Christmas Tree Lights

[kmboren]

I have gone and cut my own tree 4 years now and love it. It is a fun time for the kids and it's cheaper then buying one and the memories we make are great. My wife likes to light the tree so she does that. I do lights outside. I like being festive. Nothing over the top but better then most. Part of the fun is walking around trying to find it in the snow. This year we made it a tradition to set up our sons tree also.

 

[Caleb]

Best thing I ever did was hire a company to come do my house lights. Couple hundred bucks and they put them up and take them down. My wife usually loves to decorate for christmas so my part is getting the tree in the stand, then she goes to town

 

[benjy]

I just can't get into Christmas since we moved to StG. Something about being in the mid 50's with no chance of snow.

However, my girls cry every time we pull up to our house because we don't have lights. Thinking about everlights... I think it'd be neat to make them green for St Patrick's day, purple and orange on Halloween, red white and blue on the 4th...

 

[Caleb]

I just can't get into Christmas since we moved to StG. Something about being in the mid 50's with no chance of snow.

However, my girls cry every time we pull up to our house because we don't have lights. Thinking about everlights... I think it'd be neat to make them green for St Patrick's day, purple and orange on Halloween, red white and blue on the 4th...

I'll eventually do those on my house (probably not this house, but likely our next house).

 

[moab_cj5]

A few of us decorated our camps at Expedition Utah's FYTO X last weekend. It was fun!


My submission, complete with Leg Lamp.


@Kevin B. 's decorating skills.


1st place.


2nd place.


3rd place.


@SAMI wasn't eligible to win, but had an awesome display (2nd video)

Honorable mentions:

 

[nnnnnate]

I've been thinking about outside christmas lights lately and rather than going to always up LEDs am considering these cut to length strands. I'm pretty sure its the same stuff the "pros" use so hopefully they last a while. A couple neighbors paid to have their lights put up last year but I just can't handle paying for someone to do that. I think that by making custom lengths it'll take out the biggest hassle I dealt with at our other house which was figuring out how to run the strands and then get power to them. I need to climb up on the roof now and measure the different runs to see how much cord and bulbs to buy.

C9 Cord
C9 LED Bulbs

 

[Jinx]

This is the second house that I have done specific light strings for specific areas of house/yard.

It makes it silly easy to put up and looks good. I don't even bother removed the plastic clips from the light strings for storage.

Start at point "a" with light string "1" and the shingle tabs magically change to gutter clips at the right place every year.

Going with the bigger LEDs gives it a cool retro look that I love over smaller more common lights. Although, I might end with the LED icicles in addtion to the regular this year depending on how I feel and the weather acts as we get closer...

 

[SAMI]

I've been thinking about outside christmas lights lately and rather than going to always up LEDs am considering these cut to length strands. I'm pretty sure its the same stuff the "pros" use so hopefully they last a while. A couple neighbors paid to have their lights put up last year but I just can't handle paying for someone to do that. I think that by making custom lengths it'll take out the biggest hassle I dealt with at our other house which was figuring out how to run the strands and then get power to them. I need to climb up on the roof now and measure the different runs to see how much cord and bulbs to buy.

C9 Cord
C9 LED Bulbs

I'm not big into exterior lights, never have been.... but this product is pretty sweet. I'd go with the 2600k warm LED's personally.

 

[Tebbsjeep]

I've been thinking about outside christmas lights lately and rather than going to always up LEDs am considering these cut to length strands. I'm pretty sure its the same stuff the "pros" use so hopefully they last a while. A couple neighbors paid to have their lights put up last year but I just can't handle paying for someone to do that. I think that by making custom lengths it'll take out the biggest hassle I dealt with at our other house which was figuring out how to run the strands and then get power to them. I need to climb up on the roof now and measure the different runs to see how much cord and bulbs to buy.

C9 Cord
C9 LED Bulbs

I installed Christmas lights for two years with a company, and that is exactly what we used. Only our strand was green.

 

[nnnnnate]

I installed Christmas lights for two years with a company, and that is exactly what we used. Only our strand was green.

If thats the case then I have a question for you...how did you transition from one area that you wanted lit to another area that had a gap between them? I was thinking that I'd get just plain 18ga cord (the same place sells it) and make custom extension cords for the gaps but would like to know how a pro does it.

As far as color my house trim and gutters are white so I figured it would blend in better than green. That site sells both.

I asked the wife if she wanted solid color lights or multi color and she says she wants multi so thats what I'll get. I have no preference.

 

[Jesser04]

I did mine the way you describe with custom extension cords. you can buy that same stuff at modern display off 4th south I’m not sure on pricing.

 

[Tebbsjeep]

I wouldn't call myself a pro. Just made some money in the winter.

We used snap on plugs like these to make our extensions. They also work great to make the shortest run you can to where your outlets are.

Robot Check

We usually got our supplies at modern display as well.

 

[rholbrook]

I did my house with custom length strands from A Electrical Wholesale place in Ogden. When I built my house I added 4 plug outlets spread out in the eaves all wired to a light switch Since then I have replaced the light switch with a smart switch and use an app to turn it on and off automatically. For my transitions I used thin dark brown extension cord wire and the soldiered and heat shrinked the connections. Pretty simple and it makes the transitions look great. I just have the bigger bulbs in white. My neighbor is Clark Griswald. He has special aluminum Chanel’s that match is house he installed under his eaves. You can’t tell they are there and leaves them up all year. He has then blinking to music on a radio station you can tune to. I think he said he has 14k lights. It’s all ran from his computer

Last fall I replaced the rope light on my U to led rope light.

 

[nnnnnate]

So I'm taking a little detour from my initial intention. I bought 16 strands of these lights off aliexpress yesterday. I plan to drill holes in either j-channel or pvc pipe for each individual light then somehow hang them from the eaves/gutters. These aren't plug and play lights though so you gotta program the lights and then have a controller push that programming to them. I found this video that shows a basic tutorial about the programming aspect that I followed along with and it was pretty easy.

I still need to buy the control board and probably a power supply for the lights. There are a bunch of options ranging from hundreds of dollars to about 50 bucks for a "hat" that plugs into the gpio pins on a raspberry pi. The pi option would satisfy my needs for this year but can only control about 2k lights. I could upgrade to the pocketbeagle version for a few more $ and quadruple the light ability. I'm intrigued by the pi because I have a couple sitting around that I could run with.

I don't know that I'll ever go nuts with the music and lights synced together but there are some pretty neat shows out there. I personally think this one makes really good use of a limited amount of elements. I called it "classy" when I sent the link to my wife, she just rolled her eyes.

I'm just trying to get the lights on the house and lit up this year with maybe some rotating or chase stuff. Nothing crazy since I'm starting really late.