Computer controlled christmas lights in Brewster, OH
As we finished dinner tonight, there was a knock at the door. It was the activities director for the local nursing home. They had taken the residents out to look at Christmas lights and they allow them to vote. They chose ours as their favorite. Granted we are the only animated display around (that I’m aware of), but still that’s pretty cool. Hopefully they’ll come back next year and be even more impressed.
I went out tonight in the van to watch the entire show, and it is simply amazing what a difference the EDM transmitter is making compared to the Vastelec one. I’m glad I have the vastelec as a backup, but man is the EDM nice. The sound is crystal clear from in front of the house. The RDS functionality appears to be working, however vixen isn’t currently running the batch files that update the song title. I think (hope) it’s a simple fix, but I’ll have to wait until after the show ends tonight to tweak the sequences a bit.
My EDM LCD RDS FM (Lots of Acronyms) arrived today. I put together the “kit” and hooked it up tonight, and it already is making a huge difference. I think if I play with the antenna location and the length of the coax, I can get it better, but for now I’m happy with it. I also got the RDS functionality working, so viewers should be able to see what song is playing if their radio supports RDS. Pretty exciting!
Well the title says it all. It’s getting colder here in Brewster. The equipment hasn’t been very happy with that. The FM transmitter was the first to express its dislike of the cold. It went from providing very good sound to very crappy sound in just a day. I tried many different things, moving the antenna, changing the frequency, etc. I eventually broke down and ordered a EDM transmitter out of South Africa (it didn’t take much arm twisting, I’ve wanted one all along but was trying to hold off). It should be here in about a week and a half. Ultimately it came down to the fact that the FM Transmitter is probably the most important piece of the show, and without good audio the show just isn’t enjoyable.
Sunday I decided to try bringing the transmitter into the main part of the basement where it is heated overnight and it seemed that it made somewhat of a difference. I’m going to leave it in the unheated part tonight and see what the results are tomorrow. My suspicion is that the clock crystal is becoming not as accurate in the cold, causing transmission problems. I definitely will be doing whatever I can to keep the EDM transmitter inside. I’m excited because it will have RDS capability, so those of you with RDS capable radios will be able to see the song names on the face of your radio.
Speaking of radio, I had to make a new tune-to sign because the old one just wasn’t getting noticed, but I’m not convinced the new one is getting noticed either. I might have to build a LED Trix for next year to get the point across 
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Anyhow, with it getting colder, the lighting controllers seemed to be acting up more. Again I am attributing that to the clock crystals getting cold and loosing accuracy. To combat this, I’ve decided to leave the controllers on 24-7 so that the heat given off by the voltage regulators will keep them a bit warmer. So far it seems to be working, but it kind of defeats the purpose of putting the SSRs in the main power distribution panel to shut everything off at night. I’ll probably have to rethink that arrangement for next year.
Well, tonight was the first night since we started that we couldn’t put the show on. I came home from work to find that one GFCI had tripped. I thought it may be a fluke because the show hadn’t started yet, so I reset it and it seemed happy, but it wasn’t long before another GFCI tripped. I decided just to shut everything down for the night rather than running half a show. Hopefully everything will dry out for tomorrow night.
Edit: 12/03/09
After perusing on Planet Christmas about GFCI trip causes, it seems that I overlooked the leakage current that can arise from long extension cord runs… This combined with any other leakage is a trip waiting to happen. I think the plan for next year might be to replace the GFCIs in the sub panel with regular outlets and move the GFCIs out into the display on the ends of the feeder extension cords in weather tight enclosures. We’ll see if I can’t find the cause of the leakage. Maybe I won’t have to do anything.
Edit: 12/07/09
I’m no longer convinced the GFCIs were to blame for the outage that night. There definitely was one that was tripped, but there was the other that I was attributing to a GFCI that was not GFCI related. It was just a loose DMX cable. It has since rained just as much as it did that night, and the show ran without a hitch, so I am now thinking the initial GFCI trip was a fluke. Only time will tell I suppose.
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