11-10-12 Beautiful day today Sunny and Warm it was 66°f, got more done today than it would have taken in 2 weekends
I got the arches installed, the Merry Christmas Sign, the 2 Crosses, all the animated Candy Canes & Snowflakes and lots of network cabling runs
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11-11-12 Another perfect day! 71°f and blue skies, the wife and I got the entire light system installed...including the house. All I need to do is connect all the lights to the controllers (not a big issue for me)
This year was the most "interesting" season for the lights, November was warm and the family and I got the lights up and running in a few weekends, Then December came..... Rain, Rain and then Snow, When the rain came we had one storm that dumped a few inches in one night and around 6am my wife told me I needed to go outside, the lights are going nuts, what happened is one of my computer controllers got filled with water and shorted out, so at 6:30am I am taking apart this controller and getting it fixed for the evening, I got 90% of it fixed, not bad
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As for "how it works" it takes 4 computer networks to make the lights go blink,blink :)
most businesses and homes only use 1 computer network, my yard has 4, next year I will simplify the networking.
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I
am in thinking mode for the 2013 season, yes its a year away but it
takes 100's of hours to get this show laid out lets not even talk about
the 100's of hours to program the songs after I have the show physically
thought out, I'm considering re-lighting with all RGB/LED's and get rid
of 75% of the incan lights (I need to get a great price before I take
that dive) but with all the LED failures I had this year, good ole'
incans are looking better and better. You can see a test or demo of what
I am thinking of doing next year watch either Wizards in Winter,
Christmas with a Capital C, Snow/Heat Miser, or Nutrocker. and look
around the MERRY CHRISTMAS sign I have a RGB light string wrapped around
the edges and I can change the colors of that light string to any
colour you like (as Pink Floyd would say) That is one direction I'm
thinking of going in.
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I
got my new web camera that I ordered on November 5th, no kidding it
arrived on Christmas Eve,(its still in the box) but, I liked what I did
this year using a CCTV camera and a polarized lens, It looked rather
good on ustream, and I liked the ustream Android App, I was able to watch
the lights live anywhere. Below is a pic of the web camera, I used an
old flood light housing for the waterproof case, and a cheap CCTV
camera, and Duct Putty to affix the camera in place and a $3 polarized
lens for night clarity, it worked rather well, and the greatest thing is
I had about $50 invested in this if somebody stole it, no big loss, If
you look at the 3rd picture on the far right that camera is 100ft away
from that gray box, and that gray box is 100ft away from the house.
The Picture below is a CCTV Camera View (the camera is located over the Y in Merry
Christmas) and its over 200ft away from the display
So, I'm deep into getting ready for the 2012 Christmas Lighting Season (CLS is what I call it) and here I am working on sequencing for my 2-CCP's and looking at the song on a computer display does a great job.... but I want to see these new toys in action. So I took my 4 strands of CCP's and mounted them on the grids of my drop ceiling, I have to admit it looks really cool, lighting up the room like it does. or as my son said....neat
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I finished the sequence for nutrocker, added some "orchestra hits" visually (meaning a flash of all white) and brought my wife down to my work area and showed her the sequence..... neat is what she said. I replied...did you talk to Michael (our son) she said no, so that got me thinking I checked the web domain search engine and yup I got it, I now have the domain http://neatlights.com (it points to carrollights.com)
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