Christmas 2023
We are still at about 20,000 LEDs this year! Some new additions include a set of LED curtains on the front porch to show various Christmas images and animations, a new inflatable (Penguins Hugging), C9 LEDs for the front roof, some new LED candy canes, and two neon LED displays I made.
Major elements:
Multi-color LED Strings (~20,000 LEDs): The majority are wide-angle LEDs. There are also some sections with pointed LEDs and dome LEDs.
Gingerbread House: A path of candy canes leads up to the Gingerbread house seen in the main picture! While a snowman waves hello some naughty pups have taken down a candy cane pole...
Storytime: Some critters are listening to Santa read a story.
Tree Farm: Has 8 small Christmas trees made using tomato cages wrapped in garland and rope lights. We then added some inflatables to the mix and parked the Tree Farm Truck there.
Rainbow Trees: DIY project consisting of 3 - 8ft tall "trees" positioned on our trellis. Each has 100 WS2811 LEDs in strings positioned on them with a rainbow pattern moving it's way down the string. These are custom programs I made using ESP8266 controllers mounted to ESPixel minis. They are controlled by my Hubitat home automation using a custom driver I wrote.
Inflatables: This year we added Hugging Penguins to the inflatables list, along with the return of the Penguins Mailing Letters. But we had to retire the Santa and Elves on Ladder... In all there are 21 inflatables:
- Santa in a Camper
- Gingerbread House
- Tree Farm Truck
- Santa Reading to Reindeer
- Santa on a Sleigh
- Hot Cocoa
- Polar Bears Sledding
- Teddy Bear
- Snowman
- Hello Kitty
- Chipmunk
- Polar Bear Standing
- 4x Christmas Trees
- Dogs Holding a Candy Cane
- Husky Sitting
- Unicorn
- Kitten
- Hugging Penguins