v1.0 Color-changing lights on tree performing Feliz Navidad

Note: The first 34 seconds show the tree pretending to be a string of 1970s blinking Christmas lights. Stick with it until the chorus begins... you'll be glad you did. Especially when you see the raster-scan effect at the song's climax...

Watch it in low-def once before watching it in HD. When YouTube has a heavy load, the HD version drops frames, and the overall effect is a LOT less impressive.

I've been working on these lights for four years. The lights you see on the tree are all autonomous, and can be addressed by individual address, or by latitude and/or longitude. After putting the lights on the tree, I ran a program that lit them up one at a time so I could map them to their observed row and column.

Each light has its own microcontroller (an Atmel ATtiny25), linear power supply (enabling me to feed them with higher voltage and thin wires), RGB LED, and the expected resistors & capacitors. The light modules are entirely surface-mounted, and connected by three braided AWG24 wires (+12v, ground, and serial). The diffusers are new for this year -- I bought a few strings of C7 white LED lights, and repurposed the diffusers for my own lights.

If you assume bulk pricing and zero waste, each light has about $2.50 worth of parts. The lights you see on the tree represent about a third of the modules I've actually built... the remainder had "problems" and are in a box waiting to be desoldered and rebuilt this summer.

I apologize for the annoying autofocus artifacts. For some inane reason, there wasn't any way to lock the Aiptek A-HD+ camcorder's autofocus at infinity (in fact, I ended up returning it for that precise reason).

More info at http://www.treegee.com

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• computerized
• rgb
• christmas
• tree
• networked
• lights
• microcontroller
• atmel
• attiny25
• tiny25
• avr
• feliz
• navidad
• demo
• demoscene
• punk
• rock
• home
• grown

[VWFringe]

don't think i'd want to buy one, but certainly thinking about building one, doesn;'t seem like you need as many lights since they change colors.

amazing at the end of the video!

[LedPixelGuy]

COOL!

Exactly what i have been trying to build for the last few years. This year my ledPixel Strings will be finished, and be fully awesome! When the first samples of the final version are assembled, i will make some video and post them on youtube. Until then you can take a look at a simple website: rgbverlichting nl

[sea4ever7241]

Pure awesomeness. :)

[l0gically]

Pretty cool - that's a totally different kind of blink!

[TheCherelle]

Nice job. Who's playing? I like dark guitars but I think u taped it to loud

[ETBX1]

Thought I already responded to this.

So Cool! Been looking for exactly something like this, and a couple of companies have been promising something like it for a couple of years, but it's like vaporware. You still have to buy expensive pixel strings with more expensive DMX units!

[ETBX1]

COOL!

Exactly what I've been looking for. There had been some promises of a commercial string like this for the past few years, but they never came out with them. The only commercial string was Triklits, but these were pulled due to a defect. The best you can do is buy expensive LED pixel strings with DMX controllers, and this will costs hundreds if not over a thousand; just for one string!