2011 SCREENSHOT of Alek's Controllable Christmas Lights for Celiac Disease

Use the three christmas webcams for a live view of over 20,000 christmas lights and also CONTROL them - heck, you can even inflate (or deflate) the giant Elmo, Frosty, Santa, and Homer Simpson - D'OH! All three webcams are online from Thanksgiving to Jan 1st between 1700 to 2200 MST (GMT-7) which is when you can turn stuff on & off to entertain the neighbors. Plus send "Instant Messages via Webcam" for all to see. HO HO HO! ;-)

If you enjoy the christmas lights, please consider donating a few dollars (tax deductible) to the over $70,000 raised for the Univ of Maryland Center for Celiac Research.

$1,000: Bronner's Christmas Wonderland - Christmas Cards - Christmas Decorations - Christmas Lights Etc - Halloween Express - Mr. Costumes - Personalized Christmas Cards - Photo Christmas Cards - Printing Services - Unique Christmas Gifts
$100: Anonymous - Todd "Extra Crispy" Bradley - Bluto ($500)
$1: Dirk and Kyle Komarnitsky ... and their Big Green Buddy and other $1-$99 contributions Click here for info on how to make a charitable donation for Celiac Disease

Santa-Homer Cursor: Remove - Tiny - Small - Normal - Big - HULK'in

Free Christmas Music

Christmas Lights Webcam will be online an hour early and until midnight - watching for Santa on a busy Christmas Eve ... HO-HO-HO! ;-)

☺Welcome back Windoze Firefox Surfer 074.055.007.059 from Republic of Boulder Colorado United States United States flag

You have visited 171 times, last at 2011_12_24_17:25:46.231 - is your name Griswold? ;-) ☺

Halloween & Christmas FAQ should answer most questions - plus some misc. media reports
The lights are wind powered and carbon neutral - Al Gore would be proud!
The Christmas decorations throughout the years and even more cool Christmas pictures
Other folks who have done nutty stuff like this and watch entertaining time-lapse footage of Christmas lights videos
More about the Zany Guy behind all this and also see his Halloween Decorations! ;-)
What is new for Christmas 2011 and for Halloween 2011

HULK says Puny Humans can add some cheerful christmasy comments now in the Christmas Blog

While I appreciate the folks who have asked if they can donate/PayPal to cover the costs of the lights and (wind powered and carbon offsett'ed!) electricity, I've never asked for donations and don't plan to change that. While it is a bit of work to put up all the Christmas stuff, I do it anyway for the neighborhood kids and the web site is just my way of saying "Merry Christmas" to folks around the world. If you feel compelled to make some sort of donation, my kids have celiac disease so make a donation toward medical research at the University of Maryland - tell 'em Komar.Org sent 'ya! ;-)

Circuit Layout & Electrical Analysis for Christmas 2011
Circuit   X10-Zone   Amps   Lights   Description
Panel-1       1       8.6    3,000   Burrito Reindeer, Christmas Tree Farm, Juniper Nets, Column Lights
Balcony       1       3.6    1,000   Swag, Bells, Stars, Wreaths, Tree, Plane, HULK SpotLight!
Panel-2       2       4.0    1,600   10 foot and lower LED lighted trees, lower Juniper
Balcony       2       3.0      500   Stars and Inflatable Tree/Grinch/Homer/Santa
Panel-3       3       6.2    2,200   Sidewalk Candy Canes & Figurines, West Tree
Garage-E      3       4.7    1,600   Garage Icicles, Front Door Swag
Garage-E      4       3.5      800   Christmas Trees
Panel-4       4       5.0    2,200   Upper Roof Icicles, Purple Orbs, Bubble Lights
Panel-4       4       5.5    1,100   SnowGlobe, LED Tree, Penguin, Bells, Santa Heli
Panel-2       5       2.4      600   Giant Inflatable Frosty, Candy Canes
Garage-W      5       0.6      100   Inflatable Elmo - Tickle me!
Window-U      5       0.8      500   Upper Window Decorations
Panel-2       6       3.0      700   HO, Inflatable Frosty Family
Garage-W      6       0.3      100   SpongeBob SquarePants, LED Skeleton
Panel-2       7       3.0    1,000   HO, Tin Man, Inflatable Pumpkin - Jack is Back!!!
Garage-W      7       0.6       50   Inflatable Santa - twelve feet high!
Window-L      7       1.2      500   Lower Window Decorations
Panel-2       8       3.5      800   Santa Balloon, Doggie, LED Reindeer Family
Panel-3       8       1.0      400   Chimney Stars & Swag
Garage-W      8       0.8       50   Inflatable Homer Simpson - D'OH!
Panel-3       *       4.9    1,800   ON/OFF (1/2), Santa Skier (5), Roof Outline (6), Santa Plane (7)
Office        *       1.8      400   Various stuff in Santa's Workshop!  ;-)
                                        1:Rainier Beer    2:Santa's Workshop    3:Candles/Light-UP!  4:Bells/Hulk Lamp
                                        5:Merry Banner    6:Groovy Lava Lamps   7:Stepping Santa     8:Present/LED Cube
TOTALS       22      68.0   21,000   TOTALS

A question often asked is how much does it cost to light the holiday display - the electrical meter does spin a bit faster. That's easy to calculate - with all 21,000 lights ON, the current draw is 68 amps. Multiply by 120 Volts and divide by 1,000 to get 8.1 KiloWatts. The electricity cost in Colorado is about 10 cents per KiloWatt-Hour, so to run the display continuously for an hour, it costs 81 cents/hour - not much! But remember that Internet Surfers are turning the lights on & off ... so divide that by two and then multiply by the 5 hours/day it's active, and the electricty costs 202 cents per day. Multiply that by 31 days and for $62, a whole month of holiday fun is provided to people around the world ... plus some awareness and thousands of dollars in donations for Celiac Disease Research!

2011 Christmas Lights Webcam Updates

For reference, here is the christmas 2010 webcam updates.

2011_10_13: The warmup for Christmas is the halloween webcam which was turned on today. The 2011 halloween decorations have 8,500 lights plus giant inflatable Frankenstein, Grim Reapers, Pumpkins, Witches, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Homer Simpson - D'OH! ;-)

2011_10_24: With two months to go before December 25th, the Christmas Blog has been turned on for those fans that want to start commenting.

2011_10_31: Another crazy-fun Halloween night! It was super warm so almost 200 trick-or-treaters came by. They almost cleaned me out of candy (I'm very generous, especially early on) and I also passed out shots of Wine, Port, Irish Cream, and Peppermint Mocha Kahlua for the "big" kids. Check out all the action in the time-lapse halloween movies while listening to some halloween music and read the funny commentary in the halloween blog.

2011_11_01: One behind-the-scenes new item is an XTB-IIR/III X10 signal booster from JV Digital Engineering. X10 is the powerline protocol that actually sends the signals in my house wiring to control stuff when Internet users click ON/OFF. Because of the large number of circuits, it's always a challenge to the find the "right" combination of TM751 transceivers (on the "right" circuits!) to hopefully maximize reliability ... and sometimes things would just flake out with circuits/zones "stuck" - who turned on the Microwave Oven?!? ;-) The XTB-IIR/III addressed those issues with a single box in the Haunted Office and was rock solid for Halloween. If you are an X10 user, I strongly encourage you check out JV Digital Engineering - Jeff Volp makes some great products (the craftsmanship is exquisite) and is a genuine pleasure to work with.

2011_11_20: We actually have a new webcam this year for the holiday display as one of the 5+ year old D-Link DCS-6620G (that broke) has been replaced with a Vivotek FD8362. A big thumbs up to Jon Wade (who lives in Steamboat Springs) for donating the webcam to support the charity effort. Webcam #1 and #3 are still D-Link's (that are falling apart) ... so lets hope they work through the holiday season ... and would be awesome if there was a "Santa" out there who wanted to upgrade those.

2011_11_24: Happy Thanksgiving to all. Slowly (but surely) all the lights and decorations are being put out ... should have the webcams and X10 controls go online after the weekend.

2011_11_28: While there's still plenty of "stuff" left to put out, I've turned on the webcams and X10 controls so Internet surfers can take control of my house! ;-)

2011_12_05: Over a foot of snow has fallen in the last several days ... and temperatures tonight may drop below 0°F ... so I was glad there was mostly only indoor stuff to finish the Christmas setup. The final tally is again 21,000 lights ... which put on a nice show for the Horse Drawn Sleigh that came by last night.

2011_12_13: For almost a decade, the Controllable Christmas Lights for Celiac Disease has provided a lot of joy for Internet surfers around the world. It's always been totally free (and totally fun) but there's also an option to voluntarily donate to the University of Maryland Center for Celiac Disease - my kids have this, so it's a personal cause. A number of companies and individuals have donated through the years ... and the grand total just passed $70,000 (WOOT!) thanks to long-time donator Chris Miller from Christmas Lights Etc. Thank you Chris and everyone else who has contributed ... and if you'd like to chip in for charity, here's info on how you can donate to Celiac Disease.

2011_12_22: The 6" of snow from last week was melting away ... but another foot+ showed up this morning ... so will definitely be a White Christmas!