Mega/Mini Trees
Mega and mini trees.
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Put a mega-tree on the roof
It all started a couple of years ago when we needed to find a suitable house to help care for an aging relative. All my previous hard work building and sequencing a customized display for our old house was going down the drain. The old house had tons of shrubs and provided a natural setting for lots of lights. Not so with the new house. Not a single shrub anywhere. My creativity languished for 2011 and all I did was put a 16’ inflatable Santa on the carport roof. It was a good location where the south end of our…
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Light-O-Rama
In 1975 Dan Baldwin was a newly minted computer science wizard and had just married his longtime sweetheart, Mary. That first Christmas together they bought a three foot tree upon Mary’s insistence and a family tradition was born. For the next 20 years that little tree, plus some accessories, was just about all the decorating the couple did for the holiday season. Something changed in 1995 when Mary took it upon herself to go outside and string a few lights along the top of the fence. Dan looked at her work and said “we need more lights!” Soon there were…
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The largest computerized Christmas tree in the world
How does one construct the largest artificial foliage Christmas tree in the world? Bi-Lingual-ly of course! But I’m getting ahead of myself . . . . Let’s start at the beginning. Gallo, the largest beer manufacturing company in Guatemala, has held a tree-lighting ceremony for Guatemala City (and surrounding areas) for the last 24 years as a way to give back to the community. For their 25th Anniversary of the tree lighting, they decided to purchase a new tree; complete with a fully synchronized musical light show! To accomplish this task, Gallo contacted Barrango, Inc., located in South San Francisco.…
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The Christmas Ranch
I picked up the phone and it was Dr. Mike Fuchs, the owner of The Christmas Ranch northeast of Cincinnati. I had heard about this place for years and all I could imagine was Santa riding a horse or cooking a giant steak over the campfire, which seemed a bit odd to this Christmas lover. Mike is such a delight to talk with, has a deep passion for Christmas and a real desire to help others. He loves outdoor Christmas decorations and leaves his display up yea r-round. The more we talked the more I knew he was a PlanetChristmas…
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GFCIs
We all love to drive around and look at Christmas lights. We compare, critique and gather new ideas (aka: copying someone else’s) while commenting on everyone’s design, but as soon as it rains, what happens? Everything goes dark. What causes it? A protection we electricians call GFCI (Ground-Fault Circuit Interrupters) is a must for your safety when around a Christmas display. A ground-fault occurs when there is a break in the low-resistance grounding path from a tool or electrical system. The electrical current may then take an alternative path to the ground through the user, resulting in serious injuries or…
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Think like your cellphone
My first year to install an extreme Christmas light display at my home was in 2005. I had to buy all the products, learn a new software program, stumble through installation procedures, install an electrical sub-panel in my garage and make about a hundred trips to Home Depot for electrical supplies. The display was fairly simple and included 45,000 lights, 80 channels of computer control and very few props or tricks. I programmed about eight unedited songs, one after the next much like a collection of songs on any given album. I thought it was really cool and I had…
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Thinking about going pro?
Even with the current economic struggles, there are still entities that want to attract attention and excitement to make their facility noteworthy in the community. A computerized light display (we call them animated lighting shows) is a novel and proven effective way to do this. Attention means visitors, and visitors mean business. Animated Lighting, Inc. has been involved with hundreds of commercial projects over the past decade. Each one is exciting and many times challenging based on a variety of factors. If you’re thinking about tackling a commercial project, I’ve pulled together some hints that should make things easier to…
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Over The Top decorating contest winner
My wife Heather and I recently got married in July of 2007. We purchased our house and last year was the first year we decorated our home. In years past I installed lights for others and had a pretty good size display at my parent’s house. Once I had my own house, I was free to go “wild” with the Christmas Lights. We are located in Hobbs, New Mexico. This is my first year with a computerized display. This year we have 155,000 lights on 224 Light-O-Rama channels. We have voice-overs in between each song. Many of the voice-overs remind…
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