This is our eight year for an animated Christmas display.
Once again Mary and I had big plans for increasing the size of the display
but with two kids, we just didn't find the time. This year the
320 Circuit Controller completely died.
Over the last few years there had been a few problems with some circuits
getting stuck on, or turning on when others circuits where turned on, but
this year it was really bad with most of the circuits having problems. After
spending two hours trying to "fix" the issue by replacing individual chips,
I finally just pulled every single chip from the board and put in new
ones. (My belief was that one had gone bad and was burning up new chips
that were being put in. That should would explain why a new chip started
smoking after replaced it.) Luckily, I had enough spares laying around.
Replacing every single chip at the same time worked! As always the
LOR Hobbyist
boxes worked perfectly.
Although we didn't make any big additions, there were a few changes this year.
First, I changed the software so that the clock could count down to
New Years Eve in addition to Christmas Day. We now just replace the word
"Christmas" with the next year (2009) on Christmas Morning. It now takes
about 15 minutes to make the switch.
Second, we added some new patters for the bushes to perform. Unfortunately,
these were added after the moves where created and don't show up. :-(
Movies
We are hosting the movies on YouTube this year. If you have problems
accessing them, please let us know. They should show up below.
