Solstice Lightshow - what's on the porch?

Every year when I'm setting up the lights I end up thinking to myself "I bet most people don't have to run as many ethernet cables when they put up their lights." Here's a behind-the-scenes look at what powers our holiday light show!

The Porch Setup

Here's what it looks like up on the porch:

Light show setup on the porch
  • The big beige box on the planter is the main box that controls everything.
  • Below it is a waterproof box for a powerstrip, there's a lot of extension cords involved too.
  • The two outdoor speakers are under the planter too.
  • Along the railing are 5 grey boxes, each one has a power supply and a little controller to send signals to 1/5th of the LED lights.

Inside the Controller Box

This is what it looks like in one of those boxes:

Inside of the LED controller box

LEDs are very efficient, but to make sure they're all evenly bright they need a connection to power every 100 lights or so. Most of this box is filled with a power supply and fuses and lots of special extension cords to distribute 5v DC power to all the strings of LEDs. In the bottom right of the picture is a little board that gets connected by ethernet cable and sends out the data for 4 strings of LEDS.

The Main Control Center

Here's the big box:

Main control box with Raspberry Pi

This is where all those ethernet cables start from. On the bottom right is the raspberry pi that runs everything. It connects to that big board with all the ethernet cables to distribute the data to the right strings of LEDs. In the top right is the amp to run the speakers. Underneath is another power supply and more fuses and more connections for extension cords. There's so many extension cords!!