Rosedale Christmas Lights 2013, Richmond VA USA

M

MacThomas76

Animated Shows since 2012
Joined
Jan 12, 2013
Messages
41
Location
Richmond, VA
First, a big thank you to ACL, FastEddy, Bird, OldMan, and many others for the encouragement, as well as my buddy BillyT who helped me get going on animated light shows. 2012 was my first year with 9500 lights, 64 channels (LOR). For 2013, I expanded to 50,000 lights and 368 channels (LOR). I uploaded the videos to my youtube channel. For the best video quality, click the 720HD or 1080HD setting, icon in the lower right corner of the video. Here is a link to my channel…


http://www.youtube.com/user/TheMacdude804/videos


-Thomas
 
Awesome job! Loved how you sequenced the songs, very well done! You're layout is very well thought out and the flow is excellent.
;)
 
Fantastic job.
Like the new location of the mega tree.
Lots of new lights, very nicely done.
And of course nice sequencing as well.
 
Great work and a lot of thought was put into that display. It shows that you dont need masses of pixels to put on a great display
 
Thanks everyone! I'm definitely addicted. My spare bedroom and half my attic are now dedicated storage areas for all the lights. I so much enjoy the camaraderie with all the other animated light enthusiasts. There's also so much to be said for the vendors who sell lights, controllers, software, etc. It's rare to experience such great customer service. I received some emails from folks who had come to see my light show and some of them almost brought tears to my eyes. I guess I never thought that doing something like this could mean so much to some people at the holidays.


Now if I can just take care of that pesky street light. My buddy and I have come up with all these ideas…aim a green laser at the sensor during the light show. Climb the pole and use 1 channel to turn on a light that shines into the sensor. Of course there's the rudimentary BB gun method, but I just can't bring myself to destroy public property for the sake of making the light show look better. I keep trying to tell myself it doesn't really matter, but in the back of my mind I can't help but believe it would look great without the orange wash of a sodium vapor lamp. o_O
 
Mac, your display is fantastic. I really loved it. Carol of the Bells was my favourite. Not sure how you are going to top that this year. If your display keeps growing at 40,000 lights per year you will run out of yard pretty soon. I can't understand how those cars can drive past so fast. Even if I went past every day I would have to slow down to have another look.

Thanks again for sharing.
 
Your display is amazing! What did you use to create the sparkling look at the end of Carol of the Bells?


I didn't notice the street light until you pointed it out! I'd give the laser to sensor idea a go.
 
Do they still run the street lights on daylight sensors? Here they come on with a timer not a sensor. Different country I know, but just checking. Might be worth approaching a local friendly power supply worker to see if they can remove the bulb over the christmas period.
 
Thanks guys! It was alot of work (and expense) expanding so quickly. I had drawn up what I wanted my display to look like last January. I debated about adding each year over several years, or just going for it. So, I went for it. It cost me a bit more than I had planned but it was worth it. No major improvements planned for this year, except maybe some new sequences and some enhancements to the ones I did last year. I may rebuild the Megatree and go from 13ft to 17ft (4m to 5m).


The sparkling lights are xenon strobe lights. I have 180 in my display. If I go to 17ft on the Megatree, I'll probably add more strobes inside it, grand total of 200 strobes. Although, I had about 20% of them fail last year. I have a box of bad strobes. I'm currently trying to troubleshoot them and see which component needs to be replaced to make them work again. I'm not an electrical engineer, so it's taking me a little time to figure it out. If anyone here is an ace with electronics or strobe light circuits, I'd love to chat with you! :)


I think we have both timer and sensor street lights here. Those in my neighborhood are the sensor type. Bright flashes of light (as from lightning) will make them go out for several minutes. I've seen youtube videos of guys turning them off with green lasers. I tried one last year, but it wasn't powerful enough. I think I'd need 150-200mW laser for it to work. But those are $80-$130. Bit of an expensive toy if it doesn't work. I thought about asking the power company to turn it off for the light show, but as I am on a busy street and my light show could be deemed a distraction to drivers, I was advised to just let it go and keep a low profile. We'll see.


Thanks again for the nice comments! I'm already looking forward to putting it all back up again this year.
 
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