Last night, the Head Elf was outside working on some construction projects for this years show. A neighbor was outside, talking on the phone. She couldn't believe yours truly outside in August hooking up Christmas lights, and made it known to the person on the phone. I have finally joined the rank of 'Kooky neighbor with the Christmas lights'. On a brighter note, I was able to get a few projects near completion (at least the construction phase, the lighting phase is next).

Hobby Lobby has put out their Christmas displays. Trees, ornaments and LIGHTS!!! They have mini's, C7, C9, LED, glow bulbs and other lit goodness. Some may say it is too early, but for those who start planning well in advance, it is great to be able to run to the corner to an extra light strand or fifty! Now if they only have a late-summer sale on them. Time to start scouring the coupons for the infamous Hobby Lobby coupons!

The Head Elf has been a little lazy these past few months. Not to say that he hasn't been planning this years show, but not much has been done so far in the way of construction other than buying controllers (I have been working on some Halloween props for a neighbor, so not all time was wasted). But with only 4 months until the show starts, he is getting his rear in gear! Most of the layout has been done on the computer, and now needs the details worked out for the new additions along with channel requirements to see if he has enough to go around. Then there is the lights inventory and finally, construction. There is a Mini C3 including a swap meet coming up in a few weeks, courtesy of Constantly Christmas, so hopefully some additional LED's can be obtained at a good price. Well, the first of many trips to the hardware store starts tomorrow, so rest must be had.

It is never too early to start on the light show. Here it is March and I am starting the planning. I hope to double the number of channels this year, so I need to start planning the layout and take inventory of lights. I hope to migrate a large percentage of the incandescent bulbs to LED to save on power so I can expand. I did score a bunch of LED's during the after Christmas sales, but most of the 50 boxes or so are all green, but that will work for what I have planned.

I am also building a one shot sequencer for my Dad to use for his village Christmas tree lighting ceremony, and I will post some construction notes when it is finished. I spent a couple of hours today figuring out the wiring on some dead light strands. It looks like a 150 bulb string breaks into two separate strings which can be cut. Simply look for a socket that has three wires coming out of it in the middle of the strand somewhere and snip it. Be sure to remove the dangling wire to prevent electric shock. Also, a 70 strand LED set performs the break at the 35th LED socket. This makes sense since they are probably ~3.3v LED's, so 35 sockets * 3.3v = 115.5v which is your typical 120v AC power, thus no pull down resistors are needed. My next task is to see how many (or rather, few) incandescent bulbs I can run off of 12-18V for my dads project. This should reduce cost since I won't have to pick up LED's which will limit me to ~5 LED's per 'feed', and will need about 30 LED's per 'string' for the sequence. Using incandescent bulbs on 12-18V will allow me to make a continuous string without worry about wiring the feeds in parallel and the strings in series.

Lastly, mark your calendars for December 20th at 7:00pm. That will be the evening when Santa arrives and the Grinch performs.

PS: The lights go on Thanksgiving evening in 2008 and will run every evening until after Christmas.