Scrolly sign

Wherein GE Color Effects lights are repurposed into message display.

NEW: Download the code here:
https://github.com/riney/g35_arduino_marquee

Code by Jason Beeland
http://youtube.com/user/sylrune

Thanks to Darco for light hacking info!
http://www.deepdarc.com/2010/11/27/hacking-christmas-lights/

Song: "Terrorbyte" by Chipzel
http://8bc.org/music/chipzel/Terrorbyte/

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• ge
• color
• effects
• led
• scrolling
• text
• display
• microcontroller
• arduino
• rgb
• christmas
• lights
• hacking

[darconeous]

Nice video! And thanks for the credit at the end. While I may have gotten the ball rolling with hacking these lights, I'm constantly being blown away by the amazing things that other people are doing with them.

[jwriney]

@darconeous Thanks! The guy who wrote the code (Sylrune, just below you in the comments) is looking at cleaning it up for release, so other people can build stuff on top of it.

[mrichardson23]

Awesome, thank you for this! Love these lights, been meaning to order a strand or two to hack up.

[jwriney]

@mrichardson23 Thanks! They seem to be out of stock almost everywhere except Sears. I had to get some from a store several states away...

[sylrune]

Code is up, link in the video summary now.

[sylrune]

@darconeous Yeah I'll be cleaning things up over the next week and hope to have the code posted by next weekend.

[sylrune]

I had a complete blast with this project, and learned a lot a great deal working on the code for this. Riney and I must have batted a half dozen different ideas back and forth on the best way to drive the data bus, what refresh rate we thought we'd need, how to limit refresh rates to ensure smooth scrolling, etc.

By far my favorite thing about these hack projects is all the new things I learn each time. Stop learning, start dying.

[shades2]

That's awesome! Nice job!

[jeriellsworth]

W00t!