12/10/2023 0 Comments Free lor sequences with musicI sequenced some traditional songs like It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year by Andy Williams. I added some wonderful new songs like Mary Did You Know by Pentatonix, a fantastic Christmas Medley by Two Steps from Hell, and Christmastime by Michael W. By now, my sequence catalog was up to 35 songs. In 2017, I continued to sequence like I had in 2016. You should sell them." The seed was planted. So many people told me, "You're sequences are really good. People time and again asked for copies of our sequences, and I freely shared them. The feedback and response was unexpected. In January 2017 we began posting our first videos. Unlike our old flashy-blinky lights, the pixel lights could dance and swirl to the music. It is hard to describe how beautiful it was. Everything had been so simple before.īut the display was beautiful. Every day we put out a new fire (figuratively) and fixed my mistakes. I had wire things incorrectly and had stray electricity dancing on my data lines. Then, when it was up, we had grounding problems. There were times I felt like it would never get done. When the pixels finally arrived, I began soldering and drilling and poking and punching to put the display together. It turns out we had ordered right before a Chinese national holiday, and those folks take their holidays seriously! Factories shut down and people stay home for a week or more. By October 15th, Whoville was up, but none of our pixels had arrived. We ordered two Falcon F16V2s with expansion boards and about 10,000 pixels from Ray Wu. I bought 200 feet of 3/4 inch PVC, tons of T-joints, angles, snap-on Ts and 20 sheets of Coroplast and began working on our Whoville house. We sold our controllers and as many of our lights as we could. But we didn't just wade in, we jumped in the deep end. We made the decision to transition into pixels. By August I had sequenced more than 15 songs - enough for a show. It took almost three months of working a couple of hours a day, but I finally had my first Xlights sequence - Mavis Staples' Christmas Vacation. Xlights was a different animal, but I could tell it was extremely powerful. I had been using Light-O-Rama sequencing software for nine years. In January of 2016, I downloaded the then-current version of Xlights/Nutcracker and began playing with it. I began researching pixel controllers and software, reading all the on-line forums. I began doing drawings of what it could be like and "engineering" what it would take to make the conversion. My wife and I discussed what it would take to have a "Whoville" themed house. I also wanted to do something different with our house. For a couple of year's I had been reading about the advancements in the RGB pixels. The result is that I get lots of experience sequencing.Īs this hobby/addiction goes, there is always something you would like to change about your display. It's not unusual for our show to have 20-30 songs lasting more than an hour. I don't have to repeat the show every 10-15 minutes to keep traffic moving. That allows me to sequence more songs for the show. Unlike some displays that have to deal with slowing down or stopping traffic, our audience can actually sit and watch as many songs as they like. Our home is located in the center of a cul de sac. By 2014, we had 17 controllers, about 40,000 lights and almost two miles of extension cords. The next year we added four more controllers. The year after that I bought six controllers from someone who was selling all his controllers in January. The next year we added two more controllers, more lights and more sequences. We enjoyed the sequences and the show we put together. We bought our first pair of controllers and I taught myself to sequence using the Light-O-Rama software. After discussing what it could do and watching a video or two, my wife and I were hooked. Electronic lighting controllers that allowed you to synchronize your lights to music. Then, in 2007, I saw an article on the Internet discussing "Light-O-Rama". Mostly static lights bought at Wal Mart during the post-Christmas sales. Well each year we added to our little display. We through some lights on the bushes in front of the house. We had some garland and colored lights we ran along the eaves. In 2000, we decided to buy some Christmas lights and decorate our home. While not very big, the house has some character to it - it looks a bit like a cottage and we really like that "old-world" style. My wife and I purchased a home in Ozark, Missouri and moved into it over Thanksgiving weekend in 1999.
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