Carols 'N' Canes Christmas Music Lights 2009 Pt-1

This is my first year doing a display of holiday lights to music. In a nutshell, someone driving by the house sees the display along with a sign that tells them to tune their car radio to a preselected FM radio frequency. Upon tuning in the spectator(s) can see the lights flash & dim in sync with the music. This clip is the first two songs in my set; The Nutcracker Suite: Dance of The Sugar Plum Fairy and Sleigh Ride by Leroy Anderson.

The system used to create this display is a 16 channel Renard controller (also known as the Xmus board) as featured on the the "Do It Yourself Christmas" (DIYC) website & forum. The controlling program is called Vixen which runs on a standard Windows XP/Vista PC. Vixen can be adapted to run many different types of controllers, but by and large the Renard system is one of the most popular. It is inexpensive to build and it offers full dimming. They have systems in 16 channel, 32 channel and 64 channel variants.

On the music side of things I am using a Ramsey Electronics FM10C FM transmitter. This is a very low powered transmitter that only broadcasts about 300 to 400 feet with the built in antenna. This is good because the transmission stays localized within the immediate area within my neighborhood.

A custom made sign (shown in part-2) has a light on it so people can read what radio station to tune into.

Due to size limitations in posting videos on You Tube I cut this program down into two clips, so be sure to watch Part 2!

So if this looks interesting to you, head on over to doityourselfchristmas.com. You will see me there as I use the same screen name there too.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Vixen
• Renard
• Xmus
• Christmas Lights
• Music
• DIYC
• Do It Yourself Christmas

[lee66047]

The genius of this light show is unmistakeable. I have seen homes with 40,000 lights and over a hundred channels in controllers not accomplish message of the holiday season the way this one does. I will be doing my first show this year. Programming is almost complete and I am nowhere near the difficulty of this display. You may have included it on you page, I will check but I am curious how the canes were constructed. Again, Super Job!

[jukingeo]

@lee66047 Hello Lee and thank you for the kind words. '09 was my first year for lighting and I too have seen those 256 channel shows and while they ARE impressive, they also require TONS of programming...months in advance in fact. My show used 3 songs and 14 of 16 channels on my controller and the songs took 1.5 months to program. What I tried to do with the short time I had was to see what I could really do with just 16 channels. The truth is you can do a lot.

[jukingeo]

@lee66047 Oh! Almost forgot, the candy canes are nothing special. What you need is SINGLE plug candy canes, meaning each one has it's own plug. Walmart does sell them like this for about $8 each, but my Walmart put them out too late and thus I enlisted in Lowes and converted their candy canes. The secret to the show is the Renard dimming controller / Vixen program and the DIY Christmas website. LOADS of info there. I DO have chase lighting control experience, so that helped too :).

[PhysicsDude55]

I can tell you have a knack and art for designing light shows. Even though you didn't have an eleborate display, you made very good use of the lights, and especially the candy canes.

Good job, look forward to seeing what you can do in the future :).

[jukingeo]

Hey, didn't see that you posted here! Anyway, thanx for dropping by and posting a comment! Yes, this was my first year so I didn't really have an elaborate display and I mostly centered everything around the candy canes. However, I have had some experience programming DMX light shows in my pro sound & theater days. I had always dreamed of doing something like before Vixen's release, but prior to that DMX really was the only way to go. Needless to say being a pro format it is very expensive.

[ritahalsey]

Great page!