Specs

Photo By: Robert Syms – www.SymsPhotography.com


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Specs

Here are some general tidbits of information that most people ask about.

Lights: 160 strings. Over 12,000 bulbs. Most lights are LEDs.

Circuits: 9 control boxes that power 144 separate lighting circuits on our house and 2 neighboring houses
Over 150 extension cords (about 1 mile wire).

Other Equipment: High gain FM radio transmitter (send music to car radios)
4 high frequency signal receivers, 1 high power signal transmitter
Sequence editor software and show management program.

Equipment Cost: Approximately $7,000 for equipment (lights, controllers, wireless units, computer, & FM transmitter). There are security cameras and tamper sensors to watch for safety and theft.

Setup Time: Setting up the full system takes about 30 person/hours. Take down and storage time is 12 hours.

Misc Facts: During a show, over 500 different lighting patterns are used, with over 1/2 million computer commands to control the lights. Songs take a long time to create. Example, our newest addition of the "Electrical Light Parade" took over 30 hours to create.

Power:

Everyone guesses wrong. People think our electric bill must be huge. Not True. Lights are off most of the time due to flashing and sequencing. You get a better idea by looking at the "Sequencer Editor" page. If lights ran constantly at full brightness like most houses, it would consume 8 times more energy. Most lights are LEDs that consume only 1/10 the power of incandescent bulbs. LEDs can also turn on and off much faster to beats of music.
Additionally, controllers consume almost no power. Each one uses 5 watts of power when not operating lights. For comparison, power cost for an identical house running the same number of lights with steady full brightness of regular bulbs would cost $400 in electricity in December. We spend $40 for the entire display electric bill.

I've seen a few displays where owners actually brag about their high electric bills and big power panels. That's sad. We try to be as "Green" as possible and proud to say we use little energy. In fact, our solar PV panels supply 80% of all electricity. Just 30 minutes of daytime winter sun supplies the energy to run the display for the whole night. The thought of someone putting in extra power transformers and running a $500 electric bill on their display is not my idea of being environmentally friendly! If you are one of those people, you should be embarrassed, not bragging about it.