What do you get if you combine Christmas, jury-rigged electronics, 22,000 lights, over a dozen inflatables, webcams, and custom server software running on a Linux server? Alek Komarnitsky’s controllable Christmas lights, of course! Every year, Alek — who is one of the world wide web’s most infamous OGs — lights up his house with 22,000 lights and over a dozen inflatables, and then lets strangers on the internet control them all via a gaudy (but completely W3C-compliant) website. Why? To raise money for research into celiac disease, which his kids were diagnosed with a few years ago.
Alek’s amazing, and W3C-validated controllable Christmas lights interface
Starting at 6pm Eastern Time (4pm Mountain Time), you can hit up Alek Komarnitsky’s website and control his Christmas lights and inflatables in real time. New this year is the ability to send text messages to Santa’s Workshop — a festively illuminated office where Alek sits and works while wearing a Santa hat. There are three webcams that allow you to see your handiwork in real-time. Alek maintains that the rapidly blinking lights, which consume around 70 amps at full load, entertains the neighbors rather than annoys them. In an interview with Slashdot, Alek says that most of the lights are standard, cheap incandescent bulbs rather than LEDs, because he buys most of the lights at garage sales or when they’re heavily discounted. He also notes that, because he only runs the lights in December, it would take a long time for the increased LED efficiency to pay off.
Via: ExtremeTech
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