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North Georgia Dancing Lights |
Welcome to another year of dancing lights. Its hard to believe that another year has passed.
| Welcome to our Dancing Lights | |
Welcome to the home page of our dancing lights. This is our 5th year and we are brighter than ever.
Being that this is a computerized show, when the weather gets wet we will not turn on the lights...for obvious reasons.
We require the rain to stop for at least 2-3 hours before the lights can be turned on. Not only does this give time for the
electrical wires and connections to dry out a bit but it also gives us a chance to inspect the show before attempting
to mix water and electricity.
A couple of points of interest, always check back here to see if the lights will be playing this evening. I will have updated the
status by 5:30pm every day, as needed. This is especially useful on days where it has rained all day but it has stopped late. We will make every attempt
to play the lights every evening. One other thing, if you see a little girl peaking out at you, dont be afraid, she just loves to
give out candy canes to everyone that she sees. Thank you for sharing your christmas with us as we enjoy sharing a bit of our christmas with you.
From our family to yours Merry Christmas!!!!!
We get a ton of questions about our show and we love to talk about it. So hopefully we can answer a few obvious questions:
- How many lights do you have?
Well...a good guestimate is around 30,000....give or take a thousand.
- How much power do the lights take?
A lot to be honest BUT! not as much as you would think either. With the LED lights, power consumption has dropped ALOT. Honestly, it is wasnt for the LED lights, we would not be able to put up as many as I do.
We have 4 dedicated 15amp circuits and a dedicated 20 amp circuit. When every light is on during a show sequence, it is pulling nearly 70 amps of power which is 50% of the power that comes to house. That is the equivalent to having your central air, electric dryer and dishwasher running at the same time.
Once we make the move to use solely LED lights, the same 30,000 lights would take a mear 10amps. We run approx 40% - 50% LED in total.
- How many extention cords do you have?
Hard to tell, but between the network cable and the power cable, we probably have about literaly a mile of wire. The
intresting part about our extention cords (wiring harness), is that we custom make them. It is far cheaper than going to lowes or home depot to buy them, unless you just need the 6 foot ones.
- So what is new this year?
The back and sides of the house now 95% LED and have new programming elements added.
The biggest change comes from completely changing hardware and software vendors. While the show will "look" similar to last year, there are actually tons of changes. We have added
new controllers this year to nearly double the channel count. What this means to you is that the show will have a more distinct look as almost every string of lights have their
own individual control. In addition to "retooling" every song (including new lighting elements) to use the new software and hardware, we managed to add a new song. We also plan
to introduce 2 new synchronized songs around December 1st.
- How long does it take to synchronize a song?
With our new software, we can program a 2 minute song with 122 channels in about 5 hours. The new software can incorporate video (think deck the halls movie), allow WII controllers
to "play-along" with the musinc and actually control the lights on the house(think rock band), or even use your Android/iPhone to select the songs that you would like to see live. Our old system had just 64 individual channels to program. A 2 minute song, on average, took about 40 hours
to complete. This goes up as the channel count goes up and how tightly coupled you want the lights to be with the song.
- How long does it take to put these lights up?
We started back toward the beginning of september, labor day. We start by checking the lighting controllers and checking
each light strand to make sure there are no freyed wires or blown out bulbs. Towards the middle-end of september, we start hanging lights in the back of the house and slowly work forwards.
we have halloween show as well (on a much smaller scale) and we dont want christmas to interfere with the halloween decor.
About mid october, we are making it to the front of the house. Once halloween is over, it takes about 30 more hours to get everything hooked up correctly. From november 15st to just before thanksgiving,
we are testing the changes to the program and going through test runs of the show. Then on Thanksgiving, the show goes live for you to enjoy. From start to finish, it takes my wife and I about 500 hours to complete.
The short version, its my parents fault. The longer version, growing up in miami, my family and I used to decorate our house
with lots of chritmas lights. One tradition we always used to do was drive around and look at other christmas lights. There was this one house
in the kendall area that always had an over the top display. His display was featured on the travel channel last year. If we didnt do anything else,
we went to that one house. This house was so amazing to me when I was a child. I could not tell you any presents that I received
from santa clause except for a handful. But I could always remember that amazing house. I always told myself that if I ever get a house,
I would cover it from front to back.
When we moved here back in 2003, it started. Although, we didnt have the money to buy enough
lights to cover the front muchless the back. Over the next few years and alot of walmart clearance deals,
we were finally about to do the entire house. In the summer of 2007, we bought a complete system to synchronize
the lights to music. Over first year we had only 16 channels and converted our static display and came alive with motion.
You can see the first year below in the videos. Over the last 3 years we have doubled each year to where we are today.
We plan to be here for a long time and hope we can bring memories to you and your family for years to come. Maybe, just maybe...we might be able to
share some of that magic with you that I received when I was a child back in miami. Maybe even become a tradition....
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Current Status:
The lights will be playing tonight.
- Spirit of the Season (New)
- Holly Jolly
- Christmas Mix
- Boughs Of Holly
- Linus and Lucy
- Carol of the Bells
- Wizards in Winter
- Christmas Eve Sarajevo
- It's Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas
- Mad Russian Christmas
- Most Wonderful Time of Year
- O Come All Ye Faithful, O Holy Night
- Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer
- Christmas Canon
- Reflections of Earth
- Standing in Motion
- America
Dates | Hours |
11/24/2011 | 6:00pm - 9:00pm |
11/25/2011 | 6:00pm - 9:00pm |
11/26/2011 | 6:00pm - 9:00pm |
11/27/2011 | 6:00pm - 9:00pm |
11/28/2011 | 6:00pm - 9:00pm |
11/29/2011 | 6:00pm - 9:00pm |
11/30/2011 | 6:00pm - 9:00pm |
12/01/2011 | 6:00pm - 9:00pm |
12/02/2011 | 6:00pm - 9:00pm |
12/03/2011 | 6:00pm - 9:00pm* |
12/04/2011 | 6:00pm - 9:00pm* |
12/05/2011 | 6:00pm - 9:00pm |
12/06/2011 | 6:00pm - 9:00pm |
12/07/2011 | 6:00pm - 9:00pm |
12/08/2011 | 6:00pm - 9:00pm |
12/09/2011 | 6:00pm - 9:00pm* |
12/10/2011 | 6:00pm - 9:00pm* |
12/11/2011 | 6:00pm - 9:00pm |
12/12/2011 | 6:00pm - 9:00pm |
12/13/2011 | 6:00pm - 9:00pm |
12/14/2011 | 6:00pm - 9:00pm |
12/15/2011 | 6:00pm - 9:00pm |
12/16/2011 | 6:00pm - 9:00pm8 |
12/17/2011 | 6:00pm - 9:00pm* |
12/18/2011 | 6:00pm - 9:00pm |
12/19/2011 | 6:00pm - 9:00pm |
12/20/2011 | 6:00pm - 9:00pm |
12/21/2011 | 6:00pm - 9:00pm |
12/22/2011 | 6:00pm - 10:00pm |
12/23/2011 | 6:00pm - 10:00pm* |
12/24/2011 | 6:00pm - 12:00am* |
12/25/2011 | 6:00pm - 10:00pm* |
12/26/2011 | Lights Come Down!! |
* = Countinous Dancing Lights
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