WISHING YOU A VERY RANDOM CHRISTMAS

摘要

For the past few years, I have had as part of my backyard Christmas light display a 'tree' made up of eight LED light strings strung in a pyramidal fashion to a central metal pole. (Refer to "The Tree" sidebar.) At night, it was a nice display that worked well, but as a static display it grew to be boring. I needed to add some action using a light controller. There are a number of commercially-available Christmas light controllers that can be programmed to act in conjunction with music, control many channels of lights with various effects, and handle high current loads - all with price tags that match the capabilities. Other options are simple, but repeat the same pattern and quite often are integrated within the light string itself. For me, I didn't want to have to synchronize with music; I did not want the same patterns night after night or something that required operator interaction. I just wanted a simple controller that I could plug in a few sets of lights to and apply power.