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How do the displays work? Nativity
Our nativity was built on a full sized trailer. It stands 8 feet in height and width, 10 feet in length, and houses 6 animated figures, all of which are life sized. We have redesigned these commercially produced figures in some cases to change the way they operate. Santa Claus Our life sized Santa Claus greets visitors and offers instructions to enable them to fully enjoy the display. He is animated using a form of Audio-animatronics (trade mark of Disney). He has been completely redesigned, and the vast majority of his control circuitry is actually located inside our home, with underground cables carrying the electronic control of the figure, which is located near the entrance to the driveway. Choreographed Tree
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Christmas is of course based on the celebration of Jesus Christ’s birth. One of the 2 centerpieces of our display therefore is the nativity.
The “megatree”, one of the two centerpieces of our display, stands approximately 20 feet above the ground, and has a diameter of 10 feet at its base. It holds 64 strands of red LED lights (size C6), each strand of which is controlled by an individual computer channel, allowing us to choreograph the tree’s “movements” to music. The tree contains about 5000 LEDs, but the overall energy used is only 128 watts (compared to 1,920 watts if we would have used conventional mini-lights!).