Alek's Controllable Christmas Lights for Celiac Disease

Use the three christmas webcams to view live images of 17,000 christmas lights and also CONTROL them - heck, you can even inflate (or deflate) the giant Elmo, Frosty, Santa, and Homer Simpson - D'OH! The webcams are online 7x24 from Thanksgiving to January 1st and you can annoy the neighbors by turning stuff on & off from 1700 to 2200 MST (GMT-7). Plus you can send "Instant Messages via Webcam" for everyone to see. HO HO HO! ;-)

If you enjoyed the christmas lights, please consider donating a few dollars (tax deductible) to the over $25,000 raised for the Univ of Maryland Center for Celiac Research.

The Christmas Lights and X10 Controls are OVER for 2007 - come back after Thanksgiving/2008!

Circuit Layout for Christmas 2007
Circuit   X10-Zone   Amps   Lights   Description
Garage        1       5.1    1,600   Garage Icicles, Blue Ball
Panel-1       1       5.3    1,800   Junipers, Column, Swag, Bubble Lights, Skiing Polar Bear
Balcony       2       6.3    1,300   Balcony Novelties, Train, small Homer/Santa/Tree, US Flag
Panel-2       2       7.5    2,400   North Candy Canes, small Frosties/Tree, Tree Presents
Panel-3       3       7.4    1,800   Upper Roof Icicles, Chimney Star, Orange ON/OFF Outline
Panel-5       3       7.5    1,900   Tree & Fence wraps, 10' Mega Tree, West Candy Canes
Panel-4       4       9.9    3,200   Front Yard Christmas Tree
Window-U      4       0.9      250   Upper Window Decorations
Garage        5       1.6      400   Snow Icicles & Bells by Tree, Inflatable SpongeBob SquarePants & Elmo - Tickle me!
Window-L      5       1.2      300   Lower Window Decorations
Balcony       6       1.0      300   Santa Plane on Roof
Panel-1       6       3.2      400   Frosty and Snowman Family
Balcony       7       0.6      200   Roof ON
Garage        7       1.8      200   Inflatable Santa, Tin Man, Red/Green LED Tree
Balcony       8       1.2      400   Roof OFF
Garage        8       1.4      250   Burrito Reindeer and Inflatable Homer - D'OH!
Office        *       3.1      400   Various stuff in Santa's Workshop!  ;-)
                                        1:Blue Rope Light   2:Rainier Beer Sign   3:Three Candles    4:Hulk Lamp
                                        5:Christmas Tree    6:Groovy Lava Lamp    7:Stepping Santa   8:Red/Green Present
TOTALS       17      65.0   17,100   TOTALS

For reference, here is the christmas 2006 webcam updates.

2007_10_05: The warmup for Christmas is the halloween decorations webcam which was turned on today. Over 7,000 lights in the Halloween Decorations plus giant inflatable Frankenstein, Pumpkin, Witch, SpongeBob SquarePants and Homer Simpson - D'OH!!! ;-)

2007_10_21: Hulk's Long Lost Twin Brother comes home. But I only have one Santa Hat ... so should I put both up for Christmas?!? ;-)

2007_10_24: Turned the Christmas Blog on a bit early in case Halloween fans wanted to start commenting.

2007_10_31: Another crazy-fun Halloween night! Over 200 trick-or-treaters. The kids had some great costumes and said the halloween display ROCKED. The adults (who enjoyed the dixie cups of Port and Baileys that I poured for them) also had some appreciative words. Check out all the action in the time-lapse halloween movies and the funny commentary in the halloween blog. Come back for halloween 2008! ;-)

2007_11_07: Passed $20,000 raised for the University of Maryland Center for Celiac Disease - what a great way to start off the Christmas Season - please consider adding your direct donation too.

2007_11_16: Thanksgiving is early this year, so I've already started putting the Christmas Lights out on the lawn, especially because we have had some balmy 60°F weather - sure beats doing it at below freezing with the chilly wind.

2007_11_25: Still have a handful of things left to add to the Christmas Display such as SpongeBob SquarePants & Frosty and the Snowman Family ... plus some minor code tweaks and documention updates. But decided what the heck, lets turn on all three webcams plus X10 controls for testing purposes. Got immediately pounded by Internet surfers - people are anxious for Christmas! A few minor issues, but the software, web servers, and entire system was pretty solid and by far the best "first day" for the Christmas Lights. I'll take some pictures later this week.

2007_11_29: Have been doing minor touchups/additions the last couple of days, but everything is now deployed - final tally is just over 17,000 lights pulling 65 amps. My electricity costs ~10 cents/KWH ... and since I run it for 5 hours, that means it's about $3.50/day ... but reduce that by the percentage amount that Internet surfers turn the lights OFF! And given that I use Wind Power and am Carbon Neutral, even Al Gore would be proud of these Christmas Lights ... ;-)

2007_12_03: Have added some pictures on the main christmas lights page. Everything is working very smooth despite some 30-40 MPH gusts tonight that knocked over a Snowman, plus the Reindeer and Tin Man ... but I just staked 'em back in and they are back in action!

2007_12_13: Despite several storms that have dropped over a foot of snow, the Christmas Display is holding up well. Ditto for the web servers as traffic continues to climb from all over the world. And here is a great Christmas Story! A radio station in Galena, Alaska raised a $1,000 for Celiac Disease Research - awesome job by Station Manager Shadow Steel ... and isn't it cool how technology can bring some Christmas Cheer to the remote places of the Earth. Read the whole story (with pictures and video) about the KIYU Burrito Reindeer! ;-)

2007_12_17: The Denver Post writes "Merry Clickmas" with hilarious pictures - more info on the Christmas news page. And I've done a mid-month update on the Christmas Maps - web surfers from 122 countries have come by so far.

Listen to the hilarious radio advert from RedHotRadio in the UK

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