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This is the OLD site and is outdated. Please update your bookmarks to point to lights.donlaw.com
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playCurrent status
This is of course inconvenient if you want to come out and see the show. Therefore, the system will test the GFCI every few minutes between 5 PM and 10 PM every night and post the results here. That way, you can just check this page to see if the system is up and working.
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Visit lights.donlaw.com
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From the east, take Sunrise Blvd. 1.5 miles past the turnpike, then turn left onto NW 11th Place. Our house is the next to the last house at the end of the street.
From the west, take University Drive south from Sunrise Blvd. to the next signal, which is Marcano. Head east on Marcano to the stop sign. Turn left onto NW 11th Place and we are the 2nd house on the right.
Here we are on Google Maps
Once you get to our house, park in the driveway or on the swale. The
music show doesn't run continuously. You have to push the green
Play button on the control console by the sidewalk.
Optimal viewing
Videos
History
In December 2005 an engineer friend of mine showed me a movie of another
house that had done this, and that is what inspired me to do this project.
This video blew me away when I first saw it, and I thought to myself ...
Wow - I would like to do that ... I think I can figure out how to do
that ... I KNOW I can figure out how to do that ...
You can download the
original movie, which is of a house up in the Chicago area.
About
There are 96 different channels of control. Each channel is one string
or a set of strings of lights that can be turned on and off independently.
The music plays automatically every half hour beginning at 6:00PM and ending at
10:00PM. If you want to play a song on demand, there is a user console
next to the sidewalk with two buttons. The orange button lets you select
which of the three songs you would like to hear. When you press the green
button, the song will play immediately.
If you really want to have the best viewing experience,
the best place
to stand is on the sidewalk across the street from my house. It is
difficult to hear the music very well from there. So I broke down
and ordered an FM transmitter.
You can bring your personal FM radio, stand across the street,
tune to 104.1FM and rock out. I have some loaner headsets
if you need them.
The videos are not as good as the live thing, but they do give you
an idea of what it looks like. You can
download the 25MB MPEG-4 movie file of the best song in the show
which is new for this year. (I'm actually trying to produce a better
video that shows some of the details, but that probably won't happen
until Dec 16 2008.)
You can also still
download the 100MB MPEG-2 movie file of the show from last year.
These files will play using mplayer on Linux,
Windows Media Player on that OS from Redmond,
and VLC on the Mac.
If Windows Media Player doesn't work, try VLC on Windows.
(If you still can't get it to work, you can view a
low-quality version on YouTube.
)
I started work on the project in February and built all of the hardware
and wrote all of the software myself. For engineers and geeks only:
I have
a technical page on how it was all done,
plus a HOWTO on computerchristmas.com
which is where I got the design for the main controller.
There are about 2400 lights on the eave of the house. There are 16
segments, each of which has 3 strands of lights, 50 white, 50 red,
and 50 green. There are probably about
another 5000 or so in the yard. As far as big yard displays go, that
isn't a really big number. I use the computer control to get more
"Wows per Watt" - and therefore it's good for the environment. ;-)
If you have comments or questions, feel free to email me at
