Backstage

2009 Backstage:

The Lights:
Our 2009 display has 41,139 lights in six colors (Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet, and White).  Last year we used LED technology in the display, but there were problems.  Namely, defects in the strands resulted in a situation where some of them wanted to catch on fire.  This year we bulk ordered all new LEDs, but when they arrived from China there were once again problems with the lights.  At the last moment before the display was to be set up, we had to switch back to the old style incandescent mini lights.  All of our lights this year are standard off the shelf lights from Lowes.  We are probably going to remain with incandescent lights in future years.  Despite the long life claims of LEDs (50,000 hours) which would usually offset the additional cost, real world experience has shown that China quality control has resulted in a less than desierable 20% annual failure rate for the LEDs.  Some parts of the display, like the 120 floodlights aimed at the house and the "Firefli pixel" arches still use LED technology (but not the defective type that wants to catch on fire).  New for 2009 is our intelligent moving light which can pan, tilt, color change, and project images in the display).

Power:
The LEDs last year required 28A (3,360W) of electricity when they were all turned on at once.  The incandescents we are using this year require 142.5A (17,100W) of electricity.  Power is run to the display from a dedicated subpanel (breaker box) via ten 20A circuits.  Fortunately we don't turn them on all at once most of the time (although a couple songs do for a brief moment).  This year's display required about a mile of custom extension cords.

Light Counts (how we've grown):
2005: 8,000
2006: 32,000
2007: 35,500
2008: 36,392
2009: 41,139

Computer Control:
With all the lights and power in place comes the real challenge: synchronizing them to music. Doing so requires a way to interface the lights with a computer, and a way to program the computer with a set of commands to tell the lights what to do (and when to do it). The electronics necessary to make this happen consist of 224 channels of D-Light controllers. The software which controls the lights is known as Aurora (we wrote it). Each song takes about 10 hours of time to synchronize to music. The music is transmitted to visitor's FM radios by a low power FM transmitter (FCC part 15 compliant) on an empty FM station.

Channel Counts (how we've grown):
2005: Not animated
2006: 63 (8x D-Light ACx8)
2007: 96 (8x D-Light ACx8, 1x D-Light DCx16, 2x D-Light ACx16)
2008: 210 (8x D-Light ACx8, 1x D-Light DCx16, 6x D-Light ACx16)
2009: 240 (6x D-Light ACx8, 1x D-Light DCx16, 6x D-Light ACx16, 1x Aurora DMX Adapter)

Setting It All Up:
So, with all of that in place, how long does it take to hang all of those lights? The setup of our 2009 display began on November 1 and will take until December 11 to complete (over a full month).  They all come down in just a couple days though.

The Mega-Tree:
Of particular interest is our 26 foot tall animated Christmas tree. First used in 2006, this display element was custom made by us out of plumbing parts just for this display. The support pole and star were assembled on the ground and then raised into place by manlift and anchored by eight steel cables. Lights were raised onto the tree via parachute cords that were pre-strung through eye bolts. All of the lights except for the star may be lowered and re-raised on the tree for servicing (replacing bulbs, bad sections, etc.).  The mega tree consists of 14,500 lights.

The Leaping Arches Introduced in 2008 are the four "leaping arches" in the foreground of the display. These arches each consist of 16 individually controllable RGB pixels contained on a special D-Light Firefli strand. This allows us to control the exact color out of 16 million possible colors that each pixel should be throughout the show.

The Voice Of Lights On Logan
He's known as "The Demented Elf" and we hired him to do the voiceovers for the display.

So how much is the electric bill?
Because the lights are not always on (each “channel” in only on for brief periods of time) the bill is far less than you might guess. In 2007 it only cost $30 to run the display for the entire Christmas season. Our anticipated electricity cost this year is calculated to be about $70. Electricity turns out to be one of the cheapest things in the entire display.