Welcome to Christmas 2021! We are revamping our show from 2017, altering a bit of the music and improving the lighting to take advantage of the awesome pixel screen we added last year. The biggest new addition is a separate interactive display where people can interact with our lights using several different controllers. We plan to build upon this concept in years to come by adding more lights and ways to interact with them and would love any and all feedback. See below for more details on each new thing in this year’s display.
2021 Show Video
New Stuff for 2021
Interactive Light Display
Inspired by another interactive display in Aurora, Colorado, we decided to try our hand at building our own version. We currently have a three-dimensional cube of LED pixels (10 long x 10 high x 5 deep) and various input devices that can be used to interact with the lights. You can play a guitar hero guitar controller, a guitar hero drum kit, or a racing controller with steering wheel and pedals to make the lights do all kinds of fun things. Each controller offers its own unique ways of interacting and the racing controller even offers a Pac-Man like game you can play.
This is year 1 in what we hope will be an ever-growing interactive adventure. We very much would love any feedback you have after interacting with them to let us know what works and what could be made better, as well as any ideas for other cool ways to interact. We are already planning to double the number of lights next year as well as add a monitor to help with providing instructions for each controller and making it easier for the player to understand their options.
For lots more details on the interactive display, see Interactive Light Display.
More Power Injection
We have unfortunately discovered this year that the LED pixels on the house appear to be consuming more power than they have in the past. This has necessitated adding a few more power injection points on a few universes to ensure that our whites stay white and don’t look yellow/brown. We really don’t understand what is going on but sincerely hope it doesn’t continue to get worse as the years go on or else the roof might collapse from all the copper wire on it! (just kidding…mostly)
For more details on power injection, why it is important, and our overall saga as we learned about it, see All About Power Injection.
Music
This year’s show is just under 9 minutes long and runs every 10 minutes. When the show is not running, we have some interlude lighting, a brief voice over from Philip, some background music, and a countdown timer running on the pixel screen.
For the show, we play portions of the following songs/quotes:
- Beethoven | Trans-Siberian Orchestra
- Angels We Have Heard on High | Relient K
- Handel’s Messiah | Relient K
- God Rest | Gary Hoey
- Quote from Home Alone
- Carol of the Bells (Dubstep) | Capital Kings
- Light Me Up | Owl City / Toby Mac
- Quote from Charlie Brown Christmas
- Wizards in Winter | Trans-Siberian Orchestra
- (Interlude) The First Noel | Gary Hoey
Broomfield Lights 