Every year, I struggle with finding the time frame for our show. The road my house and church are located is a well traveled shortcut road from a few main roads in my town. The perpendicular road looking at our light show does not permit parking until 6 PM. I also have neighbors and want to be respectful of not pumping out music all hours of the night with cars backing up down the street.
For these reasons, I run my show from 5 – 9 PM Sunday through Thursday for neighbors with kids and keep it on until 10 PM on weekends. I have the sound to get slightly softer at 8 PM every night and it turns off entirely at 8:30 PM on weekdays and 9 PM on weekends. This is fine, because viewers can always tune their cars to 89.3 FM to listen along!
That all said, without exterior sound on, the lights themselves are not that annoying as long as traffic does not back up. Using a new plugin for Falcon Pi Player, I will be trying out allowing after hours songs to be picked and played. By visiting christmasatthenietzers.remotefalcon.com, those driving by after the show stops daily until 11 PM can pick a song to play from our growing list. Radios can still be tuned in and as there will be just a simple animation displaying between song choices, I hope that traffic does not back up.
So, if you come by after hours until 11 PM, give it a try! This is a work in progress, so if it doesn’t work for you, let us know.
