Light-o-rama vs. Animated Lighting??

[bridegirl]

We are going to buy one of these two systems to "upgrade" our holiday decorations (Halloween and Christmas).

Does anyone have experience with either??

Or a different one I don't know about that's somehow better?

Thanks for any and all advice!

Susy

 

[Cindy B]

light o rama--is that the lighted one which comes with a computer board and light switching?

If it is , we had that. I say had because it drew amps from our house and didn't work with our older house set up.

It was easy to set up, install, and work with, however it didn't work with the amps of our house.

 

[The Mystery Machine]

Here is "Animated Lighting", I think that was the one used in the popular house display on the news/net last year...

http://www.animatedlighting.com/default.asp

Haven't heard of "Light-O-Rama". I will have to browse it.
http://www.lightorama.com/


I WOULD LOVE even to buy one of those trees from Animated Lighting. It is pretty expensive, though.

How cool. Let us know what you go with and WE WANT TO SEE PICS!!!! Let us know how you went about doing this and if it was worth it...OK?

 

[bridegirl]

Light o rama is the one the guy used that ended up being in the Miller Lite add.

I've been browsing all the websites, watching the sample videos, and it just seems really complicated to program.

We have PLENTY of lights already I thought the music show would be a nice upgrade.

Will try and post some pics from last year if I can.

TIA,

Susy

 

[Cindy B]

Light o rama is the one the guy used that ended up being in the Miller Lite add.

I've been browsing all the websites, watching the sample videos, and it just seems really complicated to program.

We have PLENTY of lights already I thought the music show would be a nice upgrade.

Will try and post some pics from last year if I can.

TIA,

Susy

Ligth o rama isn't that challenging to program. We were going to run it off an old existing computer.

 

[bridegirl]

How many channels do you reccommend for the Light o Rama? The largest capacity one is very pricey (about 2400) - is it worth it to have more channels?

TIA,

Susy

 

[bridegirl]

The whole house is actually "wrapped" in lights

a la The Osbourne Lights

the upper level was out when I took this photo

The bats are the roof are animated and look like they are flying

 

[bridegirl]

But you get the idea -

The gingerbread, reindeer and a few others are animated

Susy

 

[bridegirl]

 

[Cindy B]

We got the $400 package from Light o Rama. Of course that was before we knew we couldn't do the amp limits.

We sold it.. and are doing something else for Christmas

 

[komondorok]

We were just looking at these for our Christmas display.

My husband, the engineer was calculating how much extra it would cost besides the 500.00 beginning package.

First of all - the $500.00 package only powers 9,000 mini lights. That would barely cover one of our trees, so we would need the next upgrade for the 18,000 lights - $750.00

Then, it is a 30amp box. That meant having to upgrade our service in order to be able to run it.

Add in another $300.00 for the FM transmitter, as our neighbors would go bonkers if we blasted the music outright.

Then, each $500.00 box only had 16 channels. Each of those "different" items moving have to be on a separate channel - so your tree, your wreath, your bushes, etc. Have to be on a separate channel. With the upgrade to the $750 box, we would get the 32 channels.

But now we have to up the amps in the main box even more

My little idea of getting the what seemed inexpensive $500.00 package was rapidly morphing into a several thousand dollar extravanza!

 

[bridegirl]

What about using an additional generator, just for the holiday season?

I agree, we would have to do the FM thing also.

I have no idea how many lights we already have, but as you can see from the poor quality photos - it's alot!

I guess I need the extra channels because we have so much "stuff" - I just wish there was a plug and play option. It's so expensive, I hate the idea of spending all that money and then maybe doing a bad job programming it, or running out of time to program it, and then it's all a waste.

And to Cindy B, I'm curious, why did you sell yours? Was it not any good/any fun/you got bored with it?

Thanks!

Susy