About Dirknerkle's Lights

Who's 'Dirknerkle'?
Dirknerkle is my nickname on many web sites, and in particular, DIYC(www.doityourselfchristmas.com). It's a bit of a takeoff on the old Rowan and Martin show, Laugh-In where one of their frequent sketches included an interchange between two guys named Fred Farkle and Ferd Berfle. The names were just stupid-sounding -- I loved that and still chuckle at the thought of hearing them. 'Dirknerkle' was born one day after I had done something stupid (like all of us do from time to time) and I was trying to explain it to someone else in the context of what "Fred Farkle" might have done, but I garbled my words and out came "Dirknerkle" instead. It stuck.

My real name is Dave Haberle. This sub-web is actually hosted on my company's web site. My partner, Scott Turnbull and I own Club Data so this seemed like a good place to store it. Scott is an avid motorcyclist and zooms all over the country on his Harley, and I have every reason to think that someday he'll put photos of his trips on the web site, too. You can read about our company and what we do on the main web site (www.clubdata.com) so I won't address that here. But essentially, I run the technical side of our company while Scott runs the management side of things.

How I got here
I've always loved Christmas lights -- going back to as early as I can remember when my parents would let me actually touch them and hang them on the tree. That goes back to the early-1950s so that gives you an idea that I've been around for awhile...  I have a varied background in a lot of areas, but throughout them all has been a keen interest in "gizmos." Because a computer is the ultimate gizmo (and I use them all the time), why not connect it to some other electronic circuitry and make it into a UBER-gizmo? One thing led to another and, well, here we are.

Soon after my wife and I built and moved our family into our present home (1990) I built some frames out of 1" PVC pipe that fit around the shutters/windows. I mounted 200 clear white Christmas mini-lights on each of them. For many years, our decoration was a simple, static display of all-clear white mini-lights and while it was extremely bright and made it easy to find our house in the neighborhood, it was boring. Our neighbors always enjoyed them, one saying, "Oh good, the Haberle's have their lights up. Now it's Christmas!" Some years I never got around to putting them up and I opted for taking the easy way out: "Awww, I'll just throw a couple nets of lights on the bushes and be done with it."

Then the amateur video of Carson Williams'  display went viral in 2005. Somebody had emailed the video to me as an example of a "guy with too much time on his hands."  I immediately knew how he did it: a home computer and some sort of electronic switching system. I was immediately hooked; I had to find out more; after all, here was a real example of my "UBER-gizmo!"

However, some family things happened that put everything on hold and then my partner and I bought the company and well, sometimes you have to put things on the back-burner for a long time. But I never forgot that video; I never lost the desire to learn more -- it stuck to me like Velcro on my brain. In mid-January 2009 after taking down my pitiful light display from Christmas 2008 I decided it was time to dig in. The business was almost paid for and was doing well, family issues had long since been resolved, and I had a few dollars available (well, at least when I opened my wallet, no moths flew out...) A few minutes later, I had found many Internet web sites related to Christmas light displays. I printed out everything I could find, read-up on electronic circuitry, looked at a photo of our house and started to pencil up some ideas. I soon built a home-brew 48-channel system using four Velleman USB digital experimenter interface boards, a CAT5 patch panel and some digital relays of my own design and in testing it worked really great (picture to right). So I said to myself, "Okay, this is good. I can do this. This will be fun again!"

Then in February 2009, I signed-in as a supporting member of DIYC for only $20/year, and started asking questions. I read and studied some more, experimented with a few home-built circuits and discovered that the Velleman controller that I had developed was only the tip of the iceberg. There was a lot more out there -- much cooler equipment. I had to have it.

Since then, my original 48 channel home-brew Velleman rig has been replaced with 584 channels of blinky-flashy capability, of which I only used 112 in 2009. (I built for the future and in the process, learned not only how all this stuff works, but how to design them, etch my own circuit boards, build, repair and modify them, too.) It turned into an 11-month project but it's been a terrific ride -- the most continuously enjoyable hobby I've ever had. (Note: some of you may know me from my professional golf career. That was never a hobby -- that was a lifestyle. I don't play anymore, by the way -- too many neck and back surgeries and besides, I've been there and done that. Don't want to do it anymore.)

About the lights
2009 saw about 10,000 lights in our display. All were the typical incandescent mini-lights that sell for about $2-$3 per string of 100 lights. I didn't have to buy many because I had a lot left over from prior years as you can see by the box of neatly-balled lights in this photo. Wrapping them into a softball-sized ball is a great way to store them because not only don't they tangle, installing them is easy because you plug in the end plug and just unwind them as you hang them on trees, branches, etc. It's such an elegantly simple solution to storing light strings that after you do it the first time, you'll whack yourself in the head for not having thought of it before. This single plastic storage box can easily hold 64 strings of lights.

About the Computer
No need to show a picture here -- you know what a typical home computer looks like. The one I use is different however insofar as it is used for only one thing: Christmas lights. It's not connected to the Internet or our home network and therefore, it doesn't have anti-virus software, word processors, email, or any other common software applications installed on it.

About the Electronics
While the really technical information is here, suffice to say that my flagship controller is essentially an Olsen 595. An Olsen 595  can control up to 64 individual channels of lights, and has several add-on options that extend its capability. In its native state, a 595 board can turn lights on and off extremely quickly -- much faster than the eye can discern. One of the add-ons I use is called a Renard 595-Converter; it allows controlling the 595 board so that the quick on/off capability operates so as to make it appear to gradually dim the light intensity all the way from 100% (full on) down to 1% (virtually off). This makes for a very nice effect instead of just either full-on or completely off. This photo shows two of my four 595's (click the photo for an enlarged view) in full test mode with all channels "on." A common Olsen 595 installation is typically indoors and the many control cables (16 per 595 board!) run from the controller out into the yard to the actual mini-controllers (called SSRs) which physically control the lights.

Here's an example of an "SSR." The acronym stands for "solid state relay" and it's actually an electronic version of an on/off switch The computer sends a command to the light controller; the light controller decodes the command to determine which light is supposed to be acted on, and it sends the proper code to that respective SSR "switch." The SSR can accommodate 4 individual channels (hence the 4 different colored lights on this SSR) and the SSR then activates the proper "switch" that lets the electricity go to the light string. It's a very, very fast chain-reaction type of operation because electricity is, well, very, very fast!

Another controller in my system is the Renard SS24. An SS24 can control 24 channels and has all the electronics built-in that decode the computer's signals, translate them into the proper light controls and actually power the lights, too -- all in one instead of having a separate controller and SSR setup. This picture (click to enlarge) shows a completed SS24 in a watertight enclosure ready to install outside. I have three of these 24-channel units and four 8-channel units. Wayne James invented the Renard SS line of light controllers along with a fellow named Phil Short. Wayne lives in North Carolina; Phil lives in California. This picture also shows an additional gizmo that was made available to owners of Renard SS controllers in the fall of 2009: a plug-in wireless adapter called the Ren-W. It's the small gold-colored circuit board in the upper left of the picture and makes it possible to put the controller anywhere out in the yard or even across the street and control it wirelessly from the house, eliminating the normal control cable. I can take credit for the Ren-W -- I invented it in the fall of 2009 -- it's one of my contributions to this great hobby and all the wonderful friends who've helped me along the way.

There are other kinds of do-it-yourself controllers with different names such as the Grinch, Helix, FireGod, Lynx and more, all created by incredibly talented people who are just as "possessed" with this hobby as I have become.

Caution
This hobby, once started, is quite consuming... as in you'll think about it day and night, you'll try to come up with new ways to light your house, more lights here, more there, what if I hung some over the.... etc. If you want to get involved, you're virtually guaranteed to have just a fantastic time at it. But once you start, it's very, very hard to stop. Come to think of it, it's that an ideal hobby to have?

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