November 20th, 1022

This year will be our 6^th year with the display, hard to believe it has been that long since we have been animating the display. I remember when we started with one controller of sixteen channels and a few songs, and the only thing available in lighting was incandescent lights, now we have LED lights, Cosmic Color Ribbons, LED RGB Flood and Spot lights to name a few, the technology has made grown and evolved tremendously over the last few years to the point that it’s hard to keep up, and knowing where to go next and can we afford to make a change.

We have made several changes over the years, we upgraded all our flood lights to LED, more and more LED strings are replacing the old incandescent lights, we have upgraded our FM transmitter , and started to integrate DMX and low voltage power.

This year we are planning to video tape all our sequences this year, and get them posted on the web site soon, maybe we can capture some footage just before Christmas when it gets crazy with all of the visitors that come to see the display.

The Quartz Hill Christmas web site has become a popular destination worldwide, 67 percent of our visitors are from North America, while the others are from all Asia, Europe, and Australia. Currently we are getting 1000 hits per week, with expectations of that doubling in the next week.

Our display is just about up, we are still hoping to make the day after Thanksgiving as out light up date, but we may fall short pending the weather conditions since we lost Sunday to rain already.

Left to do:

1)      String the lower bushes
2)      Place the strobe lights
3)      Test and hang the light balls
4)      Place all flood lights
5)      Install garland around entry
6)      Hang the wreath
7)      Install the candy canes
8)      Setup the ginger bread house
9)      Run all main feeds and laterals to the controllers.
10)   Test the controllers

New considerations:

1)      5 – 3 channel dancing Christmas Trees
2)      Additional strobes
3)      New Wreath
4)      4-Channel yard outline

Those about covers things for this week, keep checking back here and the web site for new and info.

Quartz Hill Christmas

 

November 2011

November 11, 2011

Welcome back! Our holiday season has started on Manzanita Drive! We began setting up the display two weeks ago, actually we started prepping the yard two weeks ago, have to edge the grass, trim the bushes, and rake the leaves before we began.

As of today most of the house elements are up, the controllers have been installed, we have yet to set the yard display up……..I’m not sure why, but I sort of feel funny this year putting Rudolph in the yard before Thanksgiving. Our goal is to light it up on Black Friday.

Not many noticeable changes will be seen this year as it has been very tight on funds, and the free time has been used in more needing places. We are trying to finish a few new songs, and toying on the idea of five – 7’ Christmas trees that I bought last year, we have the channels available, it’s just a matter of available time to get them programmed and installed.

After a system hard drive crash of our display server, we finally did get it rebuilt, and all the data was recovered 100% from the faulty hard drive…..good thing I’m in the business as I have the tools to recover the data….it’s not like I didn’t have backups, I always make annual show media backups, I just can’t remember the safe place I put them in, age sucks!

We upgraded our sequencing software this year to 3.x, some great changes as it will make sequencing that much more productive.

Well, that’s all for now, check back soon.