The Final Show | Holiday 2007

About Me

I am an 18 year old musician and web designer originally from Lafayette, LA. "The Lights 2006" and "The Final Show 2007" were perhaps my favorite projects of these last two years. Being a musician, I naturally think about the different instrument voices creating sound while listening to just about any orchestral selection so this project just seemed "right down my alley." Currently I am finishing up my Senior year in High School, after taking a 2 year "vacation" in North Carolina, and am actively pursuing a future in Violin performance and either Stage Design/Lighting or Business Administration.

"The Lights 2006"
Photo by L. Wallace, StarNews.com

About the lights
I started computerizing lights in July 2006 after seeing the amazing christmas display put on by Carson Williams on YouTube. Before experimenting with Vixen and the computer's parallel port, I have been actively using what I thought was the only way possible to program such a display - DMX. DMX would be extremely expensive to control even 24 channels with the 4ch dimmer packs costing anywhere from 100 - 400 USD. Another problem with DMX in this particular application, besides cost, is the lack of available programs to coordinate such a large amount of channels to a single timeline parallel to the song playing. With Vixen controlling up to 12 channels per parallel port on my pc, I was able to max out my pci slots with printer port cards and control 48 channels with no additional decoders/processors/etc.

Without any additional hardware, the parallel port on your computer is already capable of outputting 8 channels of 3-5vDC which is required by the Solid-State Relays (SSRs) switching the individual 110vAC channels of light. To gain an additional 4 channels per port, one only has to add a few 470ohm resistors from a stripped molex connecter to the 4 data pins in the port. The added voltage allows the data pins to act as control pins when the signal is sent via Vixen therefore creating a 12CH interface per parallel port.

This year's display consists of nearly 30,000 total lights spread across 48 channels of computer-controlled relays. In total there is about 5.5 miles of extension chords and over 16,000 ft of DC wire running between the relay packs and the control computer. The newest addition for this year is a 5CH fence acting as a 1 band graphic EQ spectrum, visualizing the music for songs including - "First Snow", "Angels We Have Heard on High", and "Appalachian Snowfall."

The mega-tree is similar in design to last year's featuring 8 channels of 3,200 lights for the base and a 1CH, 100 light star on top.

Directions

From I-44: If you're coming from the I-44 side of 97, you will cross 2 bridges and look out for a pond on the left as the road curves to the right. The next intersection will be 1280 and you should take a left. You should see the lights from the road.