Broomall father develops app to find all the best Christmas light displays

Thursday, December 10, 2020
Pa. father develops app to find all the best Christmas displays
A Broomall, Pennsylvania father developed an app to find all the glowing homes with Christmas lights across the region.

BROOMALL, Pennsylvania (WPVI) -- When you're in the middle of a pandemic and you are trying to find safe things to do, gazing at Christmas lights couldn't be a more enjoyable option. Now, a Delaware County, Pennsylvania man is making that quest even easier with an app that maps out the best homes.

Mike Kane of Broomall developed the iOS app, ChristmasPrism, to help people find the most decorated homes.

Kane, who is a software engineer for Connectify in Philadelphia, says it started with his son's excitement over the festive tradition.

SEE ALSO: 16-year-old's Christmas light display helps animals in need in West Chester

A West Chester 16-year-old puts on an elaborate Christmas light display all to help animals in need.

"You open up the map and immediately you're greeted with a map full of icons and people with houses," said Kane. "And you can just tap on an icon, it'll pop up an image. You can like it, you can comment on it, you can go see where it's at."

The decorated homes in the app are all user-generated, which right now has about 400.

"Each icon represents the number of likes, so you know one to three likes is a little elf and then you can move all the way up to a snow globe. We actually have some users with big snow globes already," said Kane. "It's a way to keep track of people viewing your house."

Kane is currently working on an Android version of the app.

SEE ALSO: How to get special video messages from Santa this socially distanced Christmas

So many things look different this year, the holidays included, but there's one thing a pandemic can't cancel: magic.

Kane says the app has been up now for about 10 days. He says he already has 14,000 users in 12 states.

"People from Puerto Rico are emailing me asking if they could add their house there. So, we wish it to be a nationwide thing where really the whole country comes together after such a crazy year," said Kane.

CLICK HERE to learn more about the app.