Family puts their Christmas lights online, allows the Internet to control sections of the house remotely

A family in Fairbanks, Alaska, has added online controls to the Christmas lights hanging on their home, a decision which has proven remarkably popular with site visitors thus far into the holiday season. 

Upon visiting the page, guests will see a live video feed of Ken and Rebecca-Ellen Woods’ home, along with a list of relatively simple on / off options which control lights around the couple’s windows, railings, and doors, as well as a Christmas tree in the home’s garden. 

Per a recent look into its traffic, the page is generating an average visit of hundreds of people every minute, all of whom are coming to the page to simply turn the house’s lights on and off. 

The Woods family started putting their lights online back in 2010, but this year’s control system received a couple of upgrades. Ken, who works in IT, built a dedicated computer-controlled switch box that now has ports to every set of lights plugged into the house. This was done to avoid overloading the system, and provide better control.

Also added was an active users counter as well as a local temperature display. 

The project received its first significant bump in recognition when ABC News covered it. During this particular interview, Ken told the News program that he’s gotten used to the constantly changing display, saying that it was easier to live with once he adjusted the control unit to ports for the outside lights only. 

Worth noting: there are no other houses near the Woods residency, so there haven’t been any neighbor complaints about the flashing display.

And in terms of the dollars and cents cost for this project, the Woods anticipate paying a bill somewhere in the neighborhood of $400 as millions of people the world over continue to come to the site to play around with the family’s decorations during the holiday season. They update this cost via their local power provider’s estimated bill service and update the projected cost on a daily basis.

For you chance to play with the light display, head over to christmasinfairbanks.com