CHRISTMAS CREATIONS

FROM  AUSTRALIA

CONTROL BOXES:The pictures below show what we use here in Australia to  power our outdoor Christmas Lights. All of the outdoor lights run with a 24 or 36  volt stepdown transformer. This makes them safe for outdoor use as well as conforming with State regulations. The big advantage is that when you run 80,000 plus lights your electricity bill doesn't change that much that you have to worry about it. All of the control boxes where made my me, and the two digital cards we purchased in kit form and made them up. We have four 24 line I/O cards running this year, which gives us a total of 96 digital lines.

The Solid State Replays inside the control boxes are 10 amp rated so nearly all of the relays are loaded with alot of lights all at once as the amount of power that is being drawn at one time is VERY minimal.

The picture above is of the Control Boxes connected to the transformers.  About 100  double adapter plugs and about the same again of the four way  power boards. The pic in the middle shows  the "splitter box" and the SSR boxes with the surface mounted 240v female plug. The right pic shows the digital card with the IDC cable - that plugs into the splitter box.

The above pic shows the two digital I/O cards sitting in the computer at the far end. The pic in the middle is the splitter box. IDC cable is "split" into  individual strands to access each digital line. The right pic is the inside of the "splitter box" and how each individual IDC strand is soldered onto the cat 5 data cable that connects into the SSR boxes.

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