More than a few fairy lights...

December 23, 2020 9:02 AM

xLights is an open-source package that allows users to synchronise Christmas lights to music, and every year, there's a community run "xLights Around The World" project - A team sequences a song (2 this year), people take video of it on their own displays, and a huge montage is built. This year's features 970 displays across 29 countries, and is about as festive as flashy lights get.

Previous years videos are available too -
2019 - Little Drummer Boy - For King And Country
2018 - Greatest Show (my personal favourite)
2017 - Can't Stop The Feeling

A map of all this years participants is available if you'd like to go see where they are/what they do. I may be able to provide more links, etc. if anyone has queries - Feel free to MeMail me.

Full disclosure - While I'm not involved directly in running or managing the project, our (smallish) display is in there - This has been cleared as "not-quite-a-self-link" with relevant authorities - Thanks, folks.

posted by PeteTheHair (20 comments total)

Mod note: One comment deleted; hi folks, this is a longtime Mefite's very first post, and the description is clear about what's in the video. If you don't want to see that, please just pass the thread by. Thanks.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:53 AM on December 23, 2020 [11 favorites]

I don't know anything about this hobby, and it was interesting to learn a little about it. Seeing so many displays all at once gives a kind of overview of the components available and the kinds of things you can make them do, and how different effects work better on different kinds of setups. Thanks for posting it!
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:59 AM on December 23, 2020

Ha! I just watched a video of a light display synced to some of the Mandalorian soundtrack that must use xLights before I checked metafilter and spotted this post.
posted by ursus_comiter at 10:38 AM on December 23, 2020 [5 favorites]

Growing up in the suburbs, we inevitably drove by one or two houses that went big with their lights. It was always fun to discover, especially if it was near a friend's house.

Fast forward a few decades, and living in New York we made the trek a few years ago to Dyker Heights, and wow. Really opened my eyes to what's possible, especially in the age of LEDs. Seeing so much over-the-topness packed into a small area was also a real treat. It was also my introduction to some of the new lighting technology that's come out since then.

I didn't know that cranking it up to full Daft Punk level was now consumer grade, and it's delightful.
posted by Phredward at 10:56 AM on December 23, 2020 [2 favorites]

Interestingly, Techmoan just reviewed a proprietary analogue to this, but focused on Christmas trees. The special sauce involved mapping the locations of the lights in 3D space so that coherent patterns can be displayed using a single string of individually addressable RGB lights. Not nearly as impressive as these displays, but certainly more practical for most people's lives
posted by wierdo at 11:45 AM on December 23, 2020

This is fun. Folks in my town have been obsessed with finding good holiday light displays you can drive by during this year of social distancing and any of these houses would be
a winner on that list. Side note: Is it cheating to want to pay someone to come handle the lights, music and software programming and then just bask in the pleasure of having a killer display? Asking for a friend.
posted by victoriab at 12:01 PM on December 23, 2020 [1 favorite]

Xmas love for Victorian premier's post-quarantine advice mashup.
posted by Thella at 12:30 PM on December 23, 2020 [3 favorites]

Is it cheating to want to pay someone to come handle the lights, music and software programming and then just bask in the pleasure of having a killer display?

I have no doubt somebody somewhere makes $25K in the first two weeks of December doing exactly that for the folks that don't consider coffee and socks luxury items.
posted by COD at 1:27 PM on December 23, 2020 [4 favorites]

Also, I, for one, think the OP should put a link to his display in the comments.
posted by COD at 1:29 PM on December 23, 2020 [1 favorite]

I like seeing how the same element is executed multiple different ways. It also seems like some folks must be running on their own forks, because sometimes there would be things that nobody else would have.
posted by rockindata at 1:38 PM on December 23, 2020 [1 favorite]

I love these kinds of elaborate light displays. This was a feast for the eyes! It's really cool seeing how far the community stretches around the world when locations in places like Australia and Denmark pop up.
posted by capricorn at 2:32 PM on December 23, 2020

Side note: Is it cheating to want to pay someone to come handle the lights, music and software programming and then just bask in the pleasure of having a killer display? Asking for a friend.

My former neighbor was big into holiday displays, not just Christmas but Halloween, Valentine's Day, 4th of July.

When he ran out of space on his lawn, you can bet I offered space on mine. No shame at all.

Edit: I should note it was just static stuff, no frenetic light shows.
posted by madajb at 2:35 PM on December 23, 2020

I admire the work that went into these, but honestly, none of them really appeal to me.

The style always seems to be "As many lights as you can cram onto your house, blinking as fast as possible."
Sometimes less is more.
posted by madajb at 2:38 PM on December 23, 2020

Thanks Thella for saving me the time of finding that link

Now GET ON THE BEERS.
posted by pompomtom at 3:16 PM on December 23, 2020 [1 favorite]

Now GET ON THE BEERS.

Apparently you can tune into the soundtrack while viewing from your car.

It's depressing that Dan the Man sounds so much like Scotty from Marketing.
posted by Thella at 5:32 PM on December 23, 2020

totally looking for my in-laws' neighbors on here....
posted by Laetiporus at 6:27 PM on December 23, 2020

This is fantastic, thank you for posting. I love Christmas light displays!
posted by Anonymous at 6:44 PM on December 23, 2020

> Is it cheating to want to pay someone to come handle the lights, music and software programming and then just bask in the pleasure of having a killer display?

Strongly suspect someone out there would do it for you if you asked in the right places... There are certainly people who are making cash creating the sequences for songs, which is a legitimate skill. The options afforded by "here are x thousand shiny lights - make them look good to this music" can be pretty overwhelming.

> sometimes there would be things that nobody else would have

While there are a number of commercial offerings/vendors out there now, the hobby is still pretty open to DIY... There's a fair quantity of soldering and power tools involved anyway, and enough flexibility in the software that people are free to design anything they want and incorporate it. On the forums and FB groups, you can see people come up with an idea in March/April and slowly execute it in stages until they light it all up at the end of the year - it's great to see it all evolve. You can also see people spectacularly fail to capture quite what they planned, but it generally works out OK anyway ;)

> locations in places like Australia and Denmark pop up

Not sure why, but Aus surprised me too - it's actually quite prevalent, and one of the principal maintainers of xLights lives there. Live and learn, eh? (And at least it's not -4 and snowing when they're trying to strap 10 kilos of plastic + lights to the side of their house :) )

> Sometimes less is more.

There are definitely displays that cover the range on this one. I'll admit that I look at some of these and think "That's a bit much", while having easily more lights on the front of our place than the rest of our street combined ;)

There are definitely elements that I'm not keen on, and wouldn't choose to use in my own display. I like things that look like Christmas (or Halloween) kit - I've got stars, bulbs, a Christmas tree, bits like that. I'm not overly keen on the pixel matrix/video wall type kit, or some of the "wreath" models that people use (large circular high density lumps of pixels). I wouldn't mind one of the large mega-tree structures (for tree-type effects, not animations or faces), but budget and available space have prevented that so far. I'm moving house in the new year, which will probably make the space possible, but the budget so much more problematic :)

Similarly, the sequences are definitely a matter of taste. The XLATW ones tend to be big, splashy and crowd-pleasing, and you can find plenty of these displays running epilepsy inducing Skillrex tracks, etc., but there are some more gentle examples out there.

> Also, I, for one, think the OP should put a link to his display in the comments.

Much as I appreciate the interest (and I genuinely do - it's fun to show off), I'm a big fan of the self-link policy around here. Should it become necessary/relevant to the conversation, I'll happily go back to the mods and ask their blessing, but I'm pretty sure they have better things to be doing right now :)
posted by PeteTheHair at 7:50 PM on December 23, 2020 [1 favorite]

I thought this was delightful, thank you very much!
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:12 PM on December 23, 2020

On the map, what do the snowflake and bulb represent?
posted by CheeseLouise at 6:18 AM on December 24, 2020 [1 favorite]