Alek's Controllable Halloween Decorations for Celiac Disease

Use the three halloween webcams for a live view of a buncha halloween decorations & lights and also CONTROL them - heck, you can even inflate or deflate the giant Frankenstein & Homer Simpson - D'OH! All three webcams are online from 1800 to 2200 MDT (GMT-6) which is when you can turn stuff on & off and "entertain" the neighbors. Plus send "Instant Messages via Webcam" for all to see. Watch for trick-or-treaters Halloween night!

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Spooky Halloween Music

It's been a fun run providing joy to millions of Internet surfers for over a decade, but Alek "Griswold" hung up his Santa Hat after 2014 ... ;-)

☻Hello 018.191.044.145 (refered by komar.org) from Columbus Ohio United States (39.9625°N 83.0061°W) United States flag

☻

Halloween main page - also includes historical/future stuff

Halloween & Christmas FAQ should answer most questions - plus some misc. media reports
The lights are wind powered and carbon neutral - Al Gore would be proud!
The Halloween decorations throughout the years and even more cool Halloween pictures
Other folks who have done nutty stuff like this and watch entertaining time-lapse footage of Halloween lights videos
More about the Zany Guy behind all this and also see his Christmas Lights! ;-)

HULK says Puny Humans can add their spooky halloweeny comments in the Halloween Blog

While I appreciate the folks who have asked if they can donate/PayPal to cover the costs of the lights and (wind powered!) electricity, I've never asked for donations and don't plan to change that. It is a bit of work to put up all the Halloween stuff, but I enjoy doing it for the neighborhood kids and the web site is just my way of saying "Happy Halloween" and "Merry Christmas" to folks around the world. If you feel compelled to make some sort of donation, I've been involved with celiac disease so make a donation toward medical research - tell 'em Komar.Org sent 'ya! ;-)

BTW, for the actual night of Halloween, I have "HULK SMASH" audio playing really loud. So when the kids come by, I ask the smallest (and scare'dest one) kid to tell the Hulk to "Shut Up". It requires a little prodding, but eventually they will say "Be Quiet Hulk" ... and I, of course, hit the OFF button on my wireless X10 remote in my pocket and 'lo and behold, the Hulk is quiet ... since the speaker's power is toggled off. Always get a great response and that kid then feels pretty good! ;-)

Circuit Layout & Electrical Analysis for Halloween 2014
Circuit   X10-Zone   Amps   Lights   Description
1-Balcony     1       0.8      300   Upper Roof Icicles and Purple Orb
1-Garage-E    1       5.0    2,200   Garage Icicles, Driveway RIP's & Graves, Lighted Arch
1-Panel-1     1       6.8    2,200   Upper Roof Icicles, Purple Orb, Snapping Spider, Pooh & Bubble Lights, Pumpkin Jack
2-Balcony     2       1.7      400   Bloody Hands, Pirates, Skulls, Witch, Hulk Light
2-Garage-E    2       1.3      600   Driveway Orange Rope Lights, BOO
2-Panel-2     2       4.2    1,400   Inflatable Grim Reaper on Motorcycle, Witches, Bats, Purple Rope Light, Candy Canes
2-Window-L    2       0.9      250   Lower Window Decorations
3-Balcony     3       1.7      400   Roof Pumpkins and Frankenstein, Balcony "Opera" Pumpkins, SpongeBob SquarePants
3-Panel-3     3       2.8      900   Giant Inflatable Pumpkin and Pumpkin Patch & Tree ... plus USA Flag!
3-Window-U    3       0.7      350   Upper Window Decorations
4-Balcony     4       1.5      400   Blue Rope Light around Balcony Skulls, RIP, Spider
4-Garage-W    4       0.8      100   Lighted Alien, Inflatable Headless Horseman
4-Panel-4     4       1.8      300   Inflatable Giant Green Skull and Lighted Skulls
5-Balcony     5       1.0      300   Railing Decorations and Skulls Light
Garage-W      5       0.9      100   Lighted & Inflatable FRANKENSTEIN
Panel-4       5       0.7      300   ON
6-Panel-4     6       1.1      400   OFF
Garage-W      6       0.9      100   LED Skeleton, Inflatable Homer Simpson - D'OH!
7-Office      *       1.1      300   Various stuff in the Haunted Office!   ;-)
                                        1:Brain Dude/Disco Ball   2:SpongeBob & Rainier Beer   3:Pumpkin & Plasma Ball
                                        4:Groovy Lava Lamp        5:Skull/Hulk Lamp            6:Light-Up/3-D Cube
TOTALS       19      35.7   11,300   TOTALS

A question often asked is how much does it cost to light the holiday display - the electrical meter does spin a bit faster. That's easy to calculate - with all 11,300 lights ON, the current draw is 35.7 amps. Multiply by 120 Volts and divide by 1,000 to get 4.2 KiloWatts. The electricity cost in Colorado is about 10 cents per KiloWatt-Hour, so to run the display continuously for an hour, it costs 42 cents/hour - not much! But remember that Internet Surfers are turning the lights on & off ... so divide that by two and then multiply by the 4 hours/day it's active, and the electricty costs 84 cents per day. Multiply that by 31 days and for $26, a whole month of holiday fun is provided to people around the world ... plus some awareness and thousands of dollars in donations for Celiac Disease Research!

2014 Halloween Decorations Webcam Updates

2014_09_25: As noted at the top of the page, the Controllable Halloween Decorations for Celiac Disease raises awareness and encourages people who enjoy the light show to donate to the Center for Celiac Research at Massachusetts General Hospital. Read more here and consider adding to the over $80,000 raised so far. For reference, here is the halloween 2013 webcam updates.

2014_09_28: Spooky comments now enabled on the Halloween Blog.

2014_10_05: Once again, my neighbor got their Halloween Decorations up before me. But it's kinda like the race between the turtle and the rabbit ... slow-n-steady "wins" the race! ;-)

2014_10_10: Most everything is pulled out of the crawl space and am repairing some leaks in the Hulk's. I have some family stuff this upcoming weekend, so I'm going to be a bit behind in getting everything out there and online.

2014_10_14: I did the initial setup on the front lawn ... hope to do the haunted office tomorrow. Still need to do some light testing and dust off the webcams and X10 control system. Hoping to go online by the end of the week.

2014_10_16: While I still have a lot more stuff to put out, I turned everything on tonight and went live on the Internet - the webcams and X10 controllers are all working well.

2014_10_21: Pretty much everything has been deployed and hooked up ... although there's always a little bit of "fine tuning" to make the display look just perfect - D'OH! ;-)

2014_10_29: The weather forecast for Halloween is sunny and 60°F ... so should see quite a few trick-or-treaters. I have a buncha candy for the little kids and quite a few liquid refreshments for the "big" kids - hopefully this will be enough! ;-)

2014_10_31: Another crazy-fun Halloween night! Once again, close to 200 trick-or-treaters came by as the weather was mild. They almost cleaned me out of candy (I'm very generous, especially early on) and I also passed out shots of Chocolate EggNog and Pumpkin Liquor (plus beer and wine) to the "big" kids. Check out all the action on the Halloween Blog ... Jerry Garcia costume was the best! ;-)

2014_11_04: I've put away the Halloween stuff and shut down the Halloween Blog ... so it's a wrap for 2014 ... and time to get ready for Christmas! ;-)

2014_12_04: I announce that 2014 will be the last year for the Controllable Halloween Decorations and Controllable Christmas Lights. It's been a fun run providing smiles and joy to millions of Internet surfers, but Alek "Griswold" is hanging up his Santa Hat! ;-)