How We Do It

Christmas on Court Street

We run all light controls and music programming through Light-O-Rama hardware and software. Each string of lights or item that independently flashes, fades or twinkles is plugged into a "Channel". Each light controller box has 16 channels to plug in and synchronize. Each box connects to each other through Ethernet cable then to the computer running the show. The computer also plays the music to the speakers and FM transmitter.

Here's the basic layout we first started using when learning how to program lights.

1.  The Light-O-Rama Software Sequencing Suite works on your personal computer running Microsoft Windows and allows you to design your own shows.  The Software Sequencing Suite then runs your shows and sends the right commands at the right time to the various control channels.  The Software Sequencing Suite can even keep music synchronized to the controller commands.

2.  Speakers to play the music accompanying your show are attached to the computer sound card.

3.  Your personal computer communicates to the controllers using a device plugged into your computer’s serial or USB communications port.  The blue line shows the standard serial output of your computer (RS-232 or USB) out of your PC where it enters our converter that transforms the signal to the native Light-O-Rama network protocol (the green line) that connects to our various types of controllers over standard computer network wire.  We recommend Cat 5 LAN cables available from us and off-the-shelf from your local big box store in the computer section.

4.  The Light-O-Rama commercial or residential controllers include special effects such as simple on/off, intensities, smooth fading, twinkling, shimmering.  Up to 240 controllers (each handling 16 unique electrical circuits) can be daisy chained on the LOR network giving you the ability to control over 3,840 channels.  Need more channels?  Add another Light-O-Rama network.

5.  Electrical power is supplied to the controller placed close to your lights so you don’t need to run long extension cords.  Commands from the Software Sequencing Suite are performed on each controller.  Power to each of the attached lighting circuits is controlled independently.  Think of having many dimmer switches that the computer can change very quickly and independently.