Star

I built the first star in 1988.  It was 5 feet in diameter, had hundreds of feet of wiring and weighed a LOT!  Around the periphery of the star I had built small compartments just big enough for a 10 W bulb to fit in.  I covered these areas with white translucent plastic.  On the inside of the star, sort of "a star within a star", was the electronics that lit the peripheral lights in light chaser fashion.   At first I had fluorescent bulbs in the center section, covered with red plastic, but they wouldn't always start properly in winter, so I replaced them with 20 ten-watt clear bulbs.  This display weighed about 80 lbs and was very difficult and awkward trying to get it up on the roof every year.

A few years later I added strobe lights to the points of the star so the star would "twinkle".  I had some design problems with these and they wouldn't always work.  They would work in my freezer, but they wouldn't work outside!  Because of the high voltage nature of the PC boards I made, and the poor routing of the traces, I suspect the humidity was causing traces to short out.

In 1998 I rebuilt the star, making it smaller, lighter, and 5 points instead of 6.   I redesigned the strobes, using perf-board and point-to-point wiring instead of a printed circuit board.  These work well.   The light chaser is no longer in use.  The center of the star has a motor turning a  mirror-wheel, with yellow lights reflecting off the wheel.