Our Blog

Status update & Facebook page

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 08:11:24 -0800

The lights are going up now and the show starts Thanksgiving night at 5pm! From this point on we’re be shifting the focus of these updates over to the Facebook page vs. this blog. You can best follow the progress by clicking on “Like” on our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/bretonlights.

Thanks and Merry Christmas!

-Mike

Getting ready

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 09:53:33 -0700

Yes I know it’s only October but spent a lot of time this weekend starting to get ready. Some very smart friends of mine are helping me look at the possibility of adding a web based “jukebox” like capability to the show this year. That resulted in me setting up the computer that runs the show so we could start to look at how the software might work. Since I had the PC up, I got it all current with the latest versions of everything. Then I thought I might as well update the firmware on the light control boxes so I mounted those and powered them up. Lastly, I took the above pictured base of the new mega tree stand and put it all back together so I could glue it and paint it. Whew, I’m tired already. Lights start to go up in only 4 weeks!

-Mike

We’re Back!

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 11:20:05 -0700

It’s 2011 and we’re back! We know a lot of you missed the the lights last year, but we really needed the break. Thanks for being so understanding. We are already planing for this year’s light show and have some
exciting plans in mind. It might be too hard or too costly to pull them all off, but we’ll see how things go throughout the year. Some of the highlights include; breaking 30,000 lights, converting some lights to LEDs, doubling the size of the mega tree, and bringing back the fountains!

Check out the 2011 page for more details.

More details coming soon as LED ordering get’s underway and fountain design and testing begins.

-Mike

Sorry, no show this year (2010)

Wed, 6 Oct 2010 08:34:17 -0700

I’m very sorry to announce that there will be no light show
this year. After four years of making it bigger and better
each year, we’ve decided to take a break. We’ll be back
in 2011 and hopefully with new energy to add more lights, more snow, and other fun additions and effects.

-Mike

Power Calculations

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 08:12:10 -0800

One of the questions / comments I get most often is about my power bill. The assumption is that is must be very high with all the lights. In fact, due to the sequencings to music, it’s not bad at all as not all of the lights are ever all on for long periods of time. I have several whole house energy monitoring systems and using them I’m able to get a very accurate understanding of how much energy the show uses. Here’s the results.

If everything is on, the power usage is 12.28 kHW. I’m on a time of use rate and my rate is changes during the show period so after the math, it WOULD cost $32.97 a week if all the lights were always on.

BUT, the lights are not always on as they are sequences to the music. The average power usage during the nightly 5 hour show is 2.72 kWh. Again, after the rate math, it in fact only costs about $8.15 a week to run the show. That’s 75% less than if the lights were on all the time.

Merry Christmas!

-Mike

New songs!

Tue, 8 Dec 2009 14:16:58 -0800

Added a few new songs to the mix.

Christmas Vacation by Mavis Staples
Music Box Dancer - Techno by DJ Schewede
Amazing Grace (Party Version) by Clubbing Christmas
Winter Wonderland by Alexia Philips

Fireflies by Owl City - By request only

I’m especially excited about Firefiles as it was the first song we’ve even sequenced 100% ourselves. Fun!

We also dropped God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman by Jars of Clay as it was just too slow.

Merry Christmas!

-Mike

Holidash

Tue, 8 Dec 2009 14:11:14 -0800

AOL’s Holiday Website, Holidash.com, included a short blurb about our display in a recent posting.

Click here to see. Were #14.

Merry Christmas!

-Mike

Travels, Storms, & Startups!

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 09:56:43 -0800

It’s been a bit since my last update and a lot has happened. We drove down to LA and spent a few days at Disneyland. It was great to see all the Holiday decorations and although a bit busy, the crowds were not too bad.

We then drove over to AZ for Thanksgiving with parents. While in AZ, we visited the McNamara Family’s display and got to see it on startup night! (See above photo as well as Brian’s web site)
It was fun to talk to another light show enthusiast for a hour or so.

After a long drive home, 12.5 hours, we found that a wind storm in Folsom had done some damage to our light show but it was not too bad and we had everything fixed up by noon yesterday.

I planned to start the show up tomorrow, 11/30, but when I went out last night to make sure everything was working after the storm, I found that everything looked great so I just left the show on. Come on by and check it out!

Oh yeah, I also heard from a reporter from AOL who wants to include our home in an article they are doing for their online holiday magazine. I post a link when it goes live.

P.S. I’ll try to get some videos done this week.

Merry Christmas!

Mike

We’re done!

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:15:54 -0800

Let’s see. It took a full weekend of behind the scenes prep work, two full Saturday’s, two half Sunday’s, and another half day worth of hours here and there but we are all done and ready to go. Well, mostly. I still have a hour or so of small sequence adjustment work to go but I should finish that up tonight. Not too many changes this year, but we did add over 4000 new lights for a new grand total of 26,012! There’s some new night shots in the 2009 photo gallery.

Hope to see you out there sometime after the show starts on Monday November 30th!

-Mike

We’re Half Way There!

Mon, 9 Nov 2009 08:39:31 -0800

Well, with the first full weekend of putting lights up behind us, we are about 1/2 done with just over 12,500 lights up and tested. It feels like we are behind but the rest of the lights go up faster, and some things like the snow machine are done as well, so in fact we are right on track with our install timeline. Plus, we came up with a plan to add 3,200 more lights this year so we will break out goal of breaking 25,000 lights! Not bad when you look back to our first year in 2006 where we only had 5,664 lights.

-Mike