New, planning 2018, and an introduction

[dansamy]

Greetings! I just joined because I'm considering buying a package for Halloween and Christmas 2018.

Brief history. I'm Amy and I'm a nurse by calling. I grew up in an era where riding through neighborhoods to see the lights was a Christmas tradition. Whole neighborhoods would be lit up. I always loved it. 

In 2014, I was unexpectedly widowed. In 2016, I bought a house in a neighborhood and moved from my very rural area. Shopping for Christmas decorations, I found the controller built by Gemmy for Lowe's and Disney. It only has 6 channels, very few programmed songs and very limited capacity for light quantity. Still, using the Bluetooth speaker function, it gave some life to an otherwise small display in 2016.

For 2017, we decorated quite a lot for Halloween but the actual lighting was, still of course, limited. For Christmas this year, I ditched the cheapo little spiral trees that blow over if you look at them funny and added outdoor decorations of reindeer, gift boxes, sturdier trees but still purchased ones not home built, lampposts, snowman. I also used icicles on my roof, wrapped my columns and lit my pathway. 

I hit the clearance sales on 12/26 and got an Abominable Snowman, some tall candy canes, a sleigh to add to the reindeer, more of the gift boxes, more trees. I also snagged 20 sets each of 100ct LED in red, green and blue and 11 spools of cool white 240ct LED. If I use everything, I'll go from about 2000 lights this year to almost 10k next year. Still quite small, but I have to limit myself. I'm only 3 miles away from the business end of the runways of my local airport. My house is, therefore, under the flight paths. Lasers, skyward pointed spotlights, anything like that is automatically on the no list. I have to stay within the realm of reasonable person seasonal light display. I'm also limited to what my teenagers will help me with. They're good kids though. 

My biggest issue with the current controller is there's no way to just leave the lights on after you play some music. It's either on with the music program, on with music streamed over Bluetooth, or off. I realize there's not much on the market between not very smart controllers and full on light show. I know full on light show controllers are serious overkill for my overall goal. But it puts the control back in my hands to decide what and how to run my lights. 

[Don]

There are various ways within the LOR environment to keep the lights on after music plays. It will somewhat depend on how you run the show (computer/director, etc.) but it can be done with LOR.

Welcome to the forums!

[dansamy]

 Yup. I've been reading for a while. The spasticity the Disney box does bother me, but not nearly as bad as the lights just clicking off after the playlist. Why they made that design decision, I'll never know. 

My daughter's favorite holiday is Halloween. (What is it with October babies and Halloween?!?) I'll be greatly revising and expanding over what we did this year. There were virtually no clearance Halloween lights in my area so I'm going to have to source some single color stands of yellow, purple and orange. I've got green because there plenty of Christmas lights on clearance in a couple of my stores. 

Edited December 30, 2017 by dansamy

[Thebug]

I sent you a pm of one of my favorite suplyers for lights. The other thhought I had was go the rgb rout and then its any color you like

[dansamy]

I'm just barely moving from the Gemmy Disney box to a real light show control. I'm definitely not ready for anything more than regular Christmas lights. Still not sure I like the look of them either. I know some folks hate LEDs too and they love their incandescent. I live in the Deep South where we run the AC 360 days of the year. My power bill needs the LEDs and I'm fine with their look.

[Thebug]

On 12/29/2017 at 3:21 PM, dansamy said:

I'm a nurse by calling. 

Nice to have a fellow nurse around and welcome by the way

[dibblejr]

3 hours ago, dansamy said:

I'm just barely moving from the Gemmy Disney box to a real light show control. I'm definitely not ready for anything more than regular Christmas lights. Still not sure I like the look of them either. I know some folks hate LEDs too and they love their incandescent. I live in the Deep South where we run the AC 360 days of the year. My power bill needs the LEDs and I'm fine with their look.

Where you at in Alabama? I am about 25 miles s- bham just off I65

JR

[dansamy]

1 hour ago, dibblejr said:

Where you at in Alabama? I am about 25 miles s- bham just off I65

JR

Northwest Mobile County. I'm up your way about every 2-3 months because I drive a friend's child to the Cystic Fibrosis clinic at Children's. 

[dansamy]

So, I ordered the software/starter kit with the cables and connectors, 4 16 channel controllers, some wire, some plugs, the g3-mp3 thing. Got an FM transmitter from Amazon.

I also ordered a 7 foot tall dragon for Halloween.  I already have the fog machine. I would like some lighted gravestones and pumpkins. 

 

Still working on Christmas. That's going to take a while. 

[dibblejr]

8 hours ago, dansamy said:

So, I ordered the software/starter kit with the cables and connectors, 4 16 channel controllers, some wire, some plugs, the g3-mp3 thing. Got an FM transmitter from Amazon.

I also ordered a 7 foot tall dragon for Halloween.  I already have the fog machine. I would like some lighted gravestones and pumpkins. 

 

Still working on Christmas. That's going to take a while. 

That's a great start.

JR

[dansamy]

20 minutes ago, dibblejr said:

That's a great start.

JR

I bought a fair bit of cheaper LED lights after Christmas. I will still need some specific colors. 

[debtoews]

On 12/29/2017 at 2:21 PM, dansamy said:

 

Brief history. I'm Amy and I'm a nurse by calling.

Hi Amy!  Im Deb and also a Nurse!  Welcome :-)