The lights are hooked up to a computer which synchronizes the entire show.  The computer plays the audio you hear, and with a little clever programming, the computer manipulates the relays in the yard which brings the show to life. 

Yes.  Using a computer, I programmed what all 256 channels should be doing at any particular point in the song.  I then load this into the computer, and the computer tells each of the 14 control centers in yard what to do when.  These control centers in turn fire each of the 200+ relays according to the computer's direction.  

The non-techie answer:  The computer tells each stand of lights when to turn on, off, fade, or do any number of various effects in sync with the music you hear.  

Programming is a long, painstaking process.  For each song, I have to plan out what I want each strand of lights to do when, and then program these cues into the computer at very precise times.  Depending on the complexity of the song, each minute of show takes 5-10 hours of programming.  An hour show would take over 400 hours of programming.

Yes.  When building such complex shows, there are a number of resources one can leverage to reduce the programming the time.  I started the website http://LORsequences.com to share the programming behind these shows.  Many people have participated in this site, and now anyone using Light-O-Rama equipment can download the programming for any uploaded work.  While the programming is not directly transferable - it does already have the timing marks laid out, and this is the most time consuming part of synchronizing a song.  Modifing existing programming for my display reduces the programming time by 200%-500%.  I had 30 songs in my 2007 display, and most of them were shared works. 

The music is broadcast from my bedroom.  I have a small, FM transmitter with a range less than a quarter mile, but it's sufficient to broadcast the tunes straight to your radio.

Because the playlist changes with every holiday, we don't post a static link here.  If we did, chances are the link would be outdated by the time you accessed this page. 

Try looking on our main menu for the playlist of the current show.  At the time of this writing, it was under Halloween 2009 --> Halloween Playlist.  (Click Halloween 2009 then click Halloween Playlist.)    Just look for the current holiday and year.

It takes around 80+ hours to get everything setup outside and make the 200+ electrical connections.  Keep in mind it's not as easy as setting up items in the yard.  I have to wire each light or light strand individually to the proper controller.

Planning for a display like this is a year round process.  Planning begins in early January if not sooner.  Often, I begin work on the next season as soon as the lights go up, which gives me 12-14 months to devise the concepts and programming for next years display. 

26,313 lights in 2008.  I know this because I must be extremely careful when planning all the circuit loads to reduce the risk of an overload.  If everything was turned on at once, it would consume 193 amps of power -- a wattage of 23,171.36!  

The 2008 display used just under 150 extension cords ranging from 6 feet to 100 feet.  The total length of all the extension cords was 2,763 feet.  If stetched end to end, they would extend a length greater than 6.5 complete football fields (including end zones)!

The power bill increases about $50.  When the display has many high powered devices operating like fog machines, the power bill can increase up to $100.  The reason why these increases are so low is because the display is animated.  If you watch any one individual light and ignore the rest of the display, you will see that light bulb is off more often than it is on.  Often, individual strands of lights are off over 90% of the time.        

Free electricity, anyone?  That's what I got in 2007.  In late September 2007, the house was upgraded from 100 amp to 200 amp service.  Because of this, the meter on the house was removed so a new meter could be installed.  ComEd (power company) was so backlogged, they didn't actually hook up the additional service until the second week of January.  (Yes, January!)   As a result, both my Christmas and Halloween displays were "free" because there was no meter on the house.   ComEd charged me what they believed was the regular monthly average for electricity based on their rate cards and the previous history of this residence -- meaning I paid a flat charge for electricity each month regardless of the usage.