Home of England's biggest and greatest web controlled seasonal light show !

All Material located on this website is copyrighted to Mathlin.co.uk, written consent from Luc Mathlin must be confirmed before any content can be used externally, content on this website can be referred to at any point, unless satiated otherwise.

Intro To FAQ: Welcome to mathlin.co.uk’s official FAQ. This page is to addressee all the questions that I get asked most often about the Halloween and Christmas webcams/controls.

 

How did this website start ? Well early in 2009 I saw Alek’s Controllable light show for celiac disease (which you should check out if you haven't already seen it, you can do that here) and I thought that it was spectacular, so I decided to attempt to duplicate the design but in England, so people who cant be online when Alek’s show goes live have something else to view. Well it has taken a few years, but in 2011 we finally managed to have a fully functioning system that anyone around the world could control.

 

How does the display work ? Well, first the dedicated server will take your request for a zone to be turned on or off, then it will decide if it’s the correct time of day to control it or not, then if all is ok it will send the command to my home server which will then send out a X10 command to the correct devices which will then turn on or off depending on the command. After the light has be turned on or off a IP camera will capture what is going on, that will then be taken via my home server then uploaded to the main dedicated webserver which will then rebroadcasts it to everyone watching online.

 

Can you show me how to set up my own website ? Unfortunately not, mainly because the code and soft wear used for this is very specialised to my own show, this means that a lot of code would need to be re-written to make it work with a different setup. Also if many people where to create there own copy of this show, less people would end up watching Alek’s show which would end up with less money getting donated to celiac disease. So for the current time I will not be distributing any kind of code from this set up, thanks for showing interest in the area but hopefully you can understand why I don't.

 

How popular is this ? Well on a normal every day we can expect 10-25 people to be watching our show (this number is increasing each year as people refer each other to the show). During special times such as Halloween night and Christmas eve we can average 100-300 people watching (again this number is increasing each year).

 

You just copied Alek’s show ! I get told this a lot, well in all honesty yes I did (well the idea), you will see some similarity's between this website and his, but the biggest difference between the two is the time zone. My show starts runs and ends before his even starts. This will allow people who are die hard addicts of controlling lights to be able to have maximum viewing time as well as people who cant stay up late to watch Alek's show (young children mainly). I don't try to take any of his credit for the idea and I urge you to visit his website after mine has finished.