Backstage at my Christmas light display

[ljb2of3]

For you fellow techies... I'm blogging the behind the scenes action as I prepare my Christmas light display.

Follow along here if you're interested. http://ljb2of3-christmas.blogspot.com/

 

[Hump66]

I'm wanting to do this too. I just have no idea where to start except for the music. I'd want to use the "We wish you a metal Christmas" album.

 

[ljb2of3]

It helps that I do lighting semi-professionally, so I know the ins and outs of how to make lights do what I want. I plan to post all the gory details about how it works as I go along, so watch the blog, you might learn enough to get started!

 

[o'doyle]

Following your blog.. Been wanting to do dmx Christmas lights for a while now..

 

[BReeves]

This reminds me of the late 60’s early 70's when disco was in full swing. I had a service contract on the audio system for a club that asked me if I could build them a color organ. This was back when transistors were just taking over tubes and IC’s were 2 inch square cubes. I designed and built a 3 channel 1000 watts per channel color organ using discrete audio amps/filters and triacs to drive the lights. UL would not have approved but it worked and it worked pretty durn good. I still have the smaller 500 watt version I built for the prototype, use to hook it up to the Christmas tree every year. Doubt it still works as it’s been years since it’s been fired up and the caps are probably bad. That was a fun time in my life.

What you guys are doing now is amazing but we were the pioneers

 

[flowers]

Very cool, going to have to swing by and check it out with the family.

 

[Larry Morgan]

I'm always curious as to what people use to control the lights. I know a lot of people use standard DMX stuff. Years ago I got the idea to build a custom MIDI controller for lights, though, so that way every light could be programmed as a note. Then the lights could be "played" along with a music track in a program such as Reason. I figured that would be easier to program...

How hard is it to program with the software you are using? I kind of assumed it would be tedious, but I don't really have any experience with automated lighting stuff.

I have one our of industrial automation controllers on my desk that I was thinking of taking home to automate my lights. It runs on ethernet, and has a way to publish the deployed program to the web. Long story short, I'm thinking of doing an interactive display, where people can join the network, connect to the controller, and switch the strands on and off an their leisure...

Like I need another darn project...

 

[ljb2of3]

All my lights are DMX controlled... all 1,556 channels! The software is easy to use to me, but that is because I've been using it for the past several years. I'm using the PC version of a pro lighting console, and I do a lot of contract work with the TU theater department where I program stuff for them using the software on a pretty regular basis, so I know my way around. However, the learning curve can be pretty steep if you aren't already a lighting person. It does get tedious somtimes, in general, plan on an average of an hour to program for every minute of music. Some songs are much easier, and take less time, but some take far longer.

The MIDI idea has merit. part of my show is fired by MIDI notes. Rather than writing a bunch of repetitive cues then having to tweak the timing on all of them, I wrote the cue once then used MIDI notes to fire it over and over. Dragging the notes around on the timeline was much easier than adjusting timing in the other program. I even thought about hooking up a keyboard to play along for recording so I wouldn't have to adjust so much later. Maybe next year.

Having an interactive element in the show sounds cool too.

 

[Larry Morgan]

The MIDI idea has merit. part of my show is fired by MIDI notes. Rather than writing a bunch of repetitive cues then having to tweak the timing on all of them, I wrote the cue once then used MIDI notes to fire it over and over. Dragging the notes around on the timeline was much easier than adjusting timing in the other program. I even thought about hooking up a keyboard to play along for recording so I wouldn't have to adjust so much later. Maybe next year.

That's kind of what I was getting at. You could "play" your lights along to a track first, while having software record it. Then you just loop the recording. Viola! That's where the custom midi-to-light controller comes in. If people had enough interest, maybe I'd have motivation to build one! Hahaha.

 

[MarkV]

Looks pretty sharp.

This is my first year with music to my lights. I'm using LOR (Light O Rama) to control mine. Lots of work sequencing. It's all worth in now that I can just sit back and watch the lights go.