After numerous emails and personal queries, we have decided that the most simple way to explain our Christmas Lights would be to make an extended post about them. I will divide this two posts (1) The quick and easy answer and (2) The real answer.
Question: How did you do that?
Answer: (1) It was a lot of hard work as we built it all from scratch. We learned how to create our own circuit boards, solder, and use several programs. Basically, a song is loaded into a program which can break it down into multiple layers of millisecond intervals. Each minute of the song takes 3-5 hours to sequence. This program resides on computer that is connected to an external circuit board. This circuit board has 16 cat5 (network) connections on it. These are broken down into 4 channels each for a total of 64 channels. Each connection is in turn connected via a cat5 cable to a tree. Each tree has a box with 4 115VAC outlets and its own smaller circuit board. In a nutshell, the program tells each outlet when to turn off and on. Our display had just under 7000 lights with about 1/2 of the trees having 4 strings of lights and the rest having 8 strings of lights. We also built a small FM radio transmitter which broadcast our music to 96.7 FM so that people could hear the music and watch the lights from their cars. We have no idea how many cars stopped to watch, but it was pretty continuous during the live time of 6PM to 10PM.
That was the short answer 