RichardH

What a nice surprise! I had no idea until people started contacting me.

I went 4 years without it and added it last year and people love it. I even get e-mail from people that ask me "What is the name of the song that starts at 9:30 into your video?" and I have to tell them Wizards in Winter even though it is in the description. People don't listen to Christmas music or watch displays as much as we do and it is a new experience every year for people.

Here is mine at 9:12 in the show

It would be better to have fewer songs and really work on your sequencing. Most people are not going to sit out there for 45 mins and watch the entire show. My shows are around 10-12 mins.

Well the HOA will allow me to have my display but only have the gates opened certain days. Last year there were about 11 days that the gates were opened. We had quite a bit of traffic last year and those days are always busy because since it only runs certain nights, it is a rush to see it when we are operating on those days. Traffic was backed up enough last year at one point where I could only have two songs and a voice over telling people to only watch the show once. It got to the point where it took more work for myself to do traffic control than setting up the display because I had to have a very specific system in place for the HOA to even allow it. We have to have 3-4 people working it every night and of course I was always one of those people.

This was a bad year. Usually I can pick up a lot of lights from Hobby Lobby, but they did not even carry their own brand of incandescents this year. They only had the more expensive GE brand and not very many of them. The only thing I may buy this year are some more artificial trees.

Thanks for the write up of how it all works. Makes my head hurt! Totally awesome though.

Wow! I want to start playing with some RGB. Good job!

Fantastic! I really like the megatree.

Check it out. Here is the inside of the large tree that i took with my iPhone.

http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=038824f8-68a4-46b4-bd8a-b222b3abd0ee

Thanks for all the compliments. Somebody else installed the display last year which was just the big tree and a few other trees. Things did not work out with them this year and the mall called me in the middle middle of November. I only had two weeks to layout everything, configure all the channels, and program the display so it was kind of a rush job.I was not able to use any of the programming or anything from last year. I also brought in my arches and some of the artificial trees.

The location was built just a few years ago and is actually a controllable fountain area during the summer which also has lights under the water shooting up. They told me they want me to learn how to program it all because they always have a hard time trying to get somebody to do it.

The large tree is pretty amazing. It consist of 19 levels of steel pieces that stack on top of each other and you can climb all over it. It is built like a tank. The only cord we had to run across any concrete is the large tree and since it is LED it is only powered with one cord. The LED lights on it would not fade when hooked up to LOR unless there was an incandescent load on the channel. So what I did was drive to a bunch of wal-marts and bought 60 night lights to install on each channel so we could fade it. I have some pictures of it all I will post.

They thought ahead when they built this and ran conduit all over the place and power so you don't see any cords at all. We are not using any of the wireless linkers and just using cat5 through the conduit.

They have big plans to expand next year so I am working with them now on ideas and will have more time to bring it together.

The mall has a drivable lift and they let me use it to get the video so I was able to raise and lower it while I was videoing to get the cool moving shots.

As many of you know I did not do the show at my house this year. The HOA only will allow the public to come in on certain days and traffic was becoming an issue. The local mall hired me to work on their display and I bought along my arches and few things. Hope you enjoy the video!

It was fun to watch! They contacted me a month or so ago and asked if they could use it. I had no idea that it ran last night until comments started popping up on my facebook!

Worst display ever.

Totally cool and I don't know how you do it all. Always fun to see what you add from year to year. Rock on Frosty!

My white trees where bought at Home Depot back in 2005 for 75% off. I think normally they were $80 or so but was able to buy 10 for $20 each. They each came with 1000 lights which is something I have never seen since then and usually the white twig trees you see don't have as many branches and lights. I bought some at target a few years ago and they just don't look the same.

I then bought red lights with white wire at wal-mart and then spent a whole day hitting about 12 Walgreens to buy green lights with white wire.

The trees are starting to show their age and some of them have broken in half and I have had to use rebar to make them stand straight.

Just normal light strings that you buy at wal-mart! Also getting decent video helps. Actually wal-mart is only selling muti-color incandescents this year in my area along with many other stores.

Sorry Gmac. I did send you an e-mail today. It has been the most difficult year of my life with me losing my job, having a head injury that put me out for a couple months and then finding out my Dad has serious Cancer and might not be around long.

What is awesome about using all the C9s is when you flip it on, it keeps you nice and warm when you are standing in front of it!

Yes I am still here.

I have let A LOT of e-mail stack up that I have not replied to yet. About 2 months ago I took a nasty trip fall down our stairs in the middle of the night and ended up having to go the emergency room and get scans done. For the next month I was constantly dizzy and have a hard time focusing on anything and working on the computer. Also I could not taste anything for almost a month.

I am almost back to normal buy my vision on my right eye goes in and out sometimes.

I will have to write up exactly what happened because there is a funny story of the next two days of me doing crazy things (so my wife tells me) and I can not remember any of it.

Anyway, if anybody has sent me a message I do play on going through them, but send me another one if you want me to respond faster.

[email protected]

Thanks!

Sometimes you have to really wonder about people. I have not been running my display for the past two weeks, but since I am taking it down tomorrow, I sent out the word that I will be running it one last time tonight before i start taking it down tomorrow.

We have had 2-3 cars out there and at one time we had only one car out there so they thought they could do whatever they want. We have a private park across from our house and the grass is on an upwards slope. As I was peeking out I notice a huge SUV that thought they could get a better view and saw them face directly towards the house and put their car in reverse and park it on the grass. They were slipping on the snow and grass so they are gunning and getting their entire car off the road and onto the grass in the park. I could not believe it!

I went out there and explained that they can not park on the grass and they apologized and moved back onto the road. Luckily no neighbors came driving by while they were parked on the grass or some of them may have flipped out.

I don't even want to know what kind of damage they did to the grass. I normally have reflectors up so people don't try and do such stupid things but I took them all down after the "official" last show.

Why can't everybody just have common sense.

Sorry to Spam the board, but I figured it would be ok in "Toot your Horn". Maybe we need a sub form called "Vote For Me!" where all these can go.

So I went to CES and kenwood is giving away a car stereo to the person who posts a picture of the car in their booth and then has the most "likes". Tons of people where taking photos but only 3 people ended up posting one so far so figured what the heck!

I have a old 1964 VW Bus that could use a car stereo so figured it was worth a try. If you would like to help me out, do the following.

Step 1. Go to www.facebook.com/kenwoodusa and "Like" it.

Step 2. Go to my photo at http://on.fb.me/g6dM2L and "Like" it.

That's it! You can even unlike kenwoodusa after you like my photo and you will still count.

Thanks!

That's really cool-- is it street-legal?

-Tim

I don't think so, but the trick is to be so over the top and crazy that it puts a smile on face of the police.

Great job!!!!

How do you find these contests?

I can never seem to find them in time

J. Holmes

I had a friend tell me about the Radio one.

-Richard

Does anybody provide RGB strings where all the bulbs change at the same time and only taking 3 channels per string? I am guessing this would make it cheaper and you would not need as much hardware and the sequencing would more more manageable. Even though it would be cool to control each bulb on a megatree, I don't think I would need each bulb to be controllable on a wrapped tree.

There is some awesome stuff you can do with it and bought a firefly a couple years ago when they first came out to do some testing.

Currently running a full RGB Display is very expensive which I think will keep many people from doing it even if they could invest the time and the talent to do it. I am sure prices will come down which will allow more people to use it, but at $1-$2 per bulb, I doubt you will see few 50,000 light displays that are fully RGB.

So you generate revenue just by people clicking the add link? Even if they just click it and do nothing more than that?

Yes. You get paid usually anywhere from 5 cents to 50 cents if somebody clicks on an ad.