Another year, another show! Who’s excited?!
Props
This year doesn’t bring many changes to the props thanks largely to lack of time and an abundance of sickness going through the family since the start of the school year. Luckily we were able to add the tree lights along the road which I had on my list for the year. This is a staple in the neighborhood and it was sad to not be able to include it last year. The lights are standard LED lights but are hooked into a DMX controller allowing us to turn them off and on at will through the XLights sequences. We split them up into two outputs so we can control the white and green lights separately. This should bring some added excitement to the show as well as let us have our neighborhood tree lights again when the show isn’t running!
The other addition to the show was actually added late last season but was never really added to the sequences in any real capacity, and that’s 3 spotlights that shine at the house. These spotlights are full RGB like the other lights on the house and provide a great wash of color that can be timed with the music.
The last improvement to the props is a much stronger frame for the matrix. The strong winds last year caused some serious issues with the matrix since it’s essentially a giant sail! This new frame is built with black iron piping and is a much stronger material, not to mention it has more supports going through the middle of the matrix. These improvements will hopefully keep the matrix up through much stronger winds and not cause as much headache as the old aluminum conduit frame did last year.
Music!
The playlist isn’t changing much this year for the same reasons we didn’t make a ton of changes to the props. However, we do hope to improve on the sequences to take advantage of the new props as well as to include some things that we learned from doing the sequences last year. Hopefully we will find the time to add a new song or two, but if not it should still be fun to watch.
We still have the FM transmitter sending out the music on 88.7 FM, just like last year, but we also decided to improve the outdoor speaker situation for those of you who are walking through the neighborhood. Gone is the Boss Bluetooth speaker that required us to manually turn it on each day and worry about snow damaging the device. Now we have an outdoor rated speaker and an amplifier providing a much better listening experience while on foot. For those of you who came through around Halloween, you will know what to expect.
Show Schedule
The show has been extended by 1 hour this year and will start daily at 5:00 PM and run until 10:00 PM.