Christmas 2004 - 2007





2001 2002 2003 2004-2007 2008

Christmas 2004-2007 at the Hormann's




2004 was our forth year for an animated Christmas display. A number of changes were made in 2004 (described below) and the display remains mostly the same 2004-2007.

In 2004, the real focus was on hardware and software instead of adding more lights. The vast majority of the display is still controlled by the 320 Circuit Controller. We used 70 of the available 320 circuits for The Clock, Merry Christmas Sign, and The Snowmen. We converted the bushes to use LOR Hobbyist boxes (4 boxes for a total of 32 circuits). These boxes support fading in addition to on/off circuits. Greg spend quite a bit of time developing a FreeBSD driver so that we could control the LOR components from the same software as the 320 Controller. (Why not just uses the purchased software from Lights-O-Rama? Greg wanted a challenge!)

The two must viewer noticeable changes over last year are (1) the bushes now fade between colors resulting in a softer display and (2) the addition of the "Merry Christmas" sign above the garage door.

Movies
Note: Requires Real Player 9 or higher


Clock (Real) (1MB)
House (Real) (5.8MB)

Snowmen (Real) (4MB)
Merry Christmas Sign (Real) (4MB)


Statistics Pictures
 (click to enlarge)




Behind the Scenes
 Currently, we just have quick video showing the output on the computer screen. This screen is mainly used for debugging the program and shows everything that is happening outside.


Source Code
main.c bushes.c
Makefile sign.c
main.h snowmen.c
clock.c
lor.c lor.h
320controller.c 320controller.h


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Greg & Mary Hormann
ghormann@alumni.indiana.edu
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