Mark Anderson, owner, Anderson’s Seed and Garden
With the advent of LED lights and technology in the last five to eight years, I knew it would not take long for some truly innovative ideas to evolve into the realm of holiday lighting. We’ve seen LED lights come a long way: the colors are warmer, the cost has decreased, they last 10-20 times longer than incandescent lights, and they hardly use any electricity. Even with all those advancements, I just haven’t been “wowed” with any of the new lights the last few years. Everything new has only had small improvements or tweaks, but kept essentially the same features and benefits — until now.
Imagine being able to install your holiday lights one time (they’ll last about five to eight years before you have to replace the wiring. Then, leave them up all year, change the colors, set the run times, and schedule which days they run all from a remote application on your smartphone. I can do that right now.
When the Aggie football team beat BYU in Provo this year, all my lights were blue. For the Fourth of July, our house was covered in red, white, and blue lights. On Valentine’s Day, pink and red adorned our eaves. Halloween glowed purple and orange. You get the picture.
LightStream is the name of the lighting system, and it’s very easy to set up and run. Using standard outdoor wiring (C7 or E12 sockets), the LightStream Retrofit bulbs, a LightStream Controller (up to 125 bulbs), and as many LightStream Switches as needed (up to 125 bulbs each), you can run literally thousands of bulbs in perfect synchronization from the same system. Use a couple of strands to cover your house, one down the fence line, and a few on the big evergreens in your front yard and they will all light together in unison and change colors on command. It only took us a couple of hours to sync all the bulbs, install the wiring, and link all the controllers and switches together over their own wireless network. We’ve enjoyed them ever since.
Here’s how to do it:
Step 1: Download the LightStream 2 app on your smartphone.
Step 2: Pair the controller to your phone by scanning the QR code on the back of the controller.
Step 3: Screw bulbs into the socketed wire.
Step 4: Plug wire into controller, then power up the controller and additional switches by plugging them into a power source.
Step 5: Pair or sync the bulbs, switches, and controller all at once through the LightStream app.
Step 6: Hang light strands wherever you desire!
Step 7: Control light colors, timing, fades, and many other functions through the LightStream app.
It really is that easy. Set it up once, and enjoy a variety of colors and options whenever you want. Now you can have custom lights on your house, in your yard, and even on your indoor décor all year round.
