Holiday Light Holder

Made on a Glowforge
#1

This year I decided to do something I’ve wanted to do for years. Put up year-'round lights on our house. So I spent more money than I should have and bought some lights. I got 3 strings of them. One for the roofline, one for one window, and one for another set of windows. So, I started small and did the smaller window. I found some crappy light holder things at Home Depot. They were… okay. The result was this:

Screenshot_20201212-163659_Gallery
Screenshot_20201212-163659_Gallery1440×3040 654 KB

Pretty enough. But eh… a bit messy.

So I looked for some better light hangers out there. There kinda aren’t any great ones that I could find. What to do… what to do… Oh, right! I have a frickin’ laser! So, I quickly made a couple of measurements and made this totally simple, but totally effective “device” out of draftboard as a test (or I might even keep it and see if it lasts).

IMG_20201125_163402_01
IMG_20201125_163402_014032×3024 3.34 MB

And here it is in practice:

IMG_20201125_163905_01
IMG_20201125_163905_013024×4032 2.21 MB

It simply press-fits right into place!!! Nice part is, you can’t even see the lights from inside when they’re on!

And here’s the ultimate result of that window: (Sorry I didn’t have them in a cool color mode on this pic.)

IMG_20201125_211224_01
IMG_20201125_211224_013024×4032 2.01 MB

Evenly-spaced, organized lights!

Happy holidays!

68 Likes
#2

Fun and very practical!

2 Likes
#3

Happy holidays Tom!

You’re not going to get me to think about doing this. Nope. Not even a little bit…

7 Likes
#4

Smart and practical. I don’t have that kind of patience!

4 Likes
#5

Happy Holidays Tom!
Where you been man?

4 Likes
#6

Ha! So, I know you’re not in the market and never will be. But, just for fun, let’s say… for just a moment… that you… I dunno… wanted to help “a friend” with some lights. :wink: Dude… These lights from Twinkly?.. They’re pretty awesome. You can connect different variations of them to create a “scene” and they actually know where each other are and the lights can sequence across them! You control them from a mobile app. They have a built-in timer. If they last me at least 2 years, I’ll consider them to be money-well-spent. If they don’t, it will have been a fun, but lightly-pricey experiment. :slight_smile:

Thanks! You too! I dunno… The forum lost it’s charm for me. Got kicked out of the Super-Friends Group ‘cause I couldn’t keep up with everything. And then with all of the rules about where you’re allowed to post settings and link this to that… And then answering the same questions over and over and over again (my hat is off to those who continue to do that, but I couldn’t. People need to frickin’ search before they ask!) So, I dunno. I pop in here and there, read some, post some. But I see no future where I’m a “Regular” anymore. :slight_smile: Hope all’s well with you and so many others that I do miss talking with!!!

11 Likes
#7

Thanks Tom, I hope life has been treating you well… in spite of the twilight zone.

3 Likes
#8

That is how a lot of my experiments go too… Oh no. I followed the link :slight_smile:

3 Likes
#9

Very nice. Good thinking

1 Like
#10

Neat project! Good to see you, Tom!

3 Likes
#11

Wow! I wish I had that kind of patience. We went with battery-operated, light sensor candles in the windows. Yep, right now, I’m that kind of lazy…

3 Likes
#12

Yay! Nice to see a post from you. Yep, keeping up with the forum is a strain. All in all it’s a plus in my life. I had to drop frequent visits to my CNC forum and just hanging on with GF. Trying to get my new topics down to zero. Hope all is well with you and the family is in good shape.

Whether or not you are frequent here, you will never lose your founder status and your contribution to this forum made a huge difference.

These days it is a lot of rehash, but there are frequent new projects that inspire me.

5 Likes
#13

I love that, Tom…I’m just enough OCD that making those lights so tidy like that is really cool.

3 Likes
#14

Aw gees, Tom…I clicked the link, too. I have a severe weakness for any kinds of lights. These are amazing. I might just want to drape my living room with them, year round. :wink: :smile: Good to see you here…even if for only a short drop in.

3 Likes
#15

The lights are pretty great. The app is… lacking. And I’ve voiced that opinion to the company and they actually responded and said there’s going to be an update to the app soon that should help with things. All-in-all, so far I know two friends who bought them after I showed them to them. Sure, I’ll only use them a handful of times a year, but those times’ll be fun!

2 Likes
#16

Gorgeous. I’m inspired…

I wanna do my lights out big on my house, but probably going to wait until next year to go crazy. But maybe this year I’ll do a window or two like this.

I also love Twinkly lights. Have them on our tree inside, and one string for outside. But I may have to get more.

A Twitter friend of mine has built an open-source version of Twinkly:


for his tree. It’s lacking the visual mapping Twinkly can do - which is impressively awesome for a tree - but may be less necessary for house lights (where your lights are more likely in order around windows etc.
2 Likes
#17

Great upgrade!

#18

I see a new business and product in your future! I would totally order this with my window measurements. You are on to something big my friend!

#19

Wow just wow!! The updated lights look great! Very streamlined!!