12/15/2025
It’s so fun meeting and talking to those of you who come to watch! I get a lot of questions like “How long did this take?” Or “Who did you hire to do this?”.
So to give some context, our display was built by me, my wife helped push some pixels and super awesome neighbors either loaned me a ladder or helped hoist some of the big spinners.
I designed the layout in software called xLights, it’s free which is the best price! This is the hardest part of the hobby, by far. This is the software used to sequence the shows.
The props, those come from companies who specialize in making them. I use props from EFL, Gilbert Engineering, Pixel Paradise and Boscoyo. The arches were made by me out of pex pipe, seed pixels and I 3D printed the bases. The roofline and vertical lights are just pvc pipe drilled to hold 12mm bullet pixels.
The controllers/remotes are a combination of Falcons and Kulp. I 3D printed the mounts for the cases and then wired up the power supplies and pigtails. The show runs off a Raspberry Pi running FPP which is a show control software.
The sequences are all purchased from professional sequence companies. I modify them to work with my display and adjust them to match my vision. Next year I’ll have sequences entirely programed by myself, this is what takes the most time.
As for time, I have somewhere north of 1000+ hours into building the Halloween and Christmas displays. Christmas was easier as a lot of the infrastructure was left over from Halloween, even with the Christmas display being more than twice as big.
Fast facts:
Halloween Pixel Count: 4,500
Christmas Pixel Count: 13,434
Controllers: 4 including show player
Smart Remotes: 9
3D Printed Parts: 17lbs of PETG
Radio: 7w FM transmitter connected to a dipole antenna 15ft above the ground.
Halloween and Christmas 2026 will be in the 20,000 pixel range. We’re adding a 12ft mega tree and covering the whole garage in a giant Matrix. I have Halloween ‘26 already designed and laid out in xLights.
If you are thinking about doing your own display, feel free to reach out. I would love to see more people get in to this hobby, big or small, doesn’t matter, it’s all fun!
Thank you for all your support!
