Christmas Lights

[kitfoxdrvr]

Our local government is planning its light displays for the coming Christmas season and we had a short meeting this past weekend to brainstorm. I made the mistake of reminding everyone of a commercial that ran during last Nov-Dec. I think it was a Miller Lite commercial. It had a yard with lights that were synchronized to music, and "danced" around the yard to the music. Anyone remember that commercial? Well, everyone in the meeting did and loved the potential for our application. Guess who got charged with a feasibility study?!!! Our thoughts:

A low wattage AM transmitter playing classic or early rock Christmas songs with a controller linked to the the "beat" turning strings or groups of lights on and off. At the entrance to the display we have a sign indicating the frequency the car's driver needs to tune their radio to and then drive through the display. The music on the radio would then be linked to the movements of lights in the display.

Our group has some limited technical expertise in electronics, but would prefer to use off-the-shelf components for this project. Any one have any ideas on this?

Thanks,
Steve

[Majortomski]

IIRC, a google will get you the software and switches that drives the lights

[Malc C]

Steve,

The first thing that comes to mind is that you will need to look into the legality of broadcasting on whatever frequency you use. Here in the UK you have to have permission to broadcast in the bandwidth assigned to raido transmissions, otherwise you are classed as a pirate radio station !

I don't know the commercial you mentioned, but do remember the video that was floating around the net where some guy used stage lighting to light up his house at christmas. That sort of thing uses commecial controllers that use (I think) a system called DMX Here is a typical controller

http://www.djstore.co.uk/images/products/large/pro/probote20.jpg

Here are a few links which may help

http://sound.westhost.com/project62.htm
A schematic and details on a stage lighting controller for music performances

http://www.djstore.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.pl?item=probote20
The company behind the unit shown above and the one below

http://www.djstore.co.uk/images/products/200/beh/behlc2412.jpg

The alternative is to get into PIC programming and build yourself a simple unit to control the lights the way you want to... but given that you want off the shelf items then this isn't really a practical suggestion.

Try seraching the net for "Disco lighting controllers" or "theater lighting" or "DMX Lighting" and see what you get

[jeffs555]

Just Google for "color organ" there are hundreds of cheap kits or assembled boards. Many low powered AM and FM transmitters are legal in the US, but the range is not all that great. The same places that sell the color organ kits usually have FM stereo transmitters also.


http://store.qkits.com/category.cfm/LIGHT
http://www.electronickits.com/kit/plans/lighting/lighting.htm
http://www.hobbytron.com/ColorOrgans.html

[kitfoxdrvr]

I am going to get one of these to play with:

http://www.hobbytron.com/UK186.html

This will tell us a little more about the feasibility of this project. I do know that 300W per channel is not going to come close, but it will be interesting to see how it performs. I guess we could hook the output up to relays (? input would be appreciated!) to provide higher end output, but this will give us some ideas. Had not thought about tying the channels to sound frequency; could be interesting-thanks jeffs555!

malc c:

One of the guys in the planning group said he thought that am or fm transmitters were available at low watt outputs that would have the range (~1/2 mile/ 1 km) to work in this application. Many are used over here for traffic and local interest advisories, but he is researching that end further. We expect this part of the project to eat more than its fair share of the budget. Because of some of the local ordinances and neighbors (!), loudspeakers are not an option for us, so I hope we can work out a transmitter. There are some Christmas music-only stations around here that may provide us with some free publicity if we use them, but there is a huge bucket o' worms associated with that decision as a government agency.

We did consider programmable controllers, but timing them to music with our rudimentary skills would have been tough; I really like this frequency linking, although music selection may become critical. I hope the effect is similar to what I saw on this commercial. It could have been done very manually and linked to that specific piece of music, so it would be hard for us to duplicate. My fear is it will be difficult to keep the link to the "beat", but still have balanced time of illumination across the light patterns. We'll see.

[Miami Mike]

The type of transmitter you're looking for is called a carrier current transmitter (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGGL,GGGL:2006-13,GGGL:en&q=carrier+current+transmitter).

Making lights flash with the music is cheap and easy. All you need is a solid state relay (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGGL,GGGL:2006-13,GGGL:en&q=solid+state+relay) and a simple transistor circuit to drive the input with rectified audio from a cheap radio. I've done it and it works.

[kitfoxdrvr]

Great info, Mike. I am going to give this color organ a try to drive the relays if it gives the effect I am after on a small scale. I will let you guys know when I get it in.

Thanks all!

[Soclarke]

Check out Light-O-Rama. It was their controllers that were used in making this video Wizards of Winter (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7247304136151735536)

http://www.lightorama.com/ (http://)

[Malc C]

Thats the video !

[xtal]

Good video

[kitfoxdrvr]

Yep, that's the effect I am after. I am taking my computer to the next meeting! Thanks for finding this video and the way to make it happen, Soclark!

Steve