So, the 2015 show is up and running.  We were late due to the older son getting a concussion and me having back issues for the last month.  Due to the move this year, we did this real basic by focusing on only the yard using elements we had around from previous years.  Also, the new house is ~30 ft for most of the roof line peaks and I am not big on heights.

A short video (cut off by memory card being full and out of focus anyways) can be seen here: https://vimeo.com/150559237

As you can see we ran the 10′ tree with 16 channels (folded for density per channel), bunch of canes/minitrees/santas, a few tree light wraps, 2 yard led strings (one added this year for coverage), and some new nets as we have nicely formed shrubs.  One 16 channel LOR runs the tree while another runs the rest of the show (including tune to sign).

Unlike the old house where I had run dedicated circuits to stop dimming lights, here we had one LOR running off the front door outlet and another off a garage outlet.  The garage outlet seems to be pretty isolated (still need to run through the fusebox and make sure labels are complete) but the front door outlet also runs the foyer lights and the 1/2 bath lights.  Fun stuff to use the restroom and feel like you might be having a seizure.  At least I could tell which song was running by the dimming… sigh.

Now that I have seen Matt Johnson’s dubstep show from 2014 and 2015 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90oZ52M4IC0), I am tempted to head off in this direction and scrap what I have so far.  While I like the look of incandescent lights and random leds, I am really minimalistic at heart when it comes to layout/design and I think his looks really clean… almost antiseptic in an odd way.

Got to give this some more thought!

We missed last year for the show.  There was a lot going on and work was a full 80 hour a week job due to some major releases.  Since I spent zero time on the stuff during the rest of the year, sadly that meant the show would not take place.

This year thing are even more odd since I was laid off in the fall.  I didn’t spend any time on the show when I should have been, choosing to catch up on TV shows, movies, some interviews, family life, and other stuff.  Fast forward to last week and I realized I was going to miss another year if I didn’t do something quick.

So, we got going and I will be updating the blog over the next couple days.  I can say I am very glad that I put a lot of my thoughts in the blog here as I was able to read over it and my bill of materials list to piece together why I bought certain things and how I could move forward.  Without the blog I would have been waaaayyyy behind where I am now.

Where are we now?  Well, I have a PI running with FPP over wifi, connected to a Falcon 16v2-R controller on a local network via ethernet.  A test strip of bullets was connected and validated via the controller to make sure everything worked from my phone and PC.  We are also working on the mega tree strips… but more on all that to come.  I will try to remember and document all that has been done although I may back date it so it represents when it was done.

Thanks for following the journey!