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Lighting up the neighborhood

Student brings back Christmas lights display, sets up HofC donation box

Marshalltown High School freshman Marek Jablonski is back to lighting up his yard with Christmas lights after a similar project turned heads in 2017. One major addition this year is a donations drop-box, and all money will go toward the House of Compassion. The display and drop-box can be found at 1737 Country Club Lane.

When an interest in tinkering with electronics and a love of the holiday season combine, the results can be vivid.

Marshalltown High School freshman Marek Jablonski, 14, has put his talent for creating bright, intricate Christmas light displays to work for a second year, with the project set up outside his house on the west side of Marshalltown.

“It has a software that allows you to program when each channel turns on and off, and it synchronizes the music with what you program, and then it sends a signal to a controller, which actually turns them on and off,” he said of programming the project, which combines the festive lights with music.

The idea of setting up such a display came to Jablonski when he was in seventh grade at Miller Middle School.

“I’ve been interested in doing it since the summer of 2015, when I started looking into it,” he said. “One year later, I got it up and running.”

Jablonski said he spent a lot of time in his childhood playing with electronics- and circuit-based toys and equipment. He said his education at Marshalltown Schools helped build his knowledge of such systems.

“While I learned a lot of the specifics by myself, the basic principals and how I got advanced … is from school,” he said, citing the time he was given last year in his Miller Extended Learning Program (XLP) class to work on the project. “It gave me a dedicated time to work on my programming, it was harder to get distracted by other things.”

New to the display this year is a second controller.

“That doubles the amount of channels I can turn on and off,” he said of the extra equipment.

Another change this year doesn’t have to do with the lights display, but with helping the community. A donation box for the House of Compassion hangs, lit up, next to the display, and all money received will go to the agency.

Jablonski’s mother, Bethany Jablonski, said she’s proud of her son.

“It’s been fun to see him work really hard at it,” she said. “It was his idea from the beginning, and he has just taken it on and works really hard.”

Later this week, Jablonski said the lights will be on full display in the evenings.

“The display starts on the night of Black Friday,” he said, adding it will run from about 5-10 p.m. every night.

Jablonski said he enjoys the holiday season, and that interest helped spark creativity as he planned the project.

“It may not be why I decided to do it, but it definitely gave me a big inspiration to get into it,” he said, adding he plans on continuing the project for years to come.

The display and the House of Compassion donations drop-box can be found at 1737 Country Club Lane, just before the Elmwood Country Club entrance.

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Contact Adam Sodders at (641) 753-6611 or asodders@timesrepublican.com

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