Way Kool ! - Wizards of Winter

I'd hate to be his neighbor...

Kurt

"John W"

Yah, I agree.

I did some research on this technology and there seems to be a fairly good-sized group of people using this controller. They share scripts, music etc onlne.

The scripts are played on a timed event basis so don't run continuously (unless you want them to).

One guy uses an FM transmitter instead of loud speakers so "spectators" tune into the music on their car radios so he's not blasting out sound.

For those of us who like Home Automation though, the whole idea is VERY cool! I'd like to have a basic 16 channel controller just to play with - in addition to Xmas lights it would be great for church & school plays, mood lighting etc.!

John W

"John W" addition to Xmas lights it would be great for church & school plays, mood

I've always wanted to have the super automated yard of lights. I understand that years ago, they used a stepped down motor and a shellaced coffee can with "on" signals scraped off. (I imagine a plastic sheet with holes punched would work as well.)

I wonder if DMX is the way to go for this though... certainly "standard" enough and has tons of channels.

Me, I just want a 48x48 matrix of lights to control. RGB 48x48 would really rock. ;) One of these days i'll break down and build it. Anyone know what kind of refresh rates those electronic billboards have?

This was near Cincinnati (Mason, OH). The police asked him to shut it down because of the traffic it generated.

"John W"

I think that people are confusing things or getting bad info from the internet.

It is the Mason OH person but he has not been asked to shut it down. He has volunteered to shut it down if it starts to annoy his neighbors. The audio is only transmitted on an FM frequency so that there is no extra noise. He also shuts it down at 10pm to end the cars coming through at night.

It does not use the lightorama equipment. They showed the computer and very homebrew interface on TV last night.

According to this report, it has been shut down and does use lightorama equiptment:

Well, when I screw up, I do a good job.

Apparently the information I saw on TV on the 7th didn't know about it being shut down on the 6th.

Wow. Snopes was really fast on getting that information. I had never thought to look for information on lighting displays there because I never thought of this as an urban legend.

I assume that Snopes knows what they are talking about and that they got the information from him about the Lightorama equipment, but the wiring and controller that they showed on TV were definitely not the unit that the link went to. Much more home brew with a small single board controller (not Lightorama, a different logo) and a lot of wires. However, Lightorama sells the triac cards separately and he might have been using one of them.