How else do you use your Light-O-Rama?

[Guest guest]

Greetings,

I was wondering how, if at all you use your Light-O-Rama the other 11 months. I understand that Christmas might be pretty much that someone can handle especially with so many hugely spactacular displays that take so much time and energy.

I saw a couple of videos with Halloween displays that got me thinking. Halloween is becoming more popular all of the time so it's a natural for a lighted display but it's only one day so a big display might not be worth the effort to have a display up for only a few days. But what about Independence day, St. Patrics Day and the like that could be the theme for a display. Would your neighbors tolerate "that nutcase with the lights" taking on more displays?

Also, what about non-holiday uses? Landscape lighting, irrigation, decorative lighting, inside vacation security lighting, pool pump control, etc.

I work in the Building Management System business so having something this easy to use and relatively inexpensive available fascinates me.

[Guest guest]

I used it for the other holidays too. Hopefully this year I can use it again for Easter and other holidays. Probably just for motion and light change and no sound. I did use it for Halloween with sound.

[Guest guest]

I've never used it for anything but Christmas. This year I will do a VERY small Easter display, consisting of our new cross, and some sort of LOR standalone sequence (I don't think I want to run cable outside just for one small display).

-Tim

[Guest guest]

I know we will be using ours for the 4th of July and Halloween. I have given thought to either St. Patricks Day or Easter too. My husband is Irish, and the 17th is on a Sat this year. I would do Valentines Day, but I just got over Christmas.

[Guest guest]

I used mine last year for Halloween and will do it again this year. I was thinking of something for 4th of July, but it is a lot of work for one night. At least for Halloween I could put the lights up for a week or so.

Flanman

[Guest guest]

I'm planning for several events this year to include (hopefully) March Madness (still searching tunes/ideas). 4th of July with various patriotic songs sequenced and Halloween for the whole month of October (like last year). As mentioned in other posts, this is all for the outside of my amusement ride.

Then I'm adding one more use for one of my LOR controllers. Inside the ride as you go thru the first turn, I'll have the controller activated at a certain point. A certain section of track that the car rides on will be dead so the car comes to a complete stop. The sequence will include a voice-over to introduce the ride and announce the safety message. Then a brief description of the Dungeon ride. Then the sequence will fire off special effects like lasers, smoke machine and other lighting effects. I plan to have a visual of something on a huge screen that folks will see while all this is going on (kinda like the wizard in the Wizard of OZ). At the end, a loud thundering boom with a bright flashes and the car starts rolling again to send you on your way thru the rest of the ride.

The plan is to have the LOR controller wired to all the special effects and also to the power relay to turn the section of track power on and off. If all goes well, I'll be repeating this method in other parts of the ride with different effects and voice-overs.

This is my plan and hope to have it in the works in April for the OK Mini.

My future plan is to look at animating a few props with 8 channel LOR controllers but this might be next year.

Tom

[Guest guest]

Ill be running "A Williamsburg Christmas" 'SUMMER EDITION' in my bed room. I Have fog, strobes and a box fan. It will be really fun to see what I can come up with!









--Daniel L

[Guest guest]

This year I got my first controller ready just in time to do a quick animation sequence
for Halloween. I had a tri color fence swag 3 channels, 4 pumpkins each on it's own channel, and 4 blue and 2 white floodlights each on their own channels. I had a thunderstorm mp3 playing. So when the thunder hit the orange fence swag changed to blue and white, the blue floods lit up the house, the white floods stayed on all the time lighting the 7' spider and 25' spider web, and the pumpkins did a slow chase back and forth.
It turned out great.

It was kind of cool seeing people try to figure out how I did that.

It was also a good test for the hardware.

This year I'll do more for Halloween and probably something for the
4th of July...I'm thinking firework wireframes hanging in my tree or on the roof going to the music....

[Guest guest]

I'm going to hard wire a 16 channel to use for landscape lighting and x-10 control of some porch lights. Some of these will include uplight floods and the outlets already in my soffets on the second story. As time and money allows, I would like to put on a patriotic show.

Brian

[Guest guest]

Heck, why take the lights down? We've got Valentines Day, Martin Luther King Day, Presidents Day, March Madness Day, Spring Break, St. Pats, Mothers and Fathers Day, My Birthday, my wifes Birthday and all the kid's Birthdays, Memorial Day, Summer Vacation, 4th, 24th in Utah, My Dads Birthday, LOR Purchase Day........Holy cow! the neighbors are gonna love this.

[Guest guest]

I am thinking of a water fountain display with chasing sprays and such.

RW

[Guest guest]

I was thinking about setting up something with lights and music for my daughters wedding, think it would be awesume. She is not convinced....yet. LOL

James

[Guest guest]

I used 16 channels for Halloween this past year. Otherwise, they all sit, hooked up of course, to a mini display on a basement wall.

I should add my library stays decorated all year.

[Guest guest]

Are all of you using the stock software that comes with the LOR for your displays? I see some use during halloween or general home automation that goes beyond the standard music-animation sequences, but wasn't sure if other software or an API is available for banging out commands to the lor.. ideas ??

[Guest guest]

For the past four years my buddy has been doing his own 4th of July fireworks show and it's been getting bigger each year. We are talking about joining forces this year and use my LORs (soon to be 64 channels) to ignite his fuses and create a fireworks show sync'd to music.

There are some hurdles though:

1. 
   
2. We'll have to offset the fuse duration along with the firework explosion to the music and this is going to vary for each different kind of projectile used.
   
3. Wrapping several hundred fuses with electric match heads doesn't sound like much fun.
   
4. With only 64 channels and several hundred fuses there is going to be a significant amount of cable swapping during the show...one slip-up and things will be out of sync.

Has anybody tried this before?

[Guest guest]

danpenn wrote:

For the past four years my buddy has been doing his own 4th of July fireworks show and it's been getting bigger each year. We are talking about joining forces this year and use my LORs (soon to be 64 channels) to ignite his fuses and create a fireworks show sync'd to music.

There are some hurdles though:

1. 
   
2. We'll have to offset the fuse duration along with the firework explosion to the music and this is going to vary for each different kind of projectile used.
   
3. Wrapping several hundred fuses with electric match heads doesn't sound like much fun.
   
4. With only 64 channels and several hundred fuses there is going to be a significant amount of cable swapping during the show...one slip-up and things will be out of sync.

Has anybody tried this before?

One of my employees does professional fireworks shows around the country. I discussed this with him briefly about doing it myself. I will ask him how he planned on doing fireworks with the LOR unit to synchronize to music. He mostly explained to me how they used smpte code(sp?) Maybe I can get him to give us a few pointers and post it here.

[Guest guest]

ksingleton wrote:

danpenn wrote:

For the past four years my buddy has been doing his own 4th of July fireworks show and it's been getting bigger each year. We are talking about joining forces this year and use my LORs (soon to be 64 channels) to ignite his fuses and create a fireworks show sync'd to music.

There are some hurdles though:

1. 
   
2. We'll have to offset the fuse duration along with the firework explosion to the music and this is going to vary for each different kind of projectile used.
   
3. Wrapping several hundred fuses with electric match heads doesn't sound like much fun.
   
4. With only 64 channels and several hundred fuses there is going to be a significant amount of cable swapping during the show...one slip-up and things will be out of sync.

Has anybody tried this before?

One of my employees does professional fireworks shows around the country. I discussed this with him briefly about doing it myself. I will ask him how he planned on doing fireworks with the LOR unit to synchronize to music. He mostly explained to me how they used smpte code(sp?) Maybe I can get him to give us a few pointers and post it here.

I spoke with my employee, he told me they have inventory sheets that state how long each type of firework takes to explode once the fuse is ignited. They tap out what they want almost exactly like we can do with LOR. He suggested taking one of each type of firework and timing it. (I know, you already knew this) Actually, before I write anymore, based on what he has told me you are going to do exactly what you don't want to do. Wrap all of the fuses individually, swap cables, time everything to offset the delay. If it makes you feel any better we plan on trying to do the same thing.

Hold the phone! He just had an idea! Try to follow me...if you had each of the 64 channels connected to a switch (a single pole double throw, I think) you would not need to unplug to effectively get 128 channels. You would just need to throw the switches. You would need to wire a switch in line with each channel going to the fuses. He said they do something similar but they use D.C. and change the polarity with diodes (he lost me here but I understand the A.C. aspect of it, flip a switch) Assuming you have more than one shell (firework) on each channel this might get you by. I just found this website with rotary switches with 12 positions. http://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bin/category/700425/Rotory.html With this you could technically get 12 channels from each one channel. You would need to make some sort of panel with with a dial on each switch so you would know where you were at but this seems like the way to go.

I hope this helps,

Keith