Holiday by MooresCloud is the world’s first connected, intelligent and easy-to-use set of holiday lights, perfect for the Christmas tree, writes Paul Skelton.

“Colours tell a story,” inventor, author and entrepreneur Mark Pesce says. 

“Colours tell a story and Holiday by MooresCloud lets everyone speak the language. You can set it to show your team colours before a big game – or national colours for the World Cup. For every mood, décor and season there’s a colour, pattern or animation to match.”

With Holiday, the MooresCloud team says it has realised its vision of sensitive, responsive illumination for everyone.

Putting the brains of a smartphone into each 7m string of 50 lights, Holiday by MooresCloud has the capability to display countless patterns, drive animations and run applications.

 “In a decade, this is the way all Christmas lights will work,” Mark says.

 “The idea of having lighting that is intelligent, that can be controlled, has been around for at least 10 years.

“In fact, I tried to do something along these lines about 10 years ago but the technology wasn’t ready. It was expensive, it was hard and it required a lot of wiring so it really wasn’t anything you would expect consumers to be able to pick up and use.”

Mark says he was convinced to revisit his idea after a trip to Thailand.

“Last year, while I was in Bangkok, a lot of things collided – LEDs were everywhere and people now had access to miniature computers like the Raspberry Pi. I realised that we had hit a critical threshold where a lot of what I initially thought we couldn’t do was now possible, and possible at a consumer price point.

“Initially, it was quite difficult to explain to people what our product did. People are used to the idea that lights go on and off, possibly with some dimming, so that’s what they expect out of a lighting device.

“When we tried to push that boundary with people we lost them. They couldn’t comprehend the possibilities so toward the end of last year, when we looked at the various form factors that would work for our technology, we thought of fairy lights. As soon as we told people that, they understood. Even though older fairy lights aren’t intelligent, people believe they are.”

MooresCloud isn’t Mark’s first venture as an inventor. In 1991 he founded Ono-Sendai Corporation, the first consumer virtual reality startup, inventing a sensor for low-cost virtual reality applications, adopted by Sega Corporation for its Virtua VR head-mounted display.

Also, in 1994, Mark co-invented the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML), the first standard for interactive 3D graphics on the worldwide web. While chairing the VRML Architecture Group, a consortium of industry and academic stakeholders furthering VRML standards development, he founded BlitCom, the first startup to use VRML to deliver streaming entertainment.

“I’m not sure if there’s a direct line between my history with virtual reality and MooresCloud, but I suppose there is a link in the sense that the idea behind virtual reality is having an environment that is synthetic yet responsive.

“I began to understand is that the synthetic responsiveness you have in the virtual world was something that we would be able to bring over into the real world once computing was pervasive and cheap enough. In a sense, the virtual world is a staging ground for what the real world has become.”

For Holiday to work, Mark says, an entire computer was fitted into the light’s structure.

“The lights are connected to the internet – they’re on WiFi, and the computer has a web server built into it. You don’t need to download an app; you simply use the browser on your smartphone, tablet or computer to talk to the browser on the string of lights.

“We did this so we didn’t have to create an app for Android and one for iOS, we simply work on all devices.”

Mark explains that fairy lights are simply a starting point for the development of a fully controllable, intelligent lighting solution.

“We’re in a beautiful time of transition. In 10 years time, all lighting will be networked LEDs, most of which will be full spectrum, and once we have that capacity then people will want to do amazing things with them.

“We plan to build an entire integrated software and hardware control system so that all of the lights in a house, whether they’re made by us or someone else, will be controllable and manageable by our devices. In fact, as long as you have just one of our devices in your house then you have control over the whole network.

“People have never thought about lighting like this before.”

Holiday by MooresCloud is currently only available for direct purchase from www.moorescloud.com.