Apologies for lack of a 2010 show

Unfortunately, I was not able to present the show for 2010. We will be back bigger and better than ever for 2011!
 
Let me state first that no one is more disappointed by this than myself.  I do not take the honor of being a part of the holiday traditions of families in Southern Indiana lightly and it is beyond disappointing that I was unable to put up the lights this season.

I have heard many versions of the reason for this circulating, from the heartwarming to the sublime.  Let me state for the record that I am not suffering from some sort of life threatening illness and that the City or Seymour, nor any of my neighbors played any part in the cancellation of this season's show.  It was really a combination of things.

As some of you may know, I also direct Fear Fair, a large haunted attraction in Seymour.  We recently completed our tenth season and very exciting things are happening for us.  We are going to be a featured tour for a national convention known as Hauntcon which will be held in Louisville, KY this coming April.  This is a big opportunity for Fear Fair to gain some national exposure and help us to take it to the next level in terms of attendance.  It's a blessing in so many ways, but it also turned the world upside down in terms of the build schedule.  Basically, everything that normally must be completed by the last weekend in September must now be done by the last week of April.  We are working full tilt to complete the haunt renovations and it just left no time for the light display.  We also had a particularly labor intensive haunt season and I did have about a month long fight with the flu, which caused me to be unable to start preparing the show during October.  This really made it impossible to have the lights on in time.  I posted that the show would be cancelled on the Seymour Lights Facebook profile as well as my personal sites, but neglected to update the actual web site, apologies for that.

Seymour Lights takes seven 12 hour days, just to put up, wire and test.  Hundreds more hours go into the off-season construction of display elements, video production, sequencing of the actual light show, etc.  There was simply not enough time.  I believe in doing things right or not at all, so I chose to take the year off and come back strong in 2011 with a show that will blow your mind.  I already had giant fireworks lights, flame generators and so much more underway for 2010 and I will be adding much more from May to December.  Next year's show will knock your socks off, I promise!

So, once again, I apologize for any inconvenience cause by the lack of a show this year and I can't wait to bring you the best show ever for 2011!  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Fireworks Lights for 2010

Made solid headway today, should be down to final assembly next.

All of the rope light segments for both fireworks are now corded and ready to go on.

 After finishing up the last of those, I painted the larger spokes, so those are ready for rope light.

I also got the LED C9's for the tips of the spokes ready to go. Turns out Action Lighting sent me sockets for SPT2 although I specified SPT1 and the order actually says SPT1. Since I live in the middle of nowhere and really can't afford to wait a week to get the right sockets here, I had to make it work. I just carefully positioned the wire in the sockets so that both sides were pierced, then cut little sections of wire tie as a spacer to hold the wire snug in the socket. It actually worked out just fine, so those are ready to go on as well.

Now I just need to get the rope light attached to the spokes and wiring done for each spoke assembly, finish my two JUMP poles and this one will be in the can. Such a chore!

ICE 2010

Each year a convention is held in Indianapolis for extreme Christmas nuts such as myself.  Folks travel from as far away as Arizona for this event.  This year, I was honored to present a session on dmx lighting for those assembled.  Later, we did a live demo of the new LPG flame generators that will be featured as a part of Seymour Lights 2010.

Working on the fireworks lights project

I finally got started this week on one of my 2010 projects, fireworks lights. This isn't an original design of mine; Joel Rose on the Do It Yourself Christmas Forum is doing a very similar project and I borrowed his basic design.

First I made the hub:

Next step was to weld up the spokes.  There are eight of these with four 6.5 foot stalks each.  I made a jig on an old sheet of board so I could make each of the units match.

Here are all eight spoke units welded up and ready to go.

And here's the hub on a temporary pole with the spoke units installed.  When it's mounted properly, it will slide on the pole and be pulled up by two cables and a winch.  There will be three guy wires attached to the bottom of the hub that will be tight when it's fully raised.

Next project are the 32 sections of rope light that need prepped and installed.

formspring.me

Ask me anything http://formspring.me/fearfair

2010 Channel Layout Finalized

I am sometimes asked what the schematic looks like for the dispay.  Well, I don't really do one of those, but there is a channel layout that shows what controllers/channels control what display elements.  I spent 8 hours laying it out today and I believe it is finalized. 

We added nine additional controllers from 2009..

2010 Channel Layour (PDF)

One Fan Down - Two More to Go

Alright, one fan completely done. Blue is finished.

This thing really ended up with a LOT of wire on it.  Pretty darn heavy too!

All folded up and ready to go off to storage in the folks' barn.

Two more to go. I am not sure if I will start on the next one right away or do another project in between... this REALLY got monotonous.

Progress on fans - new radio transmitter

It's taking about five hours per color to add the lights to the fans.  I spent the morning working on radio transmitter issues, so I only got half of the clear lights added to the first fan this afternoon.

I have also installed a new FM Transmitter.  This unit supports RDS which will enable me to send the current song playing, etc. to be displayed on the radio in most vehicles.  Since the transmitter is located in the garage and the show computer is in the office, I had to find a way to extend a serial connection from the computer to the rds encoder in the transmitter.  I used a serial over ip adapter to do so.  This converts the RS232 signal to tcp/ip packets which are then decoded by the adapter and sent to the serial port on the transmitter.

Wrapping the Fans

I'm making progress on the fans which will be part of the replacement for the Bellagio Fountain this season.  This is the first one with 1/4 of it's lights installed.  This is 3600 red bulbs.  Each fan will have a total of  14,400 lights and 3,312 feet of wire on them.  Good thing the frames are built of welded steel.

Flame Generators

One addition to Seymour Lights for 2010 are flame generators.  Eight of these will be placed at key spots in the display this year.  They are dmx operated and work on propane, just like a gas grill.  Before I put them away in storage, I had to have a little bit of fun with them.

Allow me to present... The Firecracker Suite
http://www.vimeo.com/8753775

Some welding on 2010 projects

I took advantage of the unseasonably warm weather today to get some work done on some projects for the 2010 show.

Since I am replacing the lights on my 25' steel z-tree, it seemed like a good time to make a couple of changes to the second section from the top.  When I originally built the tree, I used the shelf near the top for snow machines... this year I am going to put a Chauvet Q-Scan 250 there to shine gobos, etc. on the house... so I had to drop the shelf down to add another 10" of headroom.

While I was at it, I added ladder standoffs on each side.  At least once or twice a year I need to fix some lights, etc. and it's always a hassle trying to avoid breaking bulbs, etc.  Plus, I have some new LED color changing balls  that I am going to put on the tree this year. Now, I'll be able to put the ladder on these standoffs..

I also got the three frames for my fans completed.

I borrowed the idea I saw on the Planet Christmas forums of adding wheels to the frames to make them a bit easier to move around and store.  Plus, they will protect the lights when stored by placing them on the inside.

I managed to get a couple of coats of WalMart green spray paint on everything before the rains forecast for tonight.

The cords keep on coming ... ugh

Well, I got the pile of short cords all packed neatly away into four tubs. Now it's on to the heavier, power distribution, cords. I managed to get them all moved in out of the yard before they get covered with snow and hopefully I can get them stored away into tubs tomorrow night.

Cords, Cords, Cords

Well, the tear down and storage continues here at Seymour Lights. Since it has been so cold, I had to drag the cords inside the garage and let them warm up so they would be pliable enough to wind up and store. The smaller cords are now wound up and in their tubs. Now on to the power distribution cords which are the larger gauge.

We started out with this pile:
Now, after about six hours of work, they are all stored neatly in their tubs:
All ready to go to the storage shed:

Getting Ready for 2010!

Well, it took 9 cities and 12 stores, but I found the lights I need for next season's remodeling of the display. I got most of them at half price.

Those LED color changing globes are really cool, I have 36 of them for the big tree, as well as six present to go under the tree!

I also got started on the frames for the fan lights that will be part of the replacement for the Bellagio Fountain display.. I will post more about those as I get more work done on them.










Here is a picture of the first completed half-frame and the spines bent for the other five.

First time I have ever paid full price

Well, I have never paid full price for lights since I started this madness, but this year the stores are bare. I have been to over 15 stores where there are no lights left whatsoever. So when another Christmas nut tipped me off that the Scottsburg WalMart still had solid color minis on the shelf I jumped on it.




It's frustrating, though. Here's what I got for the same amount of money December 26, 2007.

Playing Around with Colorine

I am still considering switching my display to all LED lights for next season. However, I like to be prepared.

Since the stores are completely bare of lights this season and there will be no half price deals to be had, I am looking at ways to maintain lights and make ones I have on hand work where I will be needing them. Next season I plan to replace the standard light strings along the roofline of the house with icicle lights. I have not had any luck finding colored icicle (other than multi) lights around, so I am going to have to make my own. I was trying to avoid changing out bulbs with other strings, but it looks as though I may end up having to do just that.

I found a product made by Rosco (the leading supplier of theatrical lighting supplies) called Colorine. It's a product you can use to dip lights (up to 25 watts) into to change the color. The product itself is great, dries fast, super durable. The problem is I am not finding the colors to be a good match for factory mini light colors.

The examples you see are using 7607 Emerald Green, 7604 Moonlight Blue, 7602 Ruby Red and 7615 Canary Yellow. (The green and blue just won't work. I have ordered a pint of Cardinal Red and will see if that's a closer match to factory red mini light paint) You can match up the Colorine colors with the Rosco color chart here.

The only one that turned out well, is the yellow. It's a near perfect match to factory yellow mini lights, if not a slightly nicer hue. This will work.


I will show the other colors below. In each case the lights I dipped with the colorine are on the left and the factory mini lights are on the right. As you can see, just not good matches. I am especially disappointed with blue as those are the ones always needing recolored.






All things considered, not a success. Oh well, on to the alternative; switching out hundreds 0f bulbs.

Seymour Tribune Article

Seymour Lights was featured in an article in the local newspaper, The Tribune, recently. You can read the article on our media page.

2009 Show is up and running

Well, the 2009 version of Seymour Lights is up and running. The crowds have been great and we are so happy to be spreading Christmas cheer again. Stop by and check out the show. Merry Christmas.

Waterproofing is a chore!

I spent the evening in the garage getting the LED par cans going around the video wreath into the 2.5 quart paint pails for waterproofing. Should get the wreath up and start mounting them on tomorrow afternoon.

2009 Setup is underway

I have gotten started setting up for this year's show. The big tree is on site and assembled. We used a man lift this season, which made the job soooo much easier.
The truss is also installed above the garage doors. So, just have to get the video wreath mounted and it will be on to wiring... shooting for Thanksgiving night lights on as usual.