Epic Christmas Light Show featuring Retro Gaming

[Dabil]

For my 2017 Christmas I have decided to go all out on a Christmas Light Show. Of course, with my retro gaming habit I want to incorporate something from retro gaming into it as well. So this is a thread I am making as a blog about my experience with this effort. Also I wanted to see if there is anyone else here who may have something to contribute. The sequence I make will be freely available to anyone on this site who may want to build their own show as well.

I hold the opinion that old school retro games like Pac-man, Joust, Donkey Kong, etc will work great with this form of expression. My Mega-Tree which is a 16 string x 50 pixel 24 bit (8 bits each per RGB) matrix of lights would be able to do old 8 bit game animation great. The problem is that I don't have any Christmas themed music that I can use that is centered around video gaming. In the end I don't have to use Christmas themed video game music, but it would be nice.

I have looked at the Wreck-it Ralph music, and found some stuff I may be able to use, such as this: Ending Credits Or This from Pixels Movie. I could take one of these songs and add in the various video game sounds effects using Audacity.   But I really would like something more Christmasish. So I may sequence some 8-bit NES Christmas music and add sound effects to that for each cameo.  In any event the Hyperspin and retro gaming communities need to be represented lol.

My show set-up is as follows (all lights are 24 bit WS2811 12mm RGB Bullet Node Smart Pixels):

• The center is my 16 string by 50 pixel 180 degree Mega-tree
• 4 leaping arches  with 11 spoke fan - 50 pixels for the arch, and each spoke is 15 pixels
• (2) 24 strings x 24 pixel Matrices (one over each window)
• and then the roof line and each dormer both have a top and bottom single string run with a 3,4,5,4 icicle run below that. (the roof lines are 220 pixels per string, 40 & 30 for the dormers

This total set-up features about 4000 RGB smart lights. Photo below to give you a visualization. I have about 5 songs sequenced now. As soon as I get a chance I will upload some videos to youtube or my vimeo account so you can see my current sequences and what is possible using this technology. And of course if anyone else wants to get involved with their own show, I will show you exactly what you need to create your own.

 

 

To be continued...

[Dabil]

Here is a link to a sample sequence that I did using the above display:  Star Wars Funk

I used an open source program called XLights to do the sequence and lights set-up. The sequence in the video is an adaptation of a  sequence that was originally done by a user named logandc99 who posted the sequence on the nutcracker123.com forum: Nutcracker forum

I simply imported the mega-tree sequence and a few other channels into my project and then sequenced the missing parts for my remaining elements, and changed what I didn't like in the original to get my personal version. This is a work in progress that I plan on continuing as the year goes on. All the animations are done using animated gifs.

[griffin518]

Don't forget a FM transmitter!