There are three key things that make up a christmas light show.
Computer program to control christmas lights.
With a pc and some hardware anyone can have a professional looking lighting display synchronized to music.
Create something amazing where all your lights and special effects are perfectly synchronized to the music and video.
If you re like me you re not an engineer and the thought of delving into yet another computer program with vague instructions might make you feel sick.
The raspberry pi is a small linux based computer that you can use to run your christmas lights display with a program called falcon player or fpp for short.
You ll be able to control the lights with a simple python program which is easily modifiable for different patterns or triggers.
Xlights is the popular sequencing program for christmas lights in the diy community.
The lights the control circuitry and the sequencing.
The lights are arranged together to form different props like leaping arches.
It s a really good program that can do some really complex things.
Like vixen it is open source.
Light o rama provides the hardware and software to make the magic that dazzles the crowds.
You could also setup your pi for remote control and be able to control your christmas lights with an ipad or mobile phone.
Xlights has a very passionate community behind it and it s easy to see why.
Our off the shelf controllers combined with award winning sequencing tools give you the power to synchronize lights and special effects.
High tech christmas 1 0 a program that i made myself to control the lights arduino sketchpad the arduino s default programming software make sure you have both of those programs above.
Vixen is geared primarily toward the diyer.
If not download them extract the contents and run them now.
Either way you will need to have these two programs running on your computer to communicate with your arduino.
Vixen is software for do it yourself lighting automation displays.