I had seen a while back about using a relay and a wal-wart (big block wall transformer) for use on a fog machine...to use with a LOR controller. Completely forgot where I had seen it and spent about a hour looking for it. It took me longer to find the article, dig through my junk to find a Radio Shack reed relay than it did to put the thing together!  Works great!!! Now I just have to go and put in a few "fog" moments into my sequences.

I decided to use 4 of the 20 watt dc powered red and green floods I picked up cheap at Home Depot last year. With all the flood lights coming out now by different companies and the fact that I already had these...just couldn't see spending the money for it. Now if I find some cheap BLUE 20 watt floods...I might jump on those. It seems like in my display I pretty much used either red, green or blue...and white for the floods, so color mixing shouldn't be a problem. I have found that THESE floods do not mix as well as the Rainbow RGB floods I have.  I went ahead and ordered 3 Rainbow Spots. The spots are suppose to be brighter than the older style . Since these spots will go side by side with the Snow Flakes Spots, I guess I will have to really look and adjust the brightness on each. What a pain.

BOUGHT ANOTHER LOR CONTROLLER! What a deal at $155.00 and FREE shipping! On sale. They were blowing out the old models, which is what I was looking for. I still have to solder it up, but that is no biggie. I will probably now use this one to go with the arches. That way I don't have to double up on channels with my 4, 8 channel a piece...arches.

I think that I am going to use ONE full mega tree this year instead of 2 half mega trees or one sided ones. Think I am going to finish out the twig tree I started and painted (from green) and then also use the small twig tree I have (about 3 ft high) and have those on one side of the pine island. Mega tree on the other. Still not completely sold on it...but thinking in that direction.

I am also thinking about purchasing a new transmitter. I had toyed with the idea of a 5 watt version...but think I am really going to scale down to the low powered 30mw version. Cheaper and with a antenna, will cover what I need for it to.

So far behind on sequencing. Much further behind than last year. Might pair down some songs because of this...we will wait and see.

Have a bunch of red minis to go on the mini trees. Also thinking about doing a arch with the yard runners coming into one section. This will cut down on running extension cords or having to make half the strings "dead" as not to light up...on sections I don't want lit up!

Last but not least...
With the gutter lights, spots on tomb stones (for Halloween),  I am going to put up all the flood lights, gutter lights and spots for Halloween. That will REALLY help me getting ahead in putting up lights for Christmas. I will just leave them up after Halloween! Gives me a few more weekends ...to sequence ;-)

....well, at least several.  Changed the setup for one.  This is the 13th revision...no kidding.  I would have to go back and look, but I think the other picture was the 6th. Now on the picture... 

Snowflakes
The 7 snowflakes you see are made of coro board (4mm).  I am going to post over in my projects section the pictures of it and populating it with mini lights.  Thanks to Chris1976 over on Planet Christmas for the pattern.  Instead of being in a straight line across, I am going to put them in a staggered pattern of either 4 up at one level and 3 down. Alternating each one (up or down).  The mini trees are now in 2 colors, green and white.  I will be able to alternate the colors with the different channels. 

Mini Trees
I cut down the number of mini trees in order to do that.  What does not render real well is that I will have a line of mini lights (one of green and one of white) running back to the pine island from the street.  Real hard to draw that depth in the picture.  If you look closely, the street is at a angle slightly.  That is not a true depiction of the road.  Also the mini lights running from the mini trees are actually acting as a type of extension cord.  I am going to take a length pvc pipe, and mount it (with 90 deg angles and small section of pvc) in front of the pine island.  I will attach the mini lights to the pipe and pull it tight.  Hopefully that will keep the lights off the ground and help with ground fault issues.

Mega Trees
With the mega trees I am going to keep both of them at 10ft.  That seems to be the magic height for most strings to fold in half.  That would double the lines going down to the ground.  The mega tree on the right (refer to my previous blog post on this matter) I am strapping a pipe up against the pine tree.  I am actually going to mount one of the controllers at the top of the tree so as to get close to the plugs for the lights!  I am think about using pvc so I can put a type of "T" on the pipe (screw that in) and mount the controller onto it.  I will still have to use at least 2 of the channels on the bottom left corner though.  I am using 6 channels per color.  Since I am using Light O Rama controllers...I only have 16 channels on the controller.  The lines on both mega trees are going to be 5" apart and go and attach to the ground.  I will probably use light stakes to keep it from touching the ground though.  Last year, I doubled back into the pole for my one mega tree.  I thought it was a little skinny, so this will help fatten them up.  The trees are also going to be one sided, so this will also keep it THICK looking and that is what I am shooting for. 

Rainbow Floods
The Rainbow Floods I mentioned earlier are also not in the pictures.  That would be hard with the little windows paint program I use to do this with.  Just as well...need to spend the time building and sequencing anyway ;-)  I will use one flood on the porch roof, shining on the 2nd floor.  One Rainbow Spot on either side of the porch shining on the downstairs windows and one Rainbow Flood on the carport.  All of those will be on the 3 channels for red, green or blue.  I will have 4 other Rainbow Spots on the trunk (shining up) of the 4 center trees in the pine island.  I will use a rest of the channels on each individual tree.  I will use that for walking bass lines, etc. 

Gutter Lights
I have added green LED lights to the gutter as well.  So I will have the warm white LED (retros as mentioned earlier) and the green to alternate between. 

Bush Lights
I am actually going to have to order or buy some green mini lights.  I have ran out.  I hope that I don't end up overloading my power panel by adding GREEN mini's to the mix as well.  As with the gutters being on separate channels, I am going to split the bushes into porch bushes and separate channel for the carport.  I hope the effect of fading between green and white will work out well this way. 

Twig Tree or "Holdman Tree"
I lucked up on this one!  The sticky little thing in the center is one of those Christmas Trees that looks like a stick figure with lights on it.  Sometimes they are called Twig trees, sometime they are called "Holdman Trees" (http://www.holdman.com/christmas/).  This guy was one of the first to put extra lights on these trees.  Found this at a thrift store for $5.00.  That was a steal.  1000 mini lights on it (clear).  Will add about 800 red and 800 green lights on it.  Hard to get the green lights on white wire though.  Hope to get that settled over the next week. 

Arches
The arches look more like baby arches in this picture.  They will be full size arches on 8 channels.  One side will mirror the other to save on channels.

New Songs and Sequencing!
I have not even started sequencing yet!!!!  I am so far behind last year.  I hope that the fact I have several songs from last year already sequenced will speed things up.  I know with the floods and the RGB stuff....that will slow me down some.  On the songs, I know that I am going to add the Barbara Streisand version of "Jingle Bells" and Go Fish's version of "Joy To The World".  If I am lucky I hope to add the Coke Christmas commercial thing.  Nice and short.  Also if I am lucky I am going to add...Disney's "Believe In The Magic" and TSO's "Christmas in Sarajevo" .  We will see on the last 2.  Would love to add "Kripton" from Superman...but my wife might hate me for that since it is not CHRISTMAS.  Such a cool opener though!!! ;-)  I know that I am going to keep a lot of my Harry Connick stuff from last year.  Oh yeah... looking for a Carol Of The Bells that starts out kind of ominous sounding.  Ladies voices...etc.  I just can't find the song (heard it once) nor the link I heard it from before!!!

Projects Page
I need to update that big time.  All my projects are in a half way done stage though.  So that is why I have not posted over there.  Hope to soon.