All-LED lights display in Newport (South Wales), UK

Yesterday evening my 2005 festive lights display was turned on for the first time. This year it comprises entirely of LED lights and I thought some folk here might like a look. Although it is smaller than last year`s display with around half the lights, the power consumption is down to just 1/6th, and last year`s show used a fair amount of LEDs already anyway. A total of just over 2.5 amps at the 240 volt incoming supply, and that includes the losses in the large 110 volt transformer plus other assorted power supplies for everything. Got to love that tiny LED power consumption!

That and the intense vivid colours. All in blue and white with the theme of snow & ice, or "A Winter Wonderland". The lights used range from UK-origin blue LED icicles (24 volt AC low voltage, "Deta" brand) through ForeverBright strings in Mini Ice, Berry and some smooth mini globes, to home-made snowflake figures and modified mini pathway trees (I switched out the 35 incandescent bulbs for 34 LEDs & one resistor). There`s even a wireframe animated deer lit in diffused 5mm blue LEDs.

A grand total of 6571 LEDs, and not a single filament bulb among them. Even the blinking beacon at the peak of the roof is an LED one (modified from two commercial products we sell at work). Well, there *are* some filament lamps on the control panel that runs everything, but they don`t count as part of the display so I didn`t bother trying to modify them too. The big three-colour LED matrix sign in the middle window technically does not count as part of the display either, but if it did, it would add more than 2000 more LEDs to the light count!

Some preliminary photos and loads of details of past years displays can be seen on my Displays site at http://bulbmuseum.net/displays . I`ll include one of those photos below too.



Anyone else seen, or has themselves, an all-LED holiday light setup this year? I`d be interested to know.

Season`s Greetings!

Chris M :wave:
Many Thanks for sharing this with us.
Just an Awesome display. :rock: :wow:
I checked out your site, you have certainly improved every year.
The contrast of Blue and white is far better IMHO.

Just out of interest, how long does it take to set them all up each year?
Do you take them all down each year to?
If so where do your store them?

Seasons Greeting's from N.Wales to S.Wales

A good 213 Miles :santa:

WOW!

..how long does it take to set them all up each year?

I took four days off from work this year either side of the weekend, starting on December 1st. As you can tell, I`ve done this for ages so have many clips and hooks already attached to the walls, as well as a big selection of gutter clips and the ever present Big Roll of Duck-tape to stick stuff where nothing else will stay stuck. Helps speed up installation, although as it`s usually different enough every year, there`s always new stuff to cater for. Early preparations begin in October typically, when I get to ordering the new lights and working on the custom projects, as well as planning how it`ll all go. By some standards it`s a small display, but I still like to pay close attention to detail so it all goes right and looks good too.

As it is, this year was quite a bit smaller than the last one and if the weather hadn`t been so poor at the end of last week, I could probably have done it in three days. Since it was so wet, I took my time and waited for things to dry out. Was still finished by monday lunchtime.

And yes - it does have to come down every year, lights don`t last at all if you leave them out all the time, plus it looks a mess so the whole lot gets brought in as early as I can after January 6th (last day of my lighting season). Most gets stored in the cupboards and shelves in the little workshop/store-room/"Central Command" but the bigger stuff like the snowflake figures goes in the attic. The two power supply cabinets live under the stairs in the off-season. And the main power control panel is permanently built in to one cupboard so stays where it is, just gets shut off and everything unplugged from the outlets under the bench. With the door shut it looks like a normal ~1974 Hygena kitchen cupboard again.

Amazing display of lights Chris M. .... I applaud you on the effort and time that it takes you to do such marvelous work that I would contemplate doing so myself, lol.

Free bump for this awesome display Chis.
Thanks for answering my questions too.

Pretty Nice. Wish I was seeing stuff like that around here.
I see very few LED's around, and they are usually a string or two thrown in a batch of incandescents. The huge Reckson Center tree (Long Island's version of Rockefeller Center, and is taller too!) had Foreverbright c6's on only four of its branches at the bottom (and these huge trees hold 30,000-40,000 lights!)
See pretty much the same things on houses. Nothing like what you have, so far, though I do look through the suburbs to see what people have.

Though it's small, I have an all LED display: LED Dingdotz in left front window (all by themselves), ForeverBright white frosted C7's top sash of right front window, Foreverbright multicolor frosted C7's bottom sash, and the 6 Intellishine RGB's set up in a wire fixture propped on a ledge above the front door, right below the right window. Just got a photocell today, to we don;t have to remember, or be present to turn them on at dark.

Another Bump for Christmas :thumbsup:

Just before Christmas I was driving my daughter to Caerphilly.
At one point she exclaimed 'Look what those loonies have done!'.
I just glimpsed a flash of blue.
My question: are you visible from the M4? If so, great show. If not, you have an imitator!

I didn't realize this thread had been bumped twice now.
To update, this December, you could find houses like Chris's around, and whole trees, like the Bellmore, LI train station plaza. More people have LED's, and I can still find some still up, in places like store windows around the city this month.
(And now, those sRGB tubes that substitute for neons are taking off in store windows, you you will have bright LED colors all year round)

Well, I'm not allowed to post attachments yet, but in 2006 I had a 15,700-light display at my parent's home here in Tucson, Arizona that was 97% LED lights. Indeed, the only incans were there because they were needed to fulfill some specific purpose. For example: Some were individual C9 flashers, some were in areas subject to vandalism, and there was an 8-function controller string used to drive a homebrew "sequence amplifier" which boosts the controller output to drive up to 1.2 kW x four channels. This amplifier requires being driven by an incan string to get the required drive current. Also, the outputs must have an incan "ghost load" to dim properly when driving LEDs.

Several LED strings were homebrew, as well, including a UV string, a 14-color string and a violet/deep red string.

Prior to starting to convert to LEDs 3 yr. ago, I maxed out at 20,000 incans, which drew close to 7.7 kW. In 2006, the 15,700 lights took 1.8 kW, 0.5 kW of this due to the remaining incans! If we scale the 15,700 to 20,000 and assume the same percentage of incans in the future, the effective amount of power freed up is the same as though I had increased the show's power panel size by 3.3 times! That leaves A LOT of room for growing the show... :lolsign:

But more likely, the % of incans will continue to drop, resulting in even greater gains. I will prolly build a new controller that doesn't require incan strings for driving LED lights. More types of flashing LEDs will come out, and LED strings will get cheaper and available in more colors, including the very warm white of incans. If we assume no incans, the effective power increase is about 4.5 times!!!