you-know. :-)

I'm a fellow Light-o-rama friend...can I get a copy of your sequence files?

Sure! We don't mind sharing our sequence files. In this hobby I have been given files from others so nothing better than to keep the giving going by passing along our files too. Just post a message over on our Facebook Page. You do however have to get your own copies of the MP3 song files, please see previous question again if necessary. :-)

How much does it cost?

Don't ask me that, you're going to get me in trouble with my wife! Really though I am not sure because it spans many years and lots of small purchases. The real question is how do we keep a frugal budget when building the show?

When purchasing the controllers we buy them in kits where the circuit boards are already soldered together, but all the parts that go inside the controller boxes are unassembled. By getting the controller kits this way it reduces the price compared to buying the fully assembled controllers. Light-o-rama is great in this way as they embrace the hobbyist that wants to save money by doing some of the assembly themselves. They sell their controllers in several different states of assembly giving many options on how you can to save money.

We get the Lowe's brand of lights which are cheaper then most other stores. We build all the special projects from scratch with hardware/craft store parts like PVC pipe/fittings, rope, wire easels, lots of Harbor Freight zip ties, etc. Watch and buy the things on sale. Build our own cables, network cables, install all of our own new electrical circuits, outlets, and connecting to the house's electrical load center.

So as you can see we try to find as many ways as possible to help keep the costs down with this hobby.

How many watts is your show?

If everything (all 37,000 lamps, flood light, strobes, etc) were ON, the 2013 show would consume roughly about 13,200 watts (about 110 amps).

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We had to install eight 20 amp dedicated circuits to be able to power the show lights safely and reliably. With an animated show most of the time only 30% (3,960 watts) of the display are ON at one time, because the lights are OFF just as much, if not more than they are ON which helps use less power.

Here is a calculator that we put together to help figure out about how much wattage a Christmas lighting setup might consume. This calculator is based on watts per lamp numbers so you will need to enter your Christmas lights count in number of lamps (not strings) for each type of lights you might have.

These are just general wattage per lamp estimates, the actual numbers very from manufacturer to manufacturer. You can change the watts per lamp if you have a different rating on your strings.

For all the fellow LOR users, there is a very nice LOR Power Usage Utility Spreadsheet that can be used to analyze your LOR show sequence files to estimate each song's power usage. Check it out if you like.

How about your power bill?

Because the show only consumes about 30% of the total wattage our power bill is not as bad as you would think. This is because of two things; one is that I am running three colors (red, green, white) and most of the time only one of those three colors is actually ON at the same time, and two because the lights are continuously turning ON and OFF while being animated.

Power Cost Calculator
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Many of smaller static displays actually use more power than ours, because they are ON continuously without any toggling of the lights. Although I have never actually tracked it I estimate with the calculator we use about $60 to $80 worth of electricity for the Christmas display for the season which is less than running the AC during the summertime. So the side affect of having and animated show is you can still have lots of lights, but it does not use near the same amount of power as the static display of lights does.

Here is a calculator that I put together that you can use to show the differences between an animated show and a static display. Just enter the total wattage of all your lights. A good starting point for the animation activity percentage is 30%. The runtime would be how long you would leave the lights ON in a day. The amount of days the lights would be ON (Thanksgiving to New Years) is about 35 days.

As for the KWh, this can be more of a challenge to figure out. Our power company has several cost tiers and usually we use power in the first two tiers during the winter. I chose to use tier 1 KWh price for my calculations for now, you may want to average the tiers that you use normally during the winter months instead.

As you can see there is a big difference in power usage from a static display vs an animated show and is why our power bill does not jump that much when we run the show each year.

How long does it take to setup?

We work on the show in stages and restrict our time on it for the last three months of the year. Usually we start planning the channel grid and schedule of things to do in the beginning of October. If we have new items we want to add to the show we work on building them. We also watch Lowe's for when they put out the mini lights which is several weeks before Halloween. Programming the songs tends to start about this time too because we now have an idea of what is new with the show.

The setup phase of the show does not usually start until about two weeks before Thanksgiving. We usually have most of the lights on the house in four to five days. There always seems to be an item or two that takes longer to setup so those projects usually are completed over the weekends. Testing and adjusting the basic show happens on the weekend before the Thanksgiving week.

The week after Thanksgiving is when I fine tune all the songs so they look the best when viewing them in the lights, because what might look good on the computer screen usually does not in the lights. So the show usually ends up finished with all the bells and whistles on the weekend after Thanksgiving.

How do you store all those lights?

In plastic storage boxes of course. We have gotten pretty good at taking the lights down quickly and boxing them up in less than a day. We are up to about 16 storage boxes of lights now. One storage box will hold about 36 stings of lights wound in the yarn-ball way.

Winding them up in a ball is the way to go. Here is a how-to video on how to wind a ball of Christmas lights. The great with the yarn ball method is they are easy to wind up and they are easy unroll next year.

Why do you do this?

I am a tinkering, how does it work, kind of guy. I enjoy electronics, lighting, and Christmas is a great season! Also we are planning a non profit charity donation box in the future.

Are you trying to have the biggest show out there?

Nope, this is not our goal for the show. There are so many other people out there doing the same thing with much bigger pocketbooks than ours, so even if we wanted to we could not. Really we only add lights to my show each year as we can afford and maximize how we use those lights. We am not in this to keep up with the Joneses but rather to enjoy the Christmas season, bless others, and make memories with my family.

Do you get tired of the lights?

We have two children that just love them and we pick up on that energy. Every night when we arrive home we pull into the viewing position and watch the show. The kids love it, Mommy enjoys the happiness of the boys, and I get to see what I might want to improve on the show. So our family does not get too tired of it...well maybe by New Years we might be a little ready to pack it up, but by the next fall it seems everyone is about ready to do it all over again. :-)

There is one side affect that we did however have to get used to, when the lights are going ON and OFF the inside house lighting does a very slight quick dip in brightness, this is mostly noticeable if your looking for it, otherwise its not a big deal. 2013 Update: as we switch over our interior house lighting to dimable energy efficient LED bulbs we are finding this less noticeable.

Are all your friends into lights too?

Most all of our friends are normal and are not as crazy about Exterior Illumination as we are, but we do have many friends around the globe on the forums that are crazy about lights.

There are so many people that love this hobby and they all hang out at the Planet Christmas Forums. Great people, great community, all willing to help out each other however they can. Also another great place to hang out at is the Light-o-rama Forum which is more controller based discussions. Come on over if you like and check it out.

Where do you get your lights?

I buy most my incandescent mini lights from Lowe's for two reasons, one they carry a big stock of them each year, two they have a great low wattage per lamp design. You can plug-in 8 strings in a row which only consumes about 210 watts vs the older/other strings that consumed almost double the power. Even better, someday I will convert to LED strings to save even more on power, but for now I am enjoying the incandescent strings.

Also several of our friends that have really enjoyed our show have donated lights to us just to encourage us to make it bigger and better. We have been blessed and are very thankfull to everyone that helps us.

What are some of your favorite animated lights links?

There is so many great shows out there it can be difficult to pick but here is some that I have enjoyed in the past.

Do you have any how-tos on your ideas?

I have built some of our display parts myself and plan to put together info on them, but for now here are some links many of the tips, tricks, and how-tos around the web.

Where did Christmas lights come from?

The history of Christmas lights is an interesting one. If your wanting to know more here is a website I found that has lots of good info.

How did you make this website?

In 2019, we did extensive work to modernize the website with a new responsive/adaptive web design. There is many CSS frameworks that provide good responsive/adaptive designs but I wanted to write custom code to better learn how it works. In order to keep with the candy cane background that does not scale well I used more adaptive web design features.

The history of the favicon is long a twisted. I did extensive research to try and fully support these little icons. Please see the meta tags in the source code of these pages. There is a lot of icon sizes to support!

This site is built with PHP, HTML5, CSS, and Javascript. Here's a list of development tools I used.

What do you use to create your videos?

Our song videos used to be edited on the PC using Windows Movie Maker (not the best tool on the block), and we used to shoot them with a point and shoot digital camera. But now we shoot them with an iPhone and edit them in iMovie on the phone. So in order to work on the older videos on the phone too we've had to convert all the AVI files to H.264 MOV files using MPEG StreamClip.

Whats the history of Christmas Lights?

The first lights on Christmas trees were candles that were attached to the tree branches with either melted wax or pins that held them in place. As you can imagine, many trees went up in flames due to this practice. One might guess that at that time, many families would have kept buckets of water nearby to extinguish the impending fire. In the homes of the wealthy, it was often times the job of a servant to watch the tree during the evening hours and be prepared to extinguish a fire, if necessary. As a result of this eminent risk, most trees were decorated on December 24th and promptly removed following Christmas day. This must have been a lot of work for such a short viewing of the tree!

In 1882, the technology of Thomas Edison was used to hand wire 80 red, white, and blue lights onto the first electronically lighted Christmas tree. It took a few years for this idea to catch on. When President Grover Cleveland set up an electronically lighted Christmas tree in the White House in 1895, finally the idea began to get some publicity. The general public realized that there was a better way to light their Christmas trees.

By the close of the 1800's, General Electric Company began manufacturing and selling hand blown bulbs that were ready to wire into a string to be put on a Christmas tree. Since the average homeowner was not well educated about how electricity worked in those days, a new industry sprung up of "wiremen" who were hired to wire the bulbs together to light the family tree.

In the early 1900's, some big department stores began setting up large illuminated trees to attract customers. And attract customers it did! Everyone wanted to have a tree at home like the stores were capable of putting on display. In the early 1900's, the cost of such a tree was in excess of $300. That price included a generator and the wireman's service. By today's standard, that cost would be equivalent to more than $2,000.

In 1903, the American Eveready Company developed and marketed the first Christmas light set, which had screw in bulbs and a plug in wall socket, since many homes had been "wired" for electricity by this time. Then in 1908, entrepreneur Ralph Morris came up with the idea of taking the lights from an old telephone switchboard, wiring them on a Christmas tree, and running a battery as a power source.

But the individual who made the biggest difference in electric Christmas tree lights, and who made them affordable to the general public, was Albert Sadacca. Albert's family manufactured imitation birds in a wicker cage that lit up with electricity. At the age of 15, Albert had the idea of making electric Christmas lights. His parents thought it sounded like a good idea, and the family gave it a go. The first year, they only sold 100 sets of lights. The following year, Albert decided to color the bulbs in red, green, and other colors. This idea really took off. Albert Sadacca went on to become the head of a NOMA Electric Company, a multi-million dollar corporation. Headed up by Albert and his two brothers, Henri and Leon, the trio formed the largest Christmas lighting company in the world prior to 1965.

Today, yet another revolution in Christmas lighting is occurring. The newest offering in holiday lights are LED lights that use significantly less electricity than incandescent bulbs and burn out less frequently. With the trend toward energy conservation and "going green", LED lights are rapidly gaining in popularity. Though they are more expensive than traditional incandescent light sets, one way to change over all your holiday lights is to buy one new set of LED lights per year until everything is changed over.

Christmas tree lighting technology will continue to change as time goes on. History shows us that we've made many improvements in the last few centuries. Only time will tell what's in store for holiday lights in years to come!