Lights

Christmas Lights!

We’ve made it too complicated!
Remember chaser strings from long ago? Wrap one of those around your Christmas tree and suddenly it had personality. The string had a controller at the end about the size of a matchbox. Press a button to pick a pattern and you were done programming the computer. Drive around now and some of the over-the-top Christmas displays with thousands of pixels and dozens of color changing props make the old chaser strings look like they were from the stone age. Lots of WOW but at what cost? Today’s flashy Christmas displays require you to be a computer nerd with a…
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PlanetChristmas is back in 2023!
Here’s a short video (just over a minute) that shows the highlights of PlanetChristmas 2023. The last major light display at the PlanetChristmas world headquarters in Franklin, Tennessee was way back in 2003. LEDs and digital pixels were science fiction. Watching the electric meter spin like a top when all the outside Christmas lights were on was normal. When the lights were the brightest outside the house the lights were dimming inside, My how times have changed. Watch the full length video below. The PlanetChristmas synchronized light display is finally back home. Chuck Smith is using it as a testing…
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A Better/Cheaper RGB Pixel Matrix Solution?
I’ve been thinking about adding some sort of pixel matrix to my Christmas display so I could do more messages, graphics and video. A P10 RGB panel display or pixel mesh solution was going to run a minimum of $600 plus a lot of labor but I would have a low resolution RGB panel prop to really add pazazz to the layout. Ouch. Then I walked through a local big box store and saw a 50″ TV for $200. For about $100 I could build a weatherproof enclosure and have a hi-definition screen in my Christmas display. As an extra…
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Thinking about RGB pixels?
Back in the old days you would plug in a string of Christmas lights and they would just turn on. Easy. Technology started getting involved about a decade ago. Think about a special string of Christmas lights where any light could be any color at any time. The concept has evolved quite a bit and is now referred to as RGB pixels. Some of the challenges with pixels include they tend to be more complicated to implement than the old days, expensive and not as efficient as you might think when when it comes to using electricity… but the possibilities…
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How do they make Christmas lights?
So, how does the factory make a string of Christmas Lights? It really helps to have a specialized machine and a lot of automation. This YouTube video is a bit dated and mixes incandescent with LED lights but it does a good job of showing how automation works. It also shows the difference between lights wired in series and parallel. You’ll better understand the phrase “when one goes out they all go out.” Standby while we load this from YouTube…
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Holiday Lights at Cheekwood Trains 2022
What happens when you mix a giant model trains layout with Christmas lights dancing to the music? You end up with Holiday Lights down at the TRAINS! display at Cheekwood Estate and Gardens in Nashville, Tennessee. The outdoor layout has over 1000 feet of track running eight trains. See more at http://cheekwood.org/trains. PlanetChristmas helped with the design and installation of the holiday lights. Details are below but checkout the video first. So how about some details of the display? Train gauge: G scale Number of separate tracks: 8 Total length of tracks: 1035 feet Total lights: 30,964 RGB pixels: 12,887…
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2022 Top 10 Christmas tunes list
At PlanetChristmas we get to see a lot of Christmas displays. We also talk to music producers, programmers and radio DJs about what they think will be hot come Christmas time. This is tough because people love the old traditional tunes when it comes to Christmas but we’re going to give it our best shot. Here’s the official PlanetChristmas top 10 list of the most popular tunes people will use to create over-the-top Christmas shows in 2022. A Holly Jolly Christmas by Michael Bublé White Christmas by Bing Crosby Santa Tell Me by Ariana Grande Run Run Rudolph by Luke…
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The Forums are back!
It was 1997 when the Internet was relatively new and the PlanetChristmas.com domain had just been granted. Back then you filled out a paper form, mailed it in and waited several weeks to see if you got the domain name you wanted. I found some free software for a bulletin board application, installed it on the new PlanetChristmas domain, made a few posts and forgot about it. Several weeks later there was another post and after about a year there were a handful of Christmas decorating fanatics exchanging ideas. How we found each other is still a mystery to me…
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TSO keeps going and going and going
Trans-Siberian Orchestra reveals 2022 holiday tour dates and answers your burning questions by Melissa Ruggieri of USA TODAY Rare is the juggernaut as potent as Trans-Siberian Orchestra. The musical locomotive – a gloriously grandiose combination of classical music, hair metal and holiday feels – has owned the road for more than two decades (virtually in 2020) and 2,000 shows. This year’s tour, dubbed The Ghosts of Christmas Eve – The Best of TSO and More, pulls from TSO’s “The Ghosts of Christmas Eve” album and TV special, one of the enduring holiday classics created primarily by late founder, composer and…
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PlanetChristmas video from 2002
Back in the good-old-days the PlanetChristmas display at the Smith household was quite popular. The local Fox 17 news outlet from Nashville, Tennessee came out to film the display. That night they featured it on the local show… and it was obvious the news anchors had never previewed the video. Quite entertaining. The video is a bit blurry (keep in mind this was 2002 and before modern high definition TV). Some quick facts: 134,000 lights in the display 548 electrical circuits 7.8 miles of wire 212 minitrees
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