Helen Keller once wrote, “Knowledge is love and light and vision.” No idiom is more poignant for the expression and shear amazement in all the children’s eyes standing in Faneuil Hall this Saturday evening. Children young and old watched as an 85 foot tall Christmas tree lit with 350,000 light bulbs danced to music from Holiday Pops.
Neither my daughters nor I had any notion we were going to be immersed in a flood of dancing Christmas lights Saturday evening. This weekend was supposed to be our belated quarterly trip to Boston; instead, we rounded the corner from Faneuil Hall to the entrance to the North End when synchronized lights and music launched capturing everyone’s gaze; stopping us in our tracks.
After the initial shock of being in the right place at the right time I started questioning how all the lights on multiple trees tied together. Many communities have ‘that guy’ who smothers his yard with thousands of flashing lights and stationary holiday statues, but seeing a dynamic display of light and sound is unusual. I imagined setting up my own yard with a similar (but smaller) show would be difficult.
Programming dynamic lighting doesn’t appear to be much different than my past experiences setting up industrial controls. Each string of lights requires a separate output from a controller and due to the complexity of lights I imagined thousands of outputs. Achieving the effects on the giant Boston tree was done by wrapping several strands of bulbs; each connected to an individual output.
While I was watching the giant tree and other surrounding trees dancing harmoniously together I started to think how large the controller must be for this display. In my best estimate I would guess at least 1,000 outputs would be necessary to achieve the Boston magnitude. If you’re trying to picture what I’m talking about you can visit YouTube.com and search for “Faneuil Hall Christmas Tree 2012.”
If you’ve taken the time to watch some of the videos you can see why I started prospecting how to create a similar display. “Ooh’s and ah’s” in the background started my mind pondering techniques. While I was recovering from miles of walking and digesting cannolies from Mike’s Pastry I researched similar systems for home users.
Light-O-Rama sounds like the name of a cheesy 1950’s lamp store; however, visiting their website (www.lightorama.com) weaves a completely different tale. The company sells high end lighting automation equipment at a fairly reasonable cost. Although the company doesn’t supply a kit, it appears all of their products tie together using a proprietary software suite.
Customers can either control the lights directly from a PC loaded with the software or use a standalone controller. Either configuration communicates with a gang of controllers which are preprogrammed with special effects like fade and shimmer. After spending some setup time, the basic package will create special effects that dance to music replicating the Boston experience.
Beauty doesn’t come cheap. I priced a relatively simple setup and thought it was reasonably priced compared to what I was expecting. For right around $1,000.00 (not including the PC or lights) anyone can create a unique show sure to dazzle the neighbors and stop cars. The Light-O-Rama company also manufactures a host of unique products designed for the do-it-yourselfer to create mechanical automations.
Most people probably wouldn’t find it feasible to hoist an 85 foot spruce in their front yard and decorate it with 350,000 lights so trying to replicate the tree is Boston is impractical. However, creating a breathtaking model at an economic price point is very manageable using off-the-shelf components. Even a basic system will inspire holiday warmth and emotion in adults and children of all ages.
(Jeromy Patriquin is the President of Laptop & Computer Repair, Inc. located at 509 Main St. in Gardner. You can call him directly at (978) 919-8059) or visit www.LocalComputerWiz.com.