SCREENSHOT of Alek's 2012 Controllable Christmas Lights for Celiac Disease

Use the three christmas webcams for a live view of over 20,000 christmas lights and also CONTROL them - heck, you can even inflate (or deflate) the giant Elmo, Frosty, Santa, and Homer Simpson - D'OH! All three webcams are online from Thanksgiving to Jan 1st between 1700 to 2200 MST (GMT-7) which is when you can turn stuff on & off to entertain the neighbors. Plus send "Instant Messages via Webcam" for all to see. HO HO HO! ;-)

If you enjoy the christmas lights, please consider donating a few dollars (tax deductible) to the over $70,000 raised for the Univ of Maryland Center for Celiac Research.

$1,000: Bronner's Christmas Wonderland - Christmas Lights Etc - Halloween Express - Mr. Costumes - Photo Christmas Cards - Unique Christmas Gifts
$100: Anonymous - Todd "Extra Crispy" Bradley - Nature Alight - Sparky - Bluto ($500)
$1: Dirk and Kyle Komarnitsky ... and their Big Green Buddy and other $1-$99 contributions Click here for info on how to make a charitable donation for Celiac Disease

Santa-Homer Cursor: Remove - Tiny - Small - Normal - Big - HULK'in

Free Christmas Music

Christmas Lights Webcam will be online an hour early and until midnight ... watching for Santa on a busy Christmas Eve ... HO-HO-HO! ;-)

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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 Christmas decorations throughout the years and even more cool Christmas pictures
Other folks who have done nutty stuff like this and watch entertaining time-lapse footage of Christmas lights videos
More about the Zany Guy behind all this and also see his Halloween Decorations! ;-)
What is new for Christmas 2012 and for Halloween 2012

HULK says Puny Humans can add some cheerful christmasy comments now in the Christmas Blog

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

Circuit Layout & Electrical Analysis for Christmas 2012
Circuit   X10-Zone   Amps   Lights   Description
Panel-1       1       5.8    2,500   Burrito Reindeer, Christmas Tree, Presents
Balcony       1       2.8    1,000   Swag, Bells, Stars, Wreaths, Tree, Plane
Panel-2       2       3.5    1,500   10 foot and lower LED lighted trees, lower Juniper
Balcony       2       3.0      500   Stars and Inflatable Tree/Grinch/Homer/Santa, HULK Spotlight!
Panel-3       3       6.1    2,000   Sidewalk Candy Canes & Figurines, West Tree
Garage-E      3       4.0    1,600   Garage Icicles, Front Door Swag
Garage-E      4       3.5      800   Christmas Trees above Garage
Panel-4       4       4.8    2,200   Upper Roof Icicles, Purple Orbs, Column/Bubble Lights
Panel-4       4       6.2    1,100   SnowGlobe, LED Tree, Penguin, Bells, Santa Heli
Panel-2       5       2.9      800   Giant Inflatable Frosty, Frosty Figurines, Candy Canes
Garage-W      5       0.6      100   Inflatable Elmo - Tickle me!
Window-U      5       0.8      500   Upper Window Decorations
Panel-2       6       2.6      700   HO, Inflatable Frosty Family
Garage-W      6       0.3      100   SpongeBob SquarePants
Panel-2       7       2.5    1,000   HO, Tin Man, Inflatable Pumpkin - Jack is Back!!!
Garage-W      7       0.6       50   Inflatable Santa - twelve feet high!
Window-L      7       1.2      500   Lower Window Decorations
Panel-2       8       3.5      800   Santa Balloon, Doggie, LED Reindeer Family
Panel-3       8       1.0      400   Chimney Stars & Swag
Garage-W      8       0.8       50   Inflatable Homer Simpson - D'OH!
Panel-3       *       4.9    1,800   ON/OFF (1/2), Santa Skier (5), Roof Outline (6), Santa Plane (7)
Office        *       1.8      400   Various stuff in Santa's Workshop!  ;-)
                                        1:Rainier Beer    2:Santa's Workshop    3:Candles/Light-UP!  4:Bells/Hulk Lamp
                                        5:Merry Banner    6:Groovy Lava Lamps   7:Stepping Santa     8:Present/LED Cube
TOTALS       22      63.2   20,400   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 20,400 lights ON, the current draw is 63.2 amps. Multiply by 120 Volts and divide by 1,000 to get 7.5 KiloWatts. The electricity cost in Colorado is about 10 cents per KiloWatt-Hour, so to run the display continuously for an hour, it costs 75 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 5 hours/day it's active, and the electricty costs 187 cents per day. Multiply that by 31 days and for $58, 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!

2012 Christmas Lights Webcam Updates

For reference, here is the christmas 2011 webcam updates.

2012_10_13: The warmup for Christmas is the halloween webcam which was turned on today. The 2012 halloween decorations have 10,000 lights plus giant inflatable Frankenstein, Grim Reapers, Pumpkins, Witches, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Homer Simpson - D'OH! ;-)

2012_10_14: I should have also mentioned that since it is an election year, the Halloween Webcam will also feature "voting" for Obama, Romney, or the Green Party Candidate - support the HULK for President! ;-)

2012_10_23: The great X10 products and fantastic customer support from JV Digital Engineering have been a great help. I recently got an XTBM Signal Analyzer which has allowed me to figure out where my signal-suckers and noise emitters are and then apply an XPPF filter on one particular area. The XTB-IIR/III X10 signal booster ensures a powerful signal goes to all X10 modules so that when Internet surfers clicks ON/OFF, that happens reliably. If you are an X10 user, I strongly encourage you you check out JV Digital Engineering - Jeff Volp makes some great products (the craftsmanship is exquisite) and is a genuine pleasure to work with.

2012_10_30: It's the day before Halloween, so the Christmas Blog has been turned on for those fans that want to start commenting.

2012_10_31: Another crazy-fun Halloween night! It was super warm so almost 200 trick-or-treaters came by. They almost cleaned me out of candy (I'm very generous, especially early on) and I also passed out shots of Wine, Port, Pumpkin Pie Cream Liquor and Peppermint-Mocha Eggnog "big" kids. Check out all the action in the time-lapse halloween movies while listening to some halloween music and read the funny commentary in the halloween blog.

2012_11_01: HULK beats Obama and Romney on the Halloween webcam. It was very close ... with quite a bit of ballot stuffing. Fortunately, the Perl scripts were able to detect this ... and after manual verification, those votes were invalidated. In 2008, Obama won with 21,966 votes ... followed by McCain with 21,821 and HULK with 21,692. For 2012, it looks like we are sending a Big Green Monster to the White House as the final tally was:

16,161 - HULK
15,373 - Romney
15,345 - Obama

Congradulations to the Green Party Candidate and I'm sure he'll do a SMASHING job! ;-)

2012_11_07: The HULK was very angry (and you would not like him when he is angry!) to find out this morning that Obama won the real presidential election rather than him ... ;-)

2012_11_22: Happy Thanksgiving to all. I have most of the lights/inflatables moved out of the basement crawl space and ready to deploy this weekend. Hope to have the webcams and X10 controls go online after the weekend.

2012_11_26: I was hoping to go online tonight, but some freezing drizzle in the morning means the roof isn't safe to climb on to finish the display. Sorry about the delay (full refunds for all the big buck 'ya all paid! ;-) and hope to turn all webcams & X10 Controls on tomorrow.

2012_11_27: While I still have a lot more stuff to setup, the Webcams and X10 Controls went live tonight - WOOT! ;-)

2012_12_01: Finally finished setting everything up ... gotta make sure every square inch is covered with lights or inflatables! ;-)

2012_12_02: Our neighborhood has a big Chrismas shin-dig which includes a horse-drawn sleigh that takes the kids around the nieghborhood - needless to say, my house is a popular stop! ;-)

2012_12_08: One of the struts cracked in the 15' Home Depot Santa Balloon. I contacted them, they hooked me up with the manufacturer Gemmy who sent me a replacement part - that's some GREAT customer service!

2012_12_11: Finally got our first snow, but only a dusting. It's been a very warm and dry winter so far (Colorado ski resorts are not liking it) ... but hopefully we'll have a White Christmas.

2012_12_14: One of the SR227 X10 Super Sockets blew out - I typically lose a couple of these a year due to all of the ON/OFF's - but I was able to fix some and Internet Surfers can again say "Give me Full Power Scotty"

2012_12_19: We had another weak storm pass through and drop another 3" of snow ... but with sunny warm weather forecast, it will melt away in a few days. However, snow is forecast for Christmas Eve ... so we might just get a White Christmas! ;-)

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