Christmas Lights - Carol of the Bells

Our Christmas light display in Tompkinsville, Kentucky. There are 42,000 lights on 320 Light-O-Rama light channels. This particular song is Carol of the Bells by Mannheim Steamroller. The two mega trees are 25' tall with about 10,000 lights per tree. The keyboards on the each side of the house are colored Plexiglas with 40-watt bulbs behind them. The light triangles under the eves are 400 mini lights. We also programmed the popular Wizards In Winter this year (just because it was fun to do!) At full load, the lights pull 207 amps but are only at full load for 4 seconds. It costs 65 cents/hour to run our entire show and the music is broadcast over FM station 89.3. We did a canned food drive this Christmas and received nearly 1,300 pounds of food. And we have the best neighbors because they put up with the thousands of cars that came down our dead-end road for over 5 weeks!

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Christmas
• Lights
• music
• animated
• carol
• of
• the
• bells

[onebadsarge]

Are you doing this this year also? I may have to take a flight to Kentucky

[jeremycprice]

@onebadsarge : No, sad to say we aren't. After the tornado hit the place, we sold the property "as-is" and moved on.

[danina8705]

How do you program it to do this? I want to do it with my house, but I'm not sure how.

[jeremycprice]

@danina8705 : We used Light-o-Rama's software and hardware. Spent about 30 hours per song programming the lights to the music. You load the song into the software as well as the different circuits you have (a circuit turns on/off a set of lights) and then you decide which lights you want on or off (dimmed, etc.) for each beat in the music. Then have the software play the music and it runs the lights.

[fastcarsforever]

This may be a stupid question, but is there actually music coming from the house, or did you overlay it onto the video of the lights?

[jeremycprice]

@fastcarsforever : Music is coming from the house. Actually, the computer running the lights also has an FM transmitter installed (~$50) that we had trasmitting the music to people's radios. People in their cars tuned to that station and were able to watch the lights and listen to the music.

[jeremycprice]

@HarryPotter517 : Lots of structural damage. We wound up selling the house as it sat - damaged. A local couple bought the house and fixed it up.

[craz4bama]

yo

[juliebogen]

This. Is. Ridiculous. O_O It's like the fountain at the Bellagio, but more awesome.

[0o0Zuly0o0]

You guys did such a great job!!!! (:

[HorseGal523]

cool i like the vrsion of this song to trans siebarian orcistra :) but still it's cool =D

[TheMimeClown]

wow is that the house playing the song hahahahaha



[touchmeipod]

This was amazing

[abad1132]

I would totally drive down your road too just to see this but unfortunately I dont live anywhere near there. Im just a little too far from Kentucky to see this. But you really have done an AMAZING JOB!

[MNMaftertheP]

Much more artful with the timing than most people who do this. Would have liked to see a bit more lit up at a time though. So many beautiful lights we only get to see briefly.

[Mrsleticiajonas]

I would luv to see your electic bill

[Scottsiphonehelp]

@jeremycprice i live in kentucky too i remember that tornado i live in louisville.