Welcome to the Carroll's website for the upcoming 2013 Christmas Season. We are located in Wheeling WV on Wheeling Island. and I will detail more on the next pages of this website of how and why we are doing this, again and again and again :)
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Thanks To All That Stopped By To Watch The Lightshow!
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1-9-13: Light Show is Done for the 2012 Season, But I have lots of videos in the 2012 Video Page, 38 Videos over 2.5 hours worth. enjoy :)
I added lots of pictures from the 2012 season, just look around you will find them. And thanks for stopping by this website too
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-Paul
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This year was the most "interesting" season for the lights, November was warm and the family and I got the lights up and running in a few weekends, Then December came..... Rain, Rain and then Snow, When the rain came we had one storm that dumped a few inches in one night and around 6am my wife told me I needed to go outside, the lights are going nuts, what happened is one of my computer controllers got filled with water and shorted out, so at 6:30am I am taking apart this controller and getting it fixed for the evening, I got 90% of it fixed, not bad
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As for "how it works" it takes 4 computer networks to make the lights go blink,blink :)
most businesses and homes only use 1 computer network, my yard has 4, next year I will simplify the networking.
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I am in thinking mode for the 2013 season, yes its a year away but it takes 100's of hours to get this show laid out lets not even talk about the 100's of hours to program the songs after I have the show physically thought out, I'm considering re-lighting with all RGB/LED's and get rid of 75% of the incan lights (I need to get a great price before I take that dive) but with all the LED failures I had this year, good ole' incans are looking better and better. You can see a test or demo of what I am thinking of doing next year watch either Wizards in Winter, Christmas with a Capital C, Snow/Heat Miser, or Nutrocker. and look around the MERRY CHRISTMAS sign I have a RGB light string wrapped around the edges and I can change the colors of that light string to any colour you like (as Pink Floyd would say) That is one direction I'm thinking of going in.
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I got my new web camera that I ordered on November 5th, no kidding it arrived on Christmas Eve,(its still in the box) but, I liked what I did this year using a CCTV camera and a polarized lens, It looked rather good on ustream, and I liked the ustream Android App, I was able to watch the lights live anywhere. Below is a pic of the web camera, I used an old flood light housing for the waterproof case, and a cheap CCTV camera, and Duct Putty to affix the camera in place and a $3 polarized lens for night clarity, it worked rather well, and the greatest thing is I had about $50 invested in this if somebody stole it, no big loss, If you look at the 3rd picture on the far right that camera is 100ft away from that gray box, and that gray box is 100ft away from the house.
The Picture below is a CCTV Camera View (the camera is located over the Y in Merry
Christmas) and its over 200ft away from the display
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This year I am posting my favorite song (below), I enjoyed setting this song to lights and Michael and I enjoy the movie as well, I call it the Featured Video
Here is the Featured Video for the 2012 Season
Alan Silvestri - The Polar Express Suite
..I was asked by my Sister that it would be nice to have a "play all" setting for the videos, well... here you are, just click and play, or select by clicking Playlist
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"All year long"
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CountdownClockCodes.com
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Camera is OFF
Live Video streaming by Ustream
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Thanks for checking in,
Paul Carroll
3-24-13