How Do We Do It ?
I have often been asked "How do we do it "? Well hopefully the following page will help you in understanding how Lake Myra Christmas is such a spectacular light show.
Our display is 100% controlled by computer programming, synchronized to our chosen music. Synchronizing the music can take a lot of your time and is dependent on the complexity of the song and how many high voltage channels you will use in the show. Lake Myra Christmas will be using 346 channels for the 2007 show.
Now you may be asking yourself "What is a channel?" I like to describe this like a light switch in your home to turn the light on and off, but the channel we use can do this plus other special lighting effects like dimming and shimmering. We can actually turn this channel on and off at a speed where you can not even see the light come on. "That's Fast !"
Our software and hardware are made by Light O Rama . The program we use can control a total of 3,840 channels which is constructed on control boards that has either 8 or 16 channels. Lake Myra Christmas uses both of these control boards which is mounted in water tight enclosures and are located through out the display. You can click here to see these controllers mounted in our water tight enclosures.
Each control board is assigned an ID number so the computer can communicate with each one. We use Cat5 communication cable to connect the boards together which then forms our network. The first control board should be located within 100 feet of the computer but then the boards can be located up to 4000 feet from each other. This makes it possible to control multi family displays as we do here at Lake Myra Christmas. The data from the computer comes from the short range RS232 serial output and then the data is converted into the industry standard long range RS485 protocol by using a special SC485 serial connector. This connector is required in order to transmit the high speed data to control boards, X10 devices and digital IO cards.
The above illustration is courtesy of Light O Rama which is the software and hardware we use here at Lake Myra Christmas. The equipment is high quality and has the best product support in the industry. We have used LOR products ever since the company was formed and it has been a delightful experience. Sure we have experience a few little bugs but we were able to correct them and only about 2 times I needed to contact support. Those 2 times we had an answer within 24 hrs !! This company is the greatest !! If you are interested just click on the below logo for more information.
In our 2006 light show we used for the first time wireless technology to control certain control boards. We were often asked how we control the lights in the display across the street and this is the way we did it ! With this new technology we now can set up the network in many ways. When used outdoors you can achieve a 1000 foot range with point to point to multi point operation. The configuration is almost endless.
The control boards are actually microprocessors that takes its commands from an internal stored sequence which is dowloaded from the software , another controller or direct from the software. The microprocessor performs the lighting effects from high level commands, for an example : fade channel 14 from 20% intensity to 60% intensity over 8 seconds. The internal intelligence allows for very complex shows where thousands of changes in lights are possible every second. I have been asked a number of times how the computer screen looks when you program it. Below is a screen shot of a sequence and is showing a number of high level commands.
We hope this page has helped in understanding how we control our lights. If you would like you can download a demo version of the software by clicking HERE and go to the bottom of the page where you will see the Demo version. This is a complete version of the software but you will not be able to control the lights with the demo version.
How Can I Get Started ?
I have often been asked how you get started in such a hobby. This hobby has a lot of choices and there is a few questions you will need to ask your self. First are you a good, do it your selfer? If you are then you will be able to save a lot of money. The hardware we use can be purchase in several forms. You can purchase the control boards already assemble and mounted in an enclosure or you can purchase the control boards in kits and build your on enclosures to mount them in. The control boards that are ready to plug in, you can figure on a cost of somewhere around $25.00 per channel . Now if you decide to build everything your cost can be in the $7 or $8 range per channel. A HUGE DIFFERENCE ! We build everything here at Lake Myra Christmas. So where do you start ?
Remember your house is your canvas and you are going to paint it with lights ! The possibilities are endless. But above all "THINK SAFELY, ELECTRICITY CAN KILL YOU". Below you will find a general outline of what to consider before you commit to such a hobby.
I strongly recommend starting your computerized display on a small scale. What I mean by that is to have 16 to 32 channel control and then you can progress from there. I have actually seen some start with a huge amount of channels and then realize how much work is involve and decide to give it up. Above all you want to have fun and share the Christmas spirit.
When you are undertaking all of these projects you will need an array of hand tools and once you have everything built and ready to go , the most valuable tool you could ever own is the amp probe pictured below.
Another tool really nice to have around is a Cat5 tester/
ARE YOU READY TO GET STARTED ?
You may be saying to yourself ; Whats so hard about plugging in a bunch of Christmas lights ? Well it is not hard ! But what if you are going to plug in thousands of these little bulbs ? You had better understand a few rules and and verse yourself in how to handle electrical loads that you you have not done before.
RULE #1
Think in three's ! Never plug in more than 3 -100 light strings end to end. Remember these little lights has wires that are very small and can only handle a small load before they began to smoke and burn, plus the fuse in the plug ends will start blowing. You will often find this precaution on a little sticker on each strand of lights. This is one reason you need lots of drop cords. So how much electrical current does these little bulbs consumes. Below you will find a useful chart to go by. Remember I am referring to mini lights. There is other lights out there but we will talk mostly mini lights.
This is a very handy chart to have around . Really hard to believe that it requires 3.3 amps to power up 1000 mini lights or 330 amps to power up 100,000 lights. Lake Myra Christmas has 150,000 lights ! I will let you do the math on that one ! Remember we are a multi-family display with power to spare.
We highly recommend to have dedicated circuits installed by qualified electricians to power up your display and also use GFI protection on these circuits.
RULE #2
THE 80% RULE. Try hard to live by this rule and you should not have any over load problems. For an example on a 20 amp circuit try to use only 16 amps maximum current draw.
RULE #3
Think wire size ! This is very important because if you under size any of the power feeds and control feeds, they will become hot and possibly short out causing other problems also. We use a number of wire sizes within our display and the below chart will help you in designing and laying out your display. Zip wire or better known as lamp cord wire will cover you in about every case when running the control wiring. Zip wire comes in 18 and 16 awg. We do use some 20 and 22 wire.
THE CONTROLLERS
There has been a lot of questions on how to divide the loads on the control board. Hopefully I can explain how simple this is. For an example we use a 40 amp board, with a 20 amp feed on channels 1 - 8 and a 20 amp feed on channels 9 -16. Each channel has a maximum capacity to handle 8 amps. Sure you could use 2 channels at 8 amps for a total of 16 amps (the 80% rule) , but then the other 6 channels can not be used. For safety and hopefully to get more service from each controller , we never exceed 5.5 amps on any given channel. The trick is to utilized as much channel control but stay within the limits. Chasing mini trees are very popular and using about 300 lights per tree , your calculations would be .99 amps for each tree times 8 will equal 7.92 total amps per 20 amp circuit, which is well within limits.
One other very useful tool we use is a controller spreadsheet on your computer. Set up the spreadsheet that shows you the controller number and the channel numbers. Then assign the channels the scene it will control and have the spreadsheet designed to figure your wattage and amperage per channel and per controller board. This will be one of your most valuable tools in setting up your display.
DESIGNING YOUR DISPLAY
Designing your display is another challenge and sometimes can become very time consuming. The first thing you look at is your home and your yard. This is your canvas and you are going to paint it with lights and displays. The possibilities are endless !! Your imigination will be tested here ! You can install lights on the roof line, trees, bushes, and about any other thing you have. Now below is some guide lines that we here at Lake Myra Christmas have set in place for our display. Now this is our opinion only and we are just sharing a few tips we have set in place for our display.
1. Avoid clutter !
25 different displays looks better in 3000 sq.ft. then in 500 sq. ft.
2. Placing your displays.
Position your displays so that they can be seen from the front at different angles.
3. ABOVE ALL, HAVE FUN
It takes a lot of planning and we draw a schematic of our display area so we can get a more visual veiw of our display, then sometimes we will have to change the lay out. Remember your colors ! We try to balance the color through out the display. This is just part of designing your display and there is no wrong or right way of doing it. Below are some pictures of us setting up our display.
As you can see we utilize the use of a bucket truck because we do a lot of aerial effects. This is the first thing we install because we can not get into the display area once all of the ground effects are install. Some of the aerial effects consist of shooting stars. fireworks displays. and large oak trees.
I realized the above information is just to get you started because there is a lot more to this hobby then what is here. Remember , you are taking your display to another level . The above information works for us but use it at your on risk. You can e-mail us at any time if you have any further questions . We do check our mail daily.
If you live in the triangle area we now have a great source of all of your Christmas display needs. Just asked for Cindy , they stock some great wire frames and they do custom work. Just click on the following picture.
ABOVE ALL BRING JOY TO THE CHILDREN AND HAVE FUN !
Any questions just let us know !
WARNING !
This Hobby Can Be Very Addictive