• 40,000 lights, 24 strobes, 24 LED spotlights
• 101 computerized channels
• 5000+ feet of extension cables/Wire
• 700 Feet of steel rope cable (guy wires, element support)
• 180 Amps of available power, ??? Amps in use.

2006 Display Specs

• 35,000 lights, 13 strobes
• 53 computerized channels
• 3000+ feet of extension cables
• 700 Feet of steel rope cable (guy wires, element support)
• 140 Amps of available power, 115 Amps in use.

Notable elements:

• The large 'mega-tree' on the top of our house is made up of a 10' center pole, 3200 white lights.  The distance from the ground to the top of the star on the tree is 33 feet and the sides of the tree are 13.5 feet from top to the bottom edge of the rotunda. 
• The two large mesquite trees in the front yard contain about 14,000 lights total 
• The Leaping arches in the front yard are each ten feet long and are split into eight 100 light sections, each section uses one computerized channel for a total of 32 channels and 3200 lights.

Lights:  Our display contains approximately 40,000 lights.  With that many lights it becomes very difficult to count all of them.  Some of our displays contain a set amount of lights, in those cases we include exact numbers in our counts.  For example, our Mega Tree on the top of the house consists of 16 'slices' of 200 lights each so we know the Mega Tree contains 3200 lights.  In situations where we can't keep an actual count we rely on the generally known fact that a 100 light count string of mini lights utilizes around .3 amps of power.  Our formula is simply, measure the amps used by each tree, divide the total amperage by .3 and multiply by 100.  This gives us a fairly accurate count of our lights, however we still trim it back a bit to make sure we aren't exaggerating our counts.

Voiceovers: The voice you hear during our show is that of the Demented Elf.  This gentleman is kind enough to support the enthusiast community by providing low cost high quality voiceovers.  You can find more information at http://www.thedementedelf.com. 

Computerized Control: 2005 was our first venture into computerized lighting control with a single 16 channel controller.  In the summer of 2006 we invested in two additional 16 channel controllers.  In the summer of 2007 we invested in two additional 16 channel controllers for a total of 80 AC channels.  New  for 2007 is the use of a DC based controller that powers our LED spotlights, our and is used as the control for two 20 AMP solid state relays to which all roof lights are connected (roof lights alone pull about 20 amps so we've split them into two sections each on their own relay so as to control the heat output of the relays)

 Each controller contains two sets of eight channels, and each set of eight channels is capable of supplying eight amps per circuit up to a maximum of twenty amps at any given time.  This means we could, in theory, run 200 Amps worth of lights through our computerized controllers.  However, for safety's sake we do not run that much power through our controllers, we follow the generally known rule of not using more than 80% of a circuit's capacity (16 amps on a 20 amp circuit, 12 amps on a 15 amp circuit)   We're also utilizing five X-10 controllers for static portions of the display which brings the total to 101 channels.  With this technology we have a great deal of flexibility with controlling the lights (for example - we can turn all of our lights on or off with the click of a mouse).  We also have the ability to synchronize our lights to music,

Light-O-Rama: our controllers are manufactured and sold by a company called Light-o-Rama.  There are several other similar companies that sell similar products, I was sold early on by the quality of the product Light-o-Rama produces as well as the quality of the support they provide in the case of a problem.  It's not uncommon to hear stories about Dan, the owner of Light-o-Rama calling customers late at night, even on a holiday, to help solve a problem.  If you're considering computerized control of your Christmas lights I highly suggest you consider Light-o-Rama.  You can find more information and visit their online store at http://www.lightorama.com/.  I suggest you get your email on their mailing list so you can get notifications of their summer sales. 

We're currently running controllers out of their Hobbyist line.  These controllers are purchased as assembled boards (you can also buy unassembled boards that you assemble yourself, but I'm not very good with a soldering iron!), you add (or create) heat sinks, enclosures and plugs.  We run three CTB16D boards, two CTB16PC boards and one CMB16D (12 volt DC) board. On the software side we are currently running the newest version of the Light-o-Rama software, version 2.0.8 that was just recently released.  Programming songs can take as much as ten hours of programming for one minute of the song.  Songs are programmed as sequences and the light enthusiast community is typically willing to share their creations, so often times others will use the timings and/or effects that others have created for their display which can cut down on the time it takes to program a song.  Of course it is always better to have original work, something that the new software version should help with (better tools).  Currently most of our songs have at least some borrowed timings/effects from others willing to share. 

Power: Many people ask me about power.  Most homes are not equipped with the amount of circuits required to power this many lights.  In 2005 we installed four 20-Amp GFI circuit breakers in our main panel and connected four outdoor outlets for our lights.  That was barely enough for that year (23,000 lights) but it got us through the season.  Realizing the need for more power we had three additional 20-Amp circuits installed in a sub-panel in our garage in 2006.  This gave us a total of 140 Amps of dedicated power to use.  In the summer of 2007 we added two additional 20 Amp circuits and are now at the max for our electrical feed.  The two new circuits are connected via a pair of 20 amp solid state relays that allow  us to control a large amount of lights with a single 12v control cable (from our DC controller) and not take up one of our valuable AC channels.

Setup: Setting up a display of this size is time consuming.  We don't keep track of our time, but we estimate it takes about 150-200 hours to setup the display.  We also spend a lot of time on projects in the summer months.  This year we started building our new controllers in June, the leaping arches in September and started installing lights on our Mesquite trees in October.