ROUND ROCK, Texas (KXAN) — Mark Reyes’ Christmas lights display is something the entire neighborhood can enjoy — mainly because they can tell it what to do.
Reyes, who lives in the Paloma Lake neighborhood of Round Rock, set his lights up using voice command through Google Assistant. All it takes to get the Yuletide party started is a simple, “Hey Google, turn on the Christmas lights.”
Reyes says it’s fully-customizable, too. Friends and neighbors can build their own sequences for the lights, give it a name and then Google takes care of the rest.
“I love the idea of developing something that the community can appreciate and interact with,” Reyes said. “My kids love seeing the automations with Google, so they set the target for me.”
Reyes is a engineering and development manager at Spectrum, so he certainly has the technical know-how to get pretty elaborate with his displays. He said that this is his first year back to utilizing lights automation because he was busy raising his two kids the past few years.
He says he’s using this to help teach his kids development methods and programming so they can apply it in school projects.
“I try and challenge myself with projects like this and illustrate taking an idea you dream up and take the steps to accomplish it,” Reyes said.