There are basically a couple paths to take if you are interested in animating your lights. The first is the easier path of purchasing complete ready-to-use units such as Light-O-Rama. The other extreme is to build everything yourself including designing the devices, etching the printed circuit boards and building/testing them. Finally, there is an area in between which covers the entire range of complexity.

Light-O-Rama

I started out with the Light-O-Rama brand controllers - specifically two of the LOR1602W models. These are rock solid boxes (with a rock solid price unfortunately...) that each provide 16 channels of control. The units use a proprietary protocol over an RS-485 serial interface. They communicate to your PC via a "dongle" that converts USB to RS-485. If you have multiple controllers, they can be "daisy-chained" from one to the other so that you only need the one cable going back to the PC. The PC runs the sequencing/show software that drives the controllers. Light-O-Rama has accessories that allow wireless communication between the PC and the controllers and also another device that does away with the PC altogether (sort of - you still need to create the animation sequences on the PC but they can be transferred to the controller flash module and run there). The sequence editing is done using software provided by Light-O-Rama called LOR2.

DMX

The LOR controllers can also run as "dumb" controllers via the DMX-512 protocol over the RS-485 cable. DMX-512 is a standard used all over in concerts/shows to control the lights. This allows the LOR boxes to interface to the lights but you use specialized DMX software to run the show (typically along with other DMX equipment). I switched my two controllers to run via DMX and control the boxes via a free software program called Vixen. I did this because I added more DIY (Do It Yourself) type hardware which only runs through Vixen and not the software provided by Light-O-Rama. I originally started with the Enttec Open DMX USB dongle which is a very basic device but gets the job done. Some folks reported problems with this type of dongle however so I went with a DIY version of the Enttec Pro DMX USB dongle.  This came as a kit that I put together and I now have two of them to control all my lights.

Lynx FreeStyle

For 2009 I planned to add a DIY controller called the Helix which supports 128 channels. After building it and doing some testing, I decided it wasn't quite right for my setup. Since this left a pretty large hole in my configuration, I found the Lynx FreeStyle controller which also supports 128 channels. This controller (as well as the Helix) rely upon external SSR modules to switch the AC to the lights. This takes a bit more work since you have to put the SSRs into enclosures and run Cat5 between them and the controller boards but it allows for a lot of flexibility.

Renard Simple

I added LED strips (discussed below) to my setup in 2009 and I had used up all my channels for AC setup on my LOR and FreeStyle controllers. A member on the DIYC forum came up with a controller based on the popular Renard series that supported sixteen channels and used external SSRs. This made the board very compact and they were very easy to build. I etched, drilled and built up about ten of these but only ended up using four of them to drive 64 channels for my strips. Instead of using AC SSRs, I used DC SSRs which I also etched and built myself. These were driven with 5vdc and ran through Cat5 to my strips on my house. I am no longer using these boards in my display since I have converted everything to DMX and these do not support that.

Ren48LSD

When I originally built my LED strips, I only used the RGB (Red/Green/Blue) channels on them and did not use the White LED channel. For 2010, I decided to add the White LEDs which meant my Renard Simple/DCSSR stuff would need more channels. Instead of messing with that, I designed my own DC controller based upon the Renard series. I dubbed it the "Ren48LSD" which stands for LED Strip Driver and it has 48 channels - or twelve RGB+W bundles. This allowed me to run twelve strips off each controller and greatly simplified the entire setup. I plan to have 3-4 of these for various parts of the display. I offered boards through a group buy early in 2010 and sold 108 boards. I made changes to the board to support higher voltages (up to 24vdc) using a new regulator circuit and that allowed it to run cool. The second Group Buy just completed and about 45 were sold to members of DIYC.

LED SuperStrips

The LED SuperStrips are .75"x16" strips that hold 18 RGB SuperFlux LEDs and 18 White SuperFlux LEDs. All of the LEDs are in parallel for each color and each has a current limiting resistor. I have mine configured to run off 5vdc and each color draws 360mA (18 LEDs x 20mA each). These are driven from my Ren48LSD board and I have 20 strips installed on the house under the eaves and another five strips are loose until I find a place to put them.

LEDTriks

Another new feature for 2009 will be an "LEDTriks" panel. This is another DIY piece of hardware that is based on the scrolling LED signs you've probably seen around. The LEDTriks controller connects to the PC and it in turn drives 1-4 LED panels. Each LED panel has a matrix of 16 x 48 LEDs or 768 total. Originally, many folks built their own panels using pegboard from the hardware store but someone developed a custom printed circuit board to hold the LEDs. As it is a DIY project, each of the LEDs needs to be soldered onto a PCB panel so there are 3,072 solder connections alone (there are other components besides the LEDs)! The display is used for multiple purposes - it can be used to show the FM Radio station to tune to, the song that will be playing, information about the display and possibly a tickler to donate to a charity. The cost of the unit is considerably less than a comparable built scrolling LED sign of that size but it does take a lot more effort to get it going... I have a full set of four LED panels making a 32x96 display that I hope to mount above the garage door.

The LEDTriks controller initially came out with a parallel port interface. This has a couple problems - the first being that it took a lot of CPU power to keep the display running (essentially you are constantly "printing" the screens). Another problem is that fewer computers (especially laptops) have parallel ports anymore. To get around this limitation, some folks came up with the "Triks-C" board which has it's own built in micro controller. The micro controller takes care of all the LED panel updating instead of the PC doing it and interfaces to the LEDTriks controller card. Essentially it is a smart serial to parallel converter. Both the LEDTriks controller and Triks-C board attach to the back of the LED panel boards. It uses RS-485 to communicate to the PC. The Vixen software is used to generate text and/or animations and these get sent to the Triks-C board periodically.p>

EDM FM Transmitter

The animated sequences look very strange if you don't hear the music that accompanies them! It just looks like a bunch of lights flickering on/off. Since most people drive by in their cars, the natural method is to use an FM transmitter and have it broadcast directly into their car. I purchased an FM stereo transmitter from EDM Design in South Africa. It has excellent sound quality and can be configured to transmit at 1 to 100mW. The FCC doesn't allow you to run at 100mW so I turn it down quite a bit yet still get about a half-block or so of clear reception. The transmitter plugs into the show/sequence computer's line or headphone out jack.

Leaping Arches

A very common animated lighting feature is called a "leaping arch". Basically these are PVC pipes (usually 3/4" or 1") around 10-15 feet long completely wrapped in multiple strands of lights. Typically there are 6 to 12 strands of light each on a separate channel. This allows you to "leap" the light from one end of the arch to the other and back and forth, etc. Some of these can be very elaborate with multiple colors of lights wrapped over each other. It's a really neat effect and is a real eye catcher for the crowd. I built three arches in 2009 with each one in a different color with nine channels for each. I would have liked to have each one be a multicolored arch but LED lights are quite expensive so I went with a single color but at least each arch is a different color. I'm hoping to move to something more elaborate for 2011 using RGB nodes.