Post Oak Light Show

Short answer, months. This take about six to eight months of planning what decorations to make, how are things going to be laid out, what needs to be purchased, and how things will go together. On top of planning the decorations the music has to be chosen and sequenced. The sequencing is what takes most of the time, several hours for just a 3 minute song.

To put in bluntly, this all started because I opened my big mouth. My uncle showed me a video of a house with computerized Christmas lights and I said “I’m going to do that this year!” Well, a few months later I started working on the display. It was tough going at first and I thought I was crazy for doing something like this but the more time I spent with it the more I started to enjoy it. Even before the Christmas show started I was already planning next year’s lights.

One of the real highlights to all of this work was seeing the faces of the children that would come to watch and sing along….their parents were impressed too!

No, I do not own the radio station that plays the Halloween and Christmas music. In order to keep happy neighbors, and my sanity, I use an FM broadcaster to play the music to the cars. This way I do not have speakers outside that repeats the same music every night.

The Post Oak Light Show is a synchronized music and light show, with the music being broadcast over 102.3 FM so you can listen in the car, which runs for Halloween and Christmas.

2007 was the first year to do the show and it consisted of 30 minutes of music and 1,000 lights for Halloween and 1 hour of music for Christmas and 7,000 lights. Halloween 2008 got a few more lights, like blinking eye balls and ghosts, and a few more songs featuring the theme from the Twilight Zone and Beetlejuice as well as my favorite Metallica's Enter Sandman! For Christmas in 2008 I extended the songs to an hour of music consisting of 18 songs and over 12,000 lights. Also in 2008 professional voice overs, created by The Demented Elf, were used in between songs to give the show more of a radio feel.

The lights in my display are controlled by three Light O Rama controllers all linked together. All of the controllers are connected to a regular old computer. The computer is running special software from Light O Rama that tells the controllers to turn this set of lights on, turn this set of lights off, and make those lights blink.

Each song is a special program that tells the lights exactly what do to. The bad part is that this part is not automatic; I have to sit and work on these sequences listening to the same 2 seconds of music over and over and over again. In 2007 it took me on average 1 hour to synchronize 1 minute of song. So that means a 3 minutes Christmas song took a little over 3 hours to complete. Since I added more lights in 2008 my average time increased to an hour and a half per minute.

Starting out I had around 1,000 lights for the Halloween show and around 7,000 for the Christmas show. For 2008 I had just a few more for Halloween and nearly doubled the lights used for Christmas. Right now in 2009 the number of lights for Halloween is the same and Christmas has around 13,000 lights. I could probably put my hands on close to 15,000 lights if I absolutely had to.

My parents, sister and I used to decorate the yard for Christmas. Back then all it consisted of were plywood cut outs of Santa, 2 Reindeer, and a Sleigh. A few years later many plywood cut outs of comic characters were made. Now they have several wireframes that for some reason they do not make blink! The animated lights started back in 2007 and configured the whole thing without knowing a single thing about what I was doing, which is sometimes par for the course!

To synchronize the lights to the music took 3 months, off and on. In general it took about 1 hour to synchronize 1 minute of song. Aside from programming the lights I also had to make the decorations, people look at you funny when you tell them you are making Christmas decorations in the middle of summer. Hanging the lights on the bushes and house took two weekends and after work the week in between. The only hard part was boxing it all up and putting it in the attic; I guess the getting it back down will be a pain as well. Again, more lights in 2008 meant even more trips into the attic with all the new boxes. Luckily they are all nice and labeled now so bringing this all together should "hopefully" be easier.

Most everything is in the attic over the garage. Thankfully the items do not take up as much space as you might think. I was worried the first year that the extreme heat from a Mississippi summer would warp or melt some items but they all came through just fine. All of the electronics behind the scene are stored inside the house because of the before mentioned heat.

The setup for Halloween is not very much, I usually get everything setup the afternoon and evening before the first show. It only takes about 6 trips up and down the attic to get all the lights down. Christmas on the other hand takes much longer. While the Halloween show is going I will start to bring things down from the attic and it usually takes the run of the show to get it all down. I usually start putting out lights the first of November for the Christmas show. The lights that get put up that early are not really noticeable and the in a couple weeks everything is set up. Thanksgiving week is when the test runs are done to make sure everything works and looks good.

So far I have made the 6 mini trees in red, green, yellow, orange, purple, and blue located in the front yard; the 6 North Pole lights that line the driveway made of PVC pipe supplies; the present in the front yard with red, blue, and white rope light; and the 6 foot tall cross in the side yard that cycles between red, white, and purple.

There are 3 20 amp power circuits that power the lights. Each circuit contains a 20 amp breaker with only 1 power outlet. A forth outlet is also used to power the computer that controls everything. I have no clue how many extension cords are used but I do know it takes hours to wind them all up when the show is finished.

Since all the lights are not on all the time it does not use as much electricity. My electric bill from December was actually less than it was from November. In 2008 with the addition of the new lights kept my power bill up just a little. I did notice that when the lights are all on the meters spins fast enough to cut wood!

That is a good question that I just cannot answer right now. As soon as I know something I will let you know.

When I first told them what I was doing they didn’t think much of it, then they saw how many lights were being put up and thought I had lost my mind. As time came and the lights started to blink they thought it was pretty cool. Who knows what they will think of me if all of a sudden there is a line of cars going down the street.