Christmas 2004–2007 at the Hormanns

2004 was our fourth year for an animated Christmas display. A number of changes were made in 2004 and the display remained mostly the same through 2004–2007.

In 2004, the real focus was on hardware and software instead of adding more lights. The vast majority of the display was still controlled by the 320 Circuit Controller. We used 70 of the available 320 circuits for the Clock, Merry Christmas Sign, and the Snowmen. We converted the bushes to use LOR Hobbyist boxes (4 boxes for a total of 32 circuits). These boxes support fading in addition to on/off circuits. Greg spent quite a bit of time developing a FreeBSD driver so that we could control the LOR components from the same software as the 320 Controller. (Why not just use the purchased software from Lights-O-Rama? Greg wanted a challenge!)

The two most viewer-noticeable changes over last year are (1) the bushes now fade between colors resulting in a softer display and (2) the addition of the “Merry Christmas” sign above the garage door.