Looking for all the glitter this Christmas?
Robert Shaw has more than 47,000 flashing lights on display in his yard all set to music at 10025 South Heights Road in Beaverly, west of Prince George.
“It is a complete labour of love for me,” Shaw of Bater Electric said.
Shaw’s children are six and 10 years old and love the light display, so that spurs on his enthusiasm for it.
It takes more than a week to set up and then countless hours after that, especially if things go wrong like this year. He’s had to replace about 65 strands of lights because they all stopped working at once.
"And the cost adds up," Shaw said.
After so many people said they would like to donate to help ease the burden of the cost of the display over the years, Shaw thought he could direct the donations to people who really need it in Prince George.
“I always refused the donations until I had an a-ha moment three years ago and started a gofundme account where 100 per cent of the proceeds go to the Prince George food banks,” Shaw said. “To date I have been able to donate just over $4,000 to the food banks and this year my goal is to raise $2,500.”
In 2016 Shaw started programming the lights to music. It started with 16 channels (different light strands or features) timed to music and now it's something else.
And for the techies, here are the details that most of us would just consider the magic of it all.
It has 224 channels of 5 volt and 120 volt strands and over 4,500 channels for RGB lights (lights that change colour). 14 standard controllers, 3 DMX Controllers (high quality controllers to control the RGB lights), 2 networks, a radio station, and over 7,500 feet of extension wire. The computer that runs the system sends out over 50,000 signals a second to turn lights on or off all programmed to the beat of the music.
“But there is a small community of Christmas nuts like me that help each other out and use many forums for displays like mine across the world,” Shaw said. “In town there is Sommerville Lights and myself that have helped each other over the years. I have to give a shout out to Darryl and Marry-Anne at Sommerville Lights as they have helped me out a lot over the years and now this year I bought their yard displays to add them to my display as they are slowly getting out of it.”
The light display has become so popular that leading up to Christmas there is a steady flow of traffic lined up to watch.
“Sometimes we have had to wait quite a while to get into our own driveway but that is not an issue as we enjoy it that the community loves the display,” Shaw said.
To donate to the food banks, here is the link https://gofund.me/f6f1cf6a.
