Introducing the 2002 display - the biggest and longest-running ever. I expanded on the success of the previous year- most of what I used last time, including the hand painted Icicle lights, returned in a similar fashion, and were added to as well. Red, blue, purple, maroon- hotter colours as a contrast to the cold blue/green of 2001. As for the popular light-trees adirning the garage roof, a new taller one joined the three from the previous year, and all decked out in green and gold, with a Christmas Cave "SACB" microprocessor sequencing system taking control to give them a multitude of colour-changing and chasing / "dancing" effects.




I know I said it wasn`t for me but for 2002 I went Digital-ish by investing in a Christmas Cave SACB (Stand Alone Control Box) which was been programmed full of patterns to control the Light Trees. The back-and-forth fader I used in the previous two years was nice, but I fancied a bit of a change.
SACBs are 8-output devices programmed on a computer, but are then unhooked where they sit and run your patterns by themselves all evening long. Kind of like a customizable version of the little green controllers you get on multi-effect light strands, only you design the patterns! The best thing is, if you get tired of the effects you create, you can design new ones and re-program them over and over. I ran two different programs over 2002`s season, the results of which can be seen in the Videos section.
Finally, I used a lot of LED lighting. I trialled two 100-bulb "Foreverbright" sets the previou year, and expanded on their success with 1300 of their new improved models in red, gold, silver and blue. Although I had some problems with the blue lights towards the end of the season, the rest performed well and everyone commented on the deep, strong colours.

As with the previous year, I produced a simulation picture. This one was based on a 2001 photo, as I did not plan on drastically changing the lights on the house, but rather adding to them and using different colours. It was a simple enough task to edit the picture accordingly. The finished result is pretty close to what I actually achieved, although the red and purple colours were stronger in reality than I had anticipated, as you can see above and in the Night picture gallery.

The Webcam made a return and was joined by two CCTV cameras as well, and I took plenty of pictures of all parts of the the display during the day and night - this time using a film camera which seems to give slightly better results than the video stills system I used during the previous two years. All these plus an archive of shots saved from the Webcams and three downloadable videos are arranged in the five galleries below....

Archive gallery categories....**Note - Still Incomplete**
Still no significant snow this season. There were a couple of days that we saw a little of the white stuff, including a reasonable bit of ground cover for a day, but it didn`t last and no main photos were taken asides from a couple Webcam stills which you can see in the archive gallery above. I took most of the photos of things during the daytime, on a couple of days where the weather was actually quite good and the sun shone (mostly). But that is not really an accurate represantation of this season. It was wet! Very wet. A couple of pictures that better show the sort of scene that usually greeted us outdoors are accessible to the left there.