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Behind the Scenes 2012 Animated Light Show Eletrical upgrades to the house were a must after adding 30,000 more lights in 2011 from 20,000 in 2010, totaling 50,000 lights. In 2012 I added another 30,000 lights to bring the total to 80,000 lights. I had to pull permits with the city to run new mains to the house adding 200 more amps. The mains that are run to the house are good up to 400 amps.  This is after the project was completed in 2011. The meter can was changed and the middle box is the house breaker. The breaker to the right is the christmas light breaker only. I added a gutter under the breaker boxes so that I could drop 5 outlet boxes out of it totaling 10 GFCI outlets. Each outlet is a 20amp breaker with a 20amp GFCI outlet. The controller in the bottom right of the picture is a showtime controller (Commercial) that has the MP3 director built in. All of the sequences are programed on the computer and uploaded to a SD card that fits into the director. All of the controller boxes are daisy chained to each other via cat5 cable creating a network. The director controls the entire netowrk of controllers that are placed throughout the display.  After increasing the show to 80,000 lights and totaling 18 controllers I decided that I needed 8 more breakers totaling the count to 26. (18 on this side of the house and 8 on the other side.)  This is the other side of the house inwhich I installed 8 GFCI plugs under the eve of the house. I have 3 controllers under these outlets to control this side of the house. The mega tree is powered with 2 controllers but only uses 2 20amp outlets. (note the 2 yellow extension cords)  This is the mega tree that was added new in 2011. I put a pulley inside the pole at the top so that I could pull up the light holder. The star on top of the tree is configured with 3 channels and 1 channel for the strobes. 
 The spiral tree is my new for 2012. I have 16 strands of rope coming from the top to create the cone mold and then laid 16 strands of lights in a spiral down the tree. 
 I have installed a low power FM transmitter with an antenna in my attic. This is tuned to 107.1 FM.  |
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