Many many many MANY thanks to one person in particular, Ed, the mega tree is standing once again, in physical form.
Today I have been working on getting it connected to the computer once more, so I am really hoping it will be back for Christmas Eve.
To everybody (except those two young rat bags), Merry Christmas!
There will not be a mega tree for the rest of the year thanks to two or three naughty teenagers who I hope are on santa’s naughty list.
There may never be another mega tree I am not sure. I am too disappointed right now to explain what has happened so I shall let this photo tell you instead:
At this stage I will probably continue to run without the mega tree until Christmas Night (25th) and then start tearing down.
Video footage of Suite Christmas Rush, Music Box Dancer and the ever famous Wizards In Winter just to name a few can be viewed right now from the video page.
Enjoy, and Merry Christmas everybody
UPDATE: For the time being the centre garden will be without a border.
It has not even been a week since the full display was back running, but bad news must be told. One key element of this year’s display is electrically faulty.
The garden borders which use LED rope light, appears to be broken. Whenever the set is connected to power, the electrical switch board disconnects power to the circuit it is connected to.
This raises this year’s damage closer to the $200 mark. I am hoping insurance will cover the costs, as I suspect the fault is due to storm activity earlier in the month. If not, my 2011 plans will need to be cut back.
Tonight, all the controlling electronics were dry enough to run all eight controllers, which means the full 2010 display is back running once again! 🙂
Some light sets did suffer damage from the excessive rains of last Tuesday, however on the bright side (no pun intended), a dead section of rope light seems to have fix itself.
It seems progress is finally being made in drying out the wet electronics. Clearing out water from a power board is not that easy when you are unable to open up the casing for inspection.
Providing it does not rain this evening, I should be able to have the windows, roof and mega tree operating. Much of the garden will probably still be turned off for another day or two, though.
Amongst all this, a video of the display dancing to Wizards In Winter is now online (this was filmed before the weather event)
With less than two hours remaining before the intended switch on, and with about 10 powerboards still wet, there will yet again be no light show.
I am running a test to see whether I can operate the mega tree and roof only, as they run fully on low voltage DC, hence there are no powerboards with 240v electricity to get wet. Whilst no power mixes with water, there are much less issues with low voltage DC power if water does come into contact.
A fair few of the power boards that became water logged after Tuesday’s stormy weather are still damp, so once again there will not be a show this evening.
It is looking more likely that Saturday may be when the show returns.
Due to the very heavy rains, hail and flash flooding, there will be no chance of a show tonight. There looks to be little chance of a show in the next few days either due to the result of near horizontal rains which have gotten many powerboards wet. 240v power and water do not mix, obviously.
Until they are dry and it is safe to power them, there will be no light display. Having never experienced weather like this during December, I have no idea how many days it may take to get everything in a safe condition.
Check out this photo to see the water damage for yourself. Time to get the hair dryers out!
The rain has been very heavy today, so it is looking unlikely that there will be any lights running tonight. The weather forecast shows that the heavy rains are likely to continue into tomorrow night as well, potentially meaning two consecutive nights without a display. Please keep this in mind if you are traveling from afar these next few nights – I wouldn’t want to disappoint!
On the brighter side, two more videos of this year’s light show are now live on the video page – enjoy!
