Total Christmas light control

posted Nov 24th 2005 11:03am by Eliot
filed under: misc hacks

christmas light control

Now that Thanksgiving is in full swing, I think I can safely mention Christmas without receiving the beat down. In this project, Christmas is just an excuse to build a parallel port connected control box capable of switching 320 individual circuits. The interface is constructed out of two types of chips: the 138 decoder and the 374 flip-flop. Each flip-flop is attached to an individual serial port that is connected to an 8 outlet switch box. Along with this system the site features lots of other home built and modified controls.

[thanks yo_tyler]

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Comments [11]

11 Responses to Total Christmas light control

steve says:

November 24, 2005 at 11:14 am

reminds me of this [ http://metacafe.com/watch/45390/wizards_of_winter/ ] ridiculously fun movie clip.

direct link:

http://content-mixed.metacafe.com/tmp670073258530.708/%5BFrom%20www.metacafe.com%5D%2045390.153903.3.wmv

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Grendelt says:

November 24, 2005 at 11:50 am

I swear, if I see that friggin video clip one more time, I’m going to scream.

I know there are other clips from years past that are floating around – that’s why I keep clicking on “zOMG check out this aewsomep video clip of xmas lites!!1 hurr hurr” – just hoping it’s a different link.

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Tns says:

November 24, 2005 at 3:34 pm

I’m so happy that you guys have started using those damn javascript ads that cover up your content… seriously, why are they a good thing?? *they cover up your content* Ugh, they are more annoying than those X10 popups ever were. I hope they don’t get too common here, because I would be unhappy if I had to limit my visits here to once or twice a month.

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ez says:

November 24, 2005 at 4:54 pm

I hate the Java ads that were set-up crappy and tweak all ofver the place.

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jeanphe says:

November 24, 2005 at 5:41 pm

humm.. nice hack, i’m all for circuits like this one that use simple, off the shelf ICs like the 138 and 374. it must have been a bitch to solder.

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Eliot Phillips says:

November 24, 2005 at 7:13 pm

All of our ads are served by networks like tribalfusion. I saw the ad you are talking about this morning and reported it. It still takes a while but at least we can eventually ban those ads. We never display nuisance ads intentionally.

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Hal Hockersmith says:

November 24, 2005 at 10:16 pm

Remember the Hoax of the Webcam lights last year. You might be able to do something like that for real with this.

Ads? What Ads? You mean you arn’t using Adblock Plus and Firefox. Please. Taking the adds out of Hackaday is the easiest hack out there.

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prozack says:

November 25, 2005 at 12:49 am

bring back the links

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//.fade says:

November 25, 2005 at 1:22 pm

i want links too. :(

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jared harley says:

November 26, 2005 at 11:26 am

“8. Posted Nov 25, 2005, 12:49 AM ET by prozack
bring back the links
9. Posted Nov 25, 2005, 1:22 PM ET by //.fade
i want links too. :(”

Did you not see the previous post??? http://www.hackaday.com/entry/1234000627069466
It’s called hack-a-day extra and has more links than the links posts used to.

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ProzacGod says:

November 29, 2005 at 11:24 am

Hey this great, I was looking for this site about a week ago, today I jump on hackaday and bam! there it is. But, what they haven’t told you is hackaday is starting to recieve hacks through telepathy

Go hackaday! (dawns tinfoil hat)

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