The James Family Christmas light show began in 2007. The planning for the first annual show started in November of `06. The show had over 18,000 lights and was computer controlled with software called Vixen.

 As a lot of people have, I watched videos that are on the web that have musically animated Christmas light displays. I thought, "WOW, that would be really cool to do." So the research started. I found several sites that sold the equipment ready made. This equipment was a bit more costly than I wanted, so I dug deeper into my searching. I then came across DoItYourselfChristmas.com and ComputerChristmas.com 

These two sites were exactly what I was looking for. I love new challenges, so learning about the electronics involved and building the hardware was extremely fun for me. Well, I now had all of the information needed to build the hardware, so "How do I control it?" That is where the software Vixen comes in.

Now it was time to build all of the display items.  (more to be added later. :) )