Wires, Wires and more Wires

I haven't posted any setup updates since last week, but I have been working all day every day. Most of my work lately has been in wiring... connecting all of the individual elements of the show to the LightORama controllers that make them dance to the music.

For example, controller 1 is located on the roof and controls 15 snowflakes on the front of the house and the nativity set in the side yard. (each controller has 16 channels or circuits than can turn on and off, fade, shimmer, twinkle, etc.)

Controller 2 controls the lights in the garland on the house (5 colors) the lights on the shrubs (5 colors) and the lights on the wreath/video screen (5 colors). Channel 16 activates the strobes spread throughout the display. You can also see the projector in the window that powers the video screen. That big lens is a short throw lens so the wreath/video screen can stay close to the house.








Controllers 3, 4 and 5 control the large tree and the medium trees in the front yard, the big tree has four sections with five colors each (20 channels) the three sided star (3 channels) and the Sunray fixture in the center of the star (1 channel). I also used a spare channel to turn the nativity star on and off separately from the rest of the figures.












Controller 6 controls the 16 candy canes along the front of the display.

And now for the controller hog, the new bellagio fountain..controllers 7,8,9 and 10 control the leaping lights arches and the side jets of the fountain. (controllers 11,12,13,14,15,16 handle the 12 jets in the center of the fountain). This beast uses 160 channels all together.

Still setting up

A couple of projects tonight; stands for the controllers and some snowflakes that will be on the house.

First, I built some simple stands to keep the controllers up off the ground so the connections won't be on the wet ground. Just treated 2x6's... pretty simple..





Then it was on to the snowflakes. After scouring the stores last year after Christmas I was still 8 snowflakes short to do the front of the house as I was planning. So, I had Gregg Jones weld some up for me. There were 4 36" flakes and four smaller ones.



Got those all finished and ready to go.


Ok, time to catch some shuteye.

Setup Continues

Well, last evening we managed to get the star installed on the big tree. It was a little scary, but went fine.



It doesn't look as huge on top of the 22 foot tree as it did sitting on the patio.



I also got a good start on setting up the mini Bellagio fountain display. I still have to install the tee's on the tops of the circular portion and tie them together, then install the other leaping lights on the backside, then tons of wiring to do.

2008 Setup Begins!

2008 Setup Begins!!

Getting started outside... just arrived with the stuff from off-site storage.




Had a pretty good day, the Nativity scene is set up and we got the tree all together except for the star on top. We'll finish that up tomorrow night and get the fountain standing up as well.

Here are some shots of putting the tree together. You can see the Nativity scene in the background.








I had some really great help today, thanks so much to Shawn (on the tree) and Sam (on the ground).



Gary Birch was there to help out too.. he did a Top Notch job :)

89.9 The Elf is back on the air!

Tonight, 89.9FM The Elf returned to the airwaves. If you live within a few miles of Seymour Lights, tune your radio to 89.9FM for commercial free Christmas music. The current song playing will displayed at the top of the page at SeymourLights.com

The Lights will turn on Thanksgiving Night, come see us again this year

New Tree Topper Part II

I took a quick picture and video of the new tree topper after dark this evening. I really think it's going to look cool!

Finished new z-tree star.

Well, Fear Fair is closed and it's time to get Seymour Lights up and going. This weekend I finished up the star for the top of the 22' tree. I had to incorporate the SunRay into it somehow and I wanted to go to a three section star that I could animate to create a spinning effect. So, I gathered up some thin wall 3/4" tubing, some 1/4" cold roll in six foot lengths and this is how it came out. It looks massive with just the top section of the tree, but I think it won't be quite so cartoonishly large when it's 20+ feet in the air.





Here it is painted and with ropelight installed on the three star segments.



And finally, with the Sunray fixture installed... I will probably never turn the star segments and Sunray on at the same time, I just plugged everything in to check it out.



Oh well, got to get my nose back to the grindstone, the days are ticking away until lights on.