Family Christmas Display

HOME WHY WE DO IT HOW IT ALL BEGAN 2016 TO PRESENT HOW IT'S DONE CREDITS


Ron Brinkman 		I retired from a career in engineering and project management in 2014. Desiring to stay current in my technical field, I became aware of a popular microcontroller called Arduino that has incredible capabilities, is well documented, easy to use, and very low cost.
In 2016 I used the Arduino to implement a basic Christmas display in our front yard consisting of three 10 foot high "megatrees" that repeated simple light patterns - circling, on/off, flashing. The Arduino microcontroller program drove Solid State Relays (SSRs) that activated 24 strings of incadescent lights - 2400 lights in all.

Then, at Christmas 2016 our son and family gave me a Hallmark Peanuts® Gang Light Show set as a gift. I was immediately intrigued by the capabilities of the Light Show set.



Each of five figures is autonomous; any of the five may be activated - it in turn wirelessly triggers the other four to join in a synchronized light display while playing a song.

I quickly realized my next goal would be to deploy the Peanuts® Gang Light Show concept as a Christmas display in our front yard. I embarked on a multi-year task of incremental implementation.