Christmas Lighting Ideas

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sarahb84

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Hello all!

I would like to generate few Christmas Lighting ideas for this year and I need your help! Of course I am planning to decorate the tree. But this year I want my husband to help me put lighting outside the house as well.

Running extension cords from the outlets or electrical wiring should not be an issue. What I am wondering is how can I make the lights flash! I already have some static lights for the trees. I am planning to buy for the outdoors.

Is there any device or gadget I can buy locally or order online that can make my static lights animating the way I want? I want to have total control over the blinking patterns or flash! :cool:

I am a complete newbie in electronics! So, please help me find a solution.

- Sarah
 
nealtw said:
Have a look at this site'
http://www.computerchristmaslights.com/getting_started.htm
Click to expand...

Hi nealtw! Thanks a lot for the site! It provides exactly what I need. It has a system controlled by computers?! Wow!! Thats like Sci-Fi Christmas.

But serial ports? parallel ports? I don't think I have those ports on my laptop. I was surfing the yearly pages and they did really great lighting in 2009. However, it seems too complicated. I will never be able to put together what they are doing. I am trying to find something "user-friendly" if you get my drift.

What I liked most about the site is the Christmas counter and I'm sad now that we have only 83 days to go... and I don't know how to setup some great lighting. :confused:

I will set aside few hours tomorrow to google things up. H'mm!
 
Good to know about your enthusiasm about the Christmas Lighting! Did you find anything yet? I was looking for similar products few weeks ago and found a few on Amazon. You can try using a programmable power strip from PwrUSB - http://www.pwrusb.com

You can hook up the power extension box to a computer via USB and program it anyway you like. Its okay, they provide a bundle easy to use software. So you don't actually need to know any computer language to flash the Christmas lights the way you want ;)

If I am recalling right, you can program PwrUSB to flash the lights every 2 seconds on different power outlets. I was able to create some extraordinary animated lighting effects by putting diverging lighting on different power outlets (there are 4). Give it a try, you will love it!
 
Thanks asullivan! I googled pwrusb and you are right it is an interesting and inexpensive solution for Christmas lighting compared to some of the other computer controlled lighting devices available on the market. Based on Amazon reviews it seems that it does what it suppose to. I will definitely give it a try.

Once again thank everyone for the help!
 
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