|
Lights: |
All lights are LED. |
| Circuits:
|
14 control boxes
and a dedicated computer power
numerous
separate lighting circuits. The house eves and mega tree contain
thousands of multi-color LEDs.
About 10,000 LEDS in the whole
display. |
|
Other Equipment: |
High gain, low
power legal FM radio transmitter
(sends music to your car radio). Multiple LOR controllers,
sequence editor software and show
management software. Custom-built stage
controllers previously used in rock concerts. Custom built
arches, tree and mega star. |
|
Setup Time: |
Setting up the full
system takes about 20 person/hours. Take down and storage time
is 5
hours. |
|
Misc Facts: |
During a show
of 9 songs, over 5,000 different
lighting patterns are used, with over 20 million computer
commands to control the lights. Song sequences take a long time to
design. Example, the "Electrical Light
Parade" took 30 hours to program.
|
|
Power: |
People think our electric bill must
be huge. You guessed wrong. Not True. Lights are off
most of the time due to fading and
flashing. If lights ran constantly
at full brightness, it would consume
8 times more energy. Lights are
also LED and consume 1/10 the power
of incandescent bulbs. They also
turn on and off much faster to the
beats of music. The controllers
consume very little power (typically
10 watts or less).
For comparison, power cost for an identical house running the same
amount of lights with steady full brightness of regular bulbs
would
cost $200 in electricity during the season. I spend $15
for the entire December display
electric bill. Our solar PV panels supply
95% of all electricity. Just 10 minutes of daytime winter
sun supplies enough electricity to run the entire display for a
whole evening.
|
|
Sensors: |
Security cameras and
tamper sensors watch for safety and theft. To
ensure safety and protection from
damage, there area numerous sensors
for noise, tampering, and personnel
detection. The lights are
designed to stop, restart, and
notify us when anyone is in the area
at any time of the day.
Although most all of the lights work
at low voltage, we still don't want
to risk any tripping hazards or
other issues with people in the
area. The video cameras also
do a great job of monitoring the
display and stopping it when cars
park in the middle of the street or
people (mainly kids) wander onto the
property. |
