Not Enough Lights - Synchronized Lights

1. How is your display different than other displays ?
Our display is animated and truly synchronized to music using special software, hardware, and time, lots and lots of time...

2. I have seen your display before, whats different ?
First, I was unable to do a display last year but I have always changed the display each year including the music to keep it "new" each year. This year the biggest difference is the addition of my 17' tall mega tree that has 1,800 addressable red green blue combination LEDs on it that face towards the highway. So theres 1,800 individual LEDs on the tree but as mentioned, each physical LED contains a red, green and blue LED chip. This effectively triples the number of point source lights on the tree and ends up being 5,400 point source lights that can be all on at one time. This is why when the tree is white, it is extremely bright because all the individually colored LEDs are on at the same time (R+G+B = White, this is how your television and computer monitors work to produce any color possible by combining the different colors). The tree consists of 12 vertical strands with 150 LEDs per strand. This allows me to create really unique effects on my tree such as scrolling text, animations, traveling waves of color, etc. In fact if you watch the show, I draw various pictures on the tree to go along with the songs that are playing and scroll text at other times while I created a dancing hip hop elf and a talking reindeer head for one song. Ths possibilities are endless...

3. What else is different?
This year I have also made numerous LED flood lights. Each flood light contains 151 RGB LEDs that can be combined to create any color. The flood lights are used to uplight the trunks and branches of the trees and also put color onto the various parts of the house as well. The floodlights will light up large sections of tall trees so I can get light to reflect off the branches of the trees way up top and it creates a solid color on the tree and I dont have to wrap the entire tree with lights, I can simply put one or more floodlights at the base to fill in the tree. If I put more than one light per tree then I can aim at different parts of the tree and make it look like the lights are sweeping across the trees when in fact each light is stationary.

4. What songs are you running this year ?
I think I am done adding songs for this year.
1. LMFAO - Party Rock Anthem
2. Holidays Are Coming - Always Coca-Cola
3. TSO - Christmas Eve Sarejevo
4. Techno Jingle Bells
5. TSO - Christmas Canon
6. Beach Boys - Little St Nick

5. How is this different from the "Light Shows In A Box" or "Mr Christmas" things that can be purchased at various stores ?
Those are inexpensive items that people can buy if they want a basic flashing and music playing, but there are only a few channels on each one and they cant be expanded and networked together like the controllers I use. They also dont have all the capabilities that the smart controllers do such as smooth ramping up and down of the light intensities, twinkling, shimmering, etc.

6. How long does it take to put everything together ?
It takes a lot of time throughout the year to plan the display and sequence the songs to the music. The more channels you have, the longer it will take. No matter how much planning you do there will always be some road blocks / delays, etc. Thats why it is important to start as early as possible in the year planning the display and then settling on the songs, and then beginning to program the sequences for each song. This year I tried to get a head start on a lot of things but with all the new stuff I had this year (software, controllers, lights, etc) I ran into some issues that I had to work through, then for a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving when I normally finalize everything outside and run the wires and install the controllers, etc. we were having tons and tons of rain that set me behind on the outside stuff which caused delays on other things as well.

7. How do I do something similar ?
If you have any other questions about the display feel free to email info@NotEnoughLights.com

If you would like to start your own animated lighting and musical show for your home, business, church, or special event contact us at info@MusicLightShows.com or PO Box 313, Greenwood, Indiana 46142, we would be happy to create a magical display for any occassion, big or small.