It's About Time!
Welcome to your
March/April 2009 edition of the
PlanetChristmas newsletter! It is published regularly and covers
relevant topics for the Christmas decorating professional and
enthusiast.
Here's what you can read about in this March/April 2009 newsletter:
Kinda...
I've been involved with elaborate displays for decades and I can't
recall a year when I spent less time setting things up than I did the
one before. What's up with that?
I keep preaching that all this fancy decorating stuff needs to be
easy enough for my mother to use. 99% of the decorators don't have
thousands of lights and unlimited setup time but 100% of the decorators
do want a Christmas display they can be proud of.
Hmmmmmm. "Simple to set up. Easy to be proud of."
Poor grammar but very descriptive.
I was lucky enough to be a newly minted engineer at the same time as
personal computers were being introduced. I remember those good old
days of Altair's, PET's and Trash-80's. My wife still has
memories of when I took her to an Apple club meeting and a guy was
showing how he had connected an
IBM Selectric typewriter to his
computer as a printer. There were more than a few horn-rimmed
glasses and pocket protectors in that room. I thought I was in
heaven. Marla thought the other extreme. Back then personal
computers were complex beasts. 30+ years later they're easy to set
up... even my mother can do it... but we can only hope there's not a
problem else say hello to your local computer nerd. Let's just say
computers still have a way to go. Simple to set up.
Too easy to get frustrated.
I am starting to see a simplification trend with elaborate Christmas
decorations, though.
On the light animation side the famous "Mr. Christmas" light/music
sequencer has actually been a big step in the right direction.
Unfortunately, these devices are power limited and not expandable.
But, if you think about it, by using LEDs you get around the power issue
and having any animated light channels is better than having none. Now
some new or enhanced products are starting to enter the picture. Checkout
Music 'N
Motion and the latest version of
Mr. Christmas. Interesting. Simple to set up.
Easy to be proud of.
Maybe the real challenges are the decorations themselves. If you
want something easy, the Animated Lighting
Just Add Power products are pretty darn simple to set up. I got
a sneak peek at a 3-D snowman family they're working on. Cool!
Winterland
has some amazing icicles, each made up of about 100 clear mini-LEDs that
look like they're dripping or falling... each is independent and doesn't
need a computer... a few dozen of these in a tree and you're guaranteed
to stop traffic. Simple to set up. Easy to be proud of.
You'll be seeing a lot of these products at
PLUS2009 (I
know... a
shameless plug.)
What about indoor decorations? There are a lot of family
traditions involved with decorating for Christmas so I'll admit this
might be a place not to take too many shortcuts. But... putting
miniature lights everywhere might be getting easier because of battery
powered LEDs. Watch for strings with built in timers and electric
eyes that
will last an entire season on a few AA batteries. No more ugly
extension cords across the table top.
So Christmas decorations are moving in the right direction. You
can look at the trend in two ways. The more time you save putting
out the decorations means the more time you have with your family.
I'm betting many of us are saying the more time we save putting out some
decorations means we have time to put out even more!
Know of other other new products that will speed decorating.
Let me know! Remember: Simple to set up. Easy to be
proud of.
There's good and bad news on the LED front.
I'm an early adopter of lighting technology around the house. I
remember buying the fist generation of florescent lights that would
replace standard 60 watt light bulbs way back in the 80's. They were expensive and took several minutes to come to
full brightness. Today the little curly
CFL (compact fluorescent
lights) are all over my house. The only incandescents left are in
a fancy chandelier above the dining room table we never use. I'm not sure
the CFLs really last that
much longer than the old incandescents, but I do like the fact they only
use about 25% of the energy.
Last year Wal-Mart started selling LED based replacements for
incandescents around the house. They range anywhere from
$6-20/bulb and claim a 30,000 hour life span compared to 2,000 hours for
most
incandescents. They don't dim but they're good at task lighting.
I've bought several hundred dollars worth of these things lured by the
90% energy savings and the long life span. The good news is in the
right conditions you can get a lot of light produced by very little
energy. The bad news is these lights really appear to have a shorter
lifespan than incandescents. I've taken a few of the "expired"
ones apart. The LEDs are still fine but the support circuitry to
convert high voltage AC to low voltage DC is fried. Pretty obvious
the manufacturers are taking a few too many shortcuts. Bottom line,
wait awhile for LEDs to replace your typical light bulb in the home.
What
about LEDs and Christmas lights? Now that makes a lot of sense.
Since most displays are on about 30 days a year, the real-world lifespan
of LEDs is not an issue. Chances are your wires and sockets will
wear out before the LED bulbs stop working.
LED based Christmas lights are also morphing into new sizes to really
stir the imagination. In the picture to the right I'm not real sure what the
red bulb is called
from
LEDGenlighting.com, but it fits in a standard C7 socket, has 10
internal LEDs, is really bright and consumes a little over one watt
compared to it's stubby five watt incandescent cousin next to it.
The four watt difference doesn't sound like much until you need hundreds
or thousands of them.
Are LEDs worth the investment? In the retrofit world, a C7
incandescent is about 15 cents (USD) and draws five watts of power.
It dims, has a familiar look and everyone is quite comfortable with them
since they've been around for so long. LED equivalents that can also
dim seem to be in the $1+ range but consume only about 1 watt of power
and are nearly indestructible because of the plastic-like lenses.
It boils down to deciding if LEDs are worth paying 6-7 times more
than the tried-and-true incandescents.
The biggest LED justification comes from power consumption.
Your electric bill will be dramatically less but what most people don't
factor in is the electrical power distribution required in the
incandescent world. Extension cords get expensive in a hurry,
especially the high amperage ones. If you have a huge display,
you're lucky if your power source has 200 amp service and most electric
companies don't entertain larger feeds just for Christmas.
Really big venues have to rent generators that then need to be filled
with fuel every evening. Then there's the issue of theft.
Lots of copper can attract the bad guys looking to make a quick buck by
stealing your wire.
If you take advantage of computer animation, with LEDs you can
use less expensive switching modules because less current is involved.
Or you can put 5-10 times more LEDs on the same circuits you had used
for incandescents.
Then there's LED durability. Wish I had a penny for every light bulb I've broken over the years. Ever heard of
people breaking their Christmas LEDs? Most you can run over with a
truck and they keep working. This becomes very important during
setup and teardown when there is the most stress on the display.
What would I do? If you can afford LED based Christmas lights,
buy them so you're green for the planet. You'll also be pleased
with the LED pure colors that don't fade from season to season.
You should also experiment with the new retrofit bulbs showing
up to give some different effects to your display. Here's
another shameless
PLUS2009 plug: all LEDs are not created equal. The
vendors at PLUS2009 will show you what products to avoid and save
you money in the long run.
I've
been talking about PlanetChristmas Magazine for awhile. The good news is PlanetChristmas Magazine is about to debut.
Advertising is already sold, and the graphic design is
all-but-done. The first edition will be the latest generation
electronic magazine due to hit your email box any day now. No
trees are being sacrificed for your reading enjoyment.
How can you make sure you receive "PlanetChristmas Magazine, For the Serious
Decorator" ? Be sure to
register for the publication now.
PLUS2009
Our Annual Christmas Expo in July
Go ahead and mark your
PLUS2009 calendars for July 29 through August 1, 2009 in
Louisville at the Kentucky International Convention Center. It's
our gathering of people that decorate for Christmas. Doesn't
matter if you're a professional or simple enthusiast, you're going to
learn from the best.
PLUS2009 is now 3.5 days of nonstop activities. We start
Wednesday afternoon and go through Saturday night with our gala banquet.
We even have activities to keep the kids busy.
Our vendor exhibition hall is three times bigger than what we had in
the past. Think of a giant room 226 feet long, 130 feet wide
(that's a little more than 29,000 square feet) with a 31 foot ceiling.
Now imagine it full of vendors selling Christmas decorations. I'm
thinking heaven.
Light-O-Rama
will have a very impressive booth to wow us and
BuyInflatables
will be creating their own Winter Wonderland. That's just a couple
of dozens of vendors that will be exhibiting.
70% of the vendor exhibition space is already committed.
There's still some booth space left if you want to show off your
products to a most receptive crowd. Find out more on our
PLUS Exhibitor webpage.
Want an easy way to keep up with PLUS information? Go to the
website at
PlanetChristmas PLUS or just remember
www.gotoPLUS.com.
It's the first place official PLUS information is shared with
others. PLUS2009 registration is now open with early bird specials.
Into Twitter? What is a Twitter?
Twitter is an application sweeping the Internet that lets people post
short messages about what's happening. It went mainstream when
Oprah started using it. PlanetChristmas tweets on Twitter, at
least of about a week ago. Come join us at
http://twitter.com/PlanetChristmas
Through a strange twist of events I'm still the keeper of a couple dozen
rolls of 3/8" 120VAC, incandescent ropelight. 150 feet on a
roll and each in a sealed, factory fresh carton. Blue, green,
pink, purple and red colors are left. Apparently this
ropelight was manufactured in late 2007 and for whatever reason has been sitting
in the corner of a warehouse. I hate to see any potential type of
Christmas light sit idle so I've arranged to sell this stuff for
$63/roll plus shipping. PlanetChristmas gets a few bucks a roll
and the world will be a little brighter this holiday season. Seems
like a pretty good deal to me... especially since I've already bought
quite a few of the rolls... but even I have my limits. Interested?
I've setup a way to order this ropelight in the
PlanetChristmas store. Good luck!
It's Spring and many of us are working outside. Think back to
your 2008 Christmas display. Did you have wires across sidewalks/driveways
or scattered around so people could trip over them? Consider
burying some conduit at strategic locations while the weather is nice. Come display setup
time, snake your wires through the conduit, save time and keep your
viewers safe.
The PlanetChristmas radio station is available 24/7/365 to anyone with a fast Internet
connection to tap into. Find the details at
http://www.planetchristmas.com/PCRadio.htm
I'm working with a company called iContact to handle the
PlanetChristmas email distribution and make sure we comply with all
government rules and regulations. At the bottom of all our emails you
have the option to remove your address from
any future emailings by simply clicking a link. For the record, PlanetChristmas values your privacy and does not
share your email address with anyone.
Don't limit that Christmas feeling to December. Help people
every month of the year. You'll make a positive difference in the
lives of others while at the same time making yourself feel pretty darn
good.
Next time: look forward to more Christmas
decorating tips.
Chuck Smith of
PlanetChristmas
