How is this done? With lots of planning, time, and maybe some late night hair pulling as well. Hundreds and hundreds of hours have been spent planning, assembling, building, wiring, and sequencing!
The Magic You See...
When we started doing our show back in 2010, we primarily used plain ol' 120-volt LED light strings of between 25 and 100 bulbs with preset colours that were set to be on, dimmed, or off. In 2016, a major re-do using low-voltage pixels was undertaken. Pixels are individually controllable bulbs where their colour and brightness can be set for each. In 2020, we finally finished converting the rest of our "traditional" 120-volt LED light strings to pixels.
The items around the yard were made mostly from scratch with stuff that you can buy at a hardware store along with a mix of a few pre-made items that were modified to be part of our display. Our zigzag trees were entirely custom-built. The wireframe star over our living room window was bought, but it still took over 20 hours (and over 500 zip ties) to measure, plan, cut, splice, and mount all the lights on it! All of our 3D coroplast stars needed to be prototyped and built painstakingly by hand since pre-made ones couldn't be sourced anywhere. Our mini spiral trees were store-bought but subsequently taken apart and "re-engineered" to use pixels; aside from figuring out exactly how to modify the first one, the rest took well over an hour's worth of work to make them what they are today. Our mega tree is a culmination of other hobbyist's basic designs with our own unique ideas added.
The items around the yard were made mostly from scratch with stuff that you can buy at a hardware store along with a mix of a few pre-made items that were modified to be part of our display. Our zigzag trees were entirely custom-built. The wireframe star over our living room window was bought, but it still took over 20 hours (and over 500 zip ties) to measure, plan, cut, splice, and mount all the lights on it! All of our 3D coroplast stars needed to be prototyped and built painstakingly by hand since pre-made ones couldn't be sourced anywhere. Our mini spiral trees were store-bought but subsequently taken apart and "re-engineered" to use pixels; aside from figuring out exactly how to modify the first one, the rest took well over an hour's worth of work to make them what they are today. Our mega tree is a culmination of other hobbyist's basic designs with our own unique ideas added.
The Magic You Don't See...
What takes a huge portion of time is the process of sequencing the lights to the music. The computer doesn't make up random patterns on-the-fly; rather, a human being needs to decide upon the effects to be used where and when. We use xLights which is free sequencing software that offers many effects that that can be mixed together to make a show—similar to how various brush techniques are used to make a painting. It can be a tedious process taking well over ten, twenty, or more hours to sequence a song—but hobbies are all about taking up lots of spare time, right? 😜 While it's getting more and more common for people in this hobby to save time and simply go out and find free or paid for pre-made sequences that can be "mapped" to a house and yard, we prefer to make our own original art instead of buying it.
The light controllers that actually drive the lights in our display were bought either in solder-it-yourself kits or pre-assembled. The light display's "brains" are on a small and inexpensive BeagleBone Black computer running freely downloadable Falcon Player Software. Data signal cables run from the computer to around the yard to "talk" to the other light controllers.
Almost forgot: to get the music into your vehicle, we use a small FM transmitter that's plugged into the computer's audio output. It's designed to transmit clearly for only a few hundred feet since there is no need to have it go any farther than you can see the display.
The light controllers that actually drive the lights in our display were bought either in solder-it-yourself kits or pre-assembled. The light display's "brains" are on a small and inexpensive BeagleBone Black computer running freely downloadable Falcon Player Software. Data signal cables run from the computer to around the yard to "talk" to the other light controllers.
Almost forgot: to get the music into your vehicle, we use a small FM transmitter that's plugged into the computer's audio output. It's designed to transmit clearly for only a few hundred feet since there is no need to have it go any farther than you can see the display.
If You Don't Mind Information Overload...
There are many online forums used to share knowledge about this hobby. The AusChristmasLighting forum has a manual that explains both the basics and goes into great detail on what's involved in getting into this hobby. You need to register as a user to access the manual, but it's free to do.
