When do yoy stop your display?

[sparky22]

How do you program the lights to twinkle for 5 minutes at midnight?

[rmturner54]

We continue ours thru Epiphany, which is Jan 6.

[TJ Hvasta]

I agree.. my lights go til Epiphany, Jan 6th, which is Russian Orthodox Christmas Day.. are off the 7th..

[Guest guest]

sparky22 wrote:

How do you program the lights to twinkle for 5 minutes at midnight?

Create a sequence that makes them all twinkle. I'm just a first year newbie, but with my incredible sequencing skills, would do a minute, and loop it.

Create a show with just that as your animation, schedule it for midnight Friday/Saturday, that runs for 5 minutes.

We did something similar for santa on christmas eve...concern was his being able to find his way to our house , so we created a special santa sequence/show, with the lights on at 50% for the night...scheduler shut them off in the AM.

[Bob Wingert]

I'm gonna rephrase my take down date of 1/9 and revise with: until I FINALLY get all my vid's taken WITHOUT cars driving in front of the camera. Stay tuned, my display maybe up till Memorial Day

[DanLowell]

Same here, the last night of the display is january 6th. I also start later than most, with the first night this year being December 12.

[Paul Roberson]

DonFL wrote:

sparky22 wrote:

How do you program the lights to twinkle for 5 minutes at midnight?

Create a sequence that makes them all twinkle. I'm just a first year newbie, but with my incredible sequencing skills, would do a minute, and loop it.

Create a show with just that as your animation, schedule it for midnight Friday/Saturday, that runs for 5 minutes.

We did something similar for santa on christmas eve...concern was his being able to find his way to our house , so we created a special santa sequence/show, with the lights on at 50% for the night...scheduler shut them off in the AM.

Don't forget to uncheck "Turn used lights off at the end of each sequence" in the LOR Show Editor or the lights will go off briefly between the sequence.

We do the same here every night the display is up. Our mega tree and 2 Z trees are on at 50% clear from show shutdown to 6:30 am. This puts enough light in our yard so our cameras can 'see' very well. It will also deter people who don't like light when they are feeling mischievous. : )

[Guest guest]

Paul Roberson wrote:

DonFL wrote:

sparky22 wrote:

How do you program the lights to twinkle for 5 minutes at midnight?

Create a sequence that makes them all twinkle. I'm just a first year newbie, but with my incredible sequencing skills, would do a minute, and loop it.

Create a show with just that as your animation, schedule it for midnight Friday/Saturday, that runs for 5 minutes.

We did something similar for santa on christmas eve...concern was his being able to find his way to our house , so we created a special santa sequence/show, with the lights on at 50% for the night...scheduler shut them off in the AM.

Don't forget to uncheck "Turn used lights off at the end of each sequence" in the LOR Show Editor or the lights will go off briefly between the sequence.

I have not seen that behavior.

originally, I just had an "animation" that turned the lights on, i looped it, and then shut them off at the scheduled time. Without the box checked, and no shutdown sequence, the lights just stayed on. I am not doing any music sequences this year, this is a first year for me, doing animation only. I had that running originally, until I added some animation and movement to the lights.

With the box checked, they shut off at the scheduled time, and did not blink off whenever the loop started over.

I now do a shutdown sequence that just shuts everything off, which seems closer to the proper way to do things, so its a moot point, but my testing runs counter to what you are saying.

Curious what others have seen, and if maybe I am missing something..

[Paul Roberson]

DonFL wrote:

Paul Roberson wrote:

DonFL wrote:

sparky22 wrote:

How do you program the lights to twinkle for 5 minutes at midnight?

Create a sequence that makes them all twinkle. I'm just a first year newbie, but with my incredible sequencing skills, would do a minute, and loop it.

Create a show with just that as your animation, schedule it for midnight Friday/Saturday, that runs for 5 minutes.

We did something similar for santa on christmas eve...concern was his being able to find his way to our house , so we created a special santa sequence/show, with the lights on at 50% for the night...scheduler shut them off in the AM.

Don't forget to uncheck "Turn used lights off at the end of each sequence" in the LOR Show Editor or the lights will go off briefly between the sequence.

I have not seen that behavior.

originally, I just had an "animation" that turned the lights on, i looped it, and then shut them off at the scheduled time. Without the box checked, and no shutdown sequence, the lights just stayed on. I am not doing any music sequences this year, this is a first year for me, doing animation only. I had that running originally, until I added some animation and movement to the lights.

With the box checked, they shut off at the scheduled time, and did not blink off whenever the loop started over.

I now do a shutdown sequence that just shuts everything off, which seems closer to the proper way to do things, so its a moot point, but my testing runs counter to what you are saying.

Curious what others have seen, and if maybe I am missing something..

Now that you mention it. I did have to add a shutdown sequence that turned the lights off at the end.

Maybe the "loop" is making the difference in the lights not going off between sequences. Not sure I use loop. I'll have to check into that.

[Bob Wingert]

I dont even loop it. just make a 1 min sequence of all your lights set to twinkle. Set show time to start at 12:00am and off at 12:05. It will keep playing until that time. Keep it simple

[PaulXmas]

sparky22 wrote:

How do you program the lights to twinkle for 5 minutes at midnight?

Take an MP3 (anything) run it through Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) extend it to 5 minutes, lower the volume to 0 and save as 5 minute MP3

Then start a new sequence and use the newly created MP3

I will shut down my normal show around 11:55 and start the 5 minute twinkle at midnight.

Ummmm maybe I could look for a fireworks sound effect and have that loop for 5 minutes

[bwaldrep]

PaulXmas wrote:

sparky22 wrote:

How do you program the lights to  twinkle for 5 minutes at midnight?

Take an MP3 (anything) run it through Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) extend it to 5 minutes, lower the volume to 0 and save as 5 minute MP3

Then start a new sequence and use the newly created MP3

Why do all that with an audio file, when you could do the same thing with a animation sequence, and bypass the music step all together.

[PaulXmas]

bwaldrep wrote:

PaulXmas wrote:

sparky22 wrote:

How do you program the lights to twinkle for 5 minutes at midnight?

Take an MP3 (anything) run it through Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) extend it to 5 minutes, lower the volume to 0 and save as 5 minute MP3

Then start a new sequence and use the newly created MP3

Why do all that with an audio file, when you could do the same thing with a animation sequence, and bypass the music step all together.

I should have start by saying someone might have a better idea but this is what I did.

[Guest guest]

I dont even loop it. just make a 1 min sequence of all your lights set to twinkle. Set show time to start at 12:00am and off at 12:05. It will keep playing until that time. Keep it simple

(forgot to quote..so cut and pasted..)

Makes sense...since it is the only sequence in what would be the animation category, it will continue to run until end of show time right?

So I guess the difference is, the single animation, if looped, would always loop and never "end", versus, it ends and starts over.

As a newbie, that is one of those "ah ha" moments that I like..:cool:

[Fabian]

Put another vote in the "12th day" / "Epiphany" collumn for me.

Fabian

[friskybri]

George Simmons wrote:

My last night is usually Dec 31st. This year I might just fire it up on Saturday night and see if anyone shows up to watch.

I am with George I shut down on December 31st. I am taking advantage of the warm weather. Snow is almost gone. So 3 days of putting everything away. Was thinking of shutting down a day earlier but wife said that there were still cars out there last night.

[Richard R]

Mine go off tonight too

[Richard R]

[TGabriel]

Last night was my last show, most other times it go to the end of Dec. Took the backyard down yesterday and the front today. Everything is pack and stored, just need to put in final storage area until next year. They are calling for rain both day this weekend is the reason I took it down early.

Thomas

[ryebred]

I had planned to run it through the weekend and take it down next week but 60 mile an hour winds yesterday knocked over my 18 foot tall mega-tree. I could spend a couple hours setting it back up but it is not worth it just to run it a few more days.

Everything survived the collapse except for the hundreds of pounds of force yanked one of my cat5 cables hard enough to pull it through the strain relief and halfway yank out the soldered in connector on the controller. Hopefully I can extract it and solder in a new one. Otherwise that controller will have to be relegated to an end-of-the-line controller next year.