[iboucher] wanted to do some crazy Christmas light choreography. Finding the cost of the off the shelf system to be way too much, he set out to build his own. After a visit to eBay to pick up some cheap 1 amp relays, he was ready to get started. Using a Basic Stamp2 that he had laying around, he was able to put together a fairly complete 16 port system. Great job [iboucher]
[via Hacked Gadgets]
Is Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s “Wizards in Winter” now some sort of benchmark for controllable Christmas lights?
Posted at 12:14 pm on Dec 19th, 2008 by EdZ
I am so sick of that song… Any other song would be better.
Posted at 12:15 pm on Dec 19th, 2008 by Alexander
that must drive the neighbors crazy.
Posted at 1:40 pm on Dec 19th, 2008 by Cyrozap
i would only call it a hack if someone on this earth figured out how to use a different song!
Posted at 2:12 pm on Dec 19th, 2008 by zamadatix
I ve seen worst..
Welcome epilepsy !!
Posted at 2:42 pm on Dec 19th, 2008 by Blastar
kinda funny, i just received my first basic stamp in the mail today. maybe after i do the obligatory blinking led i’ll try this out.
best christmas song ever btw…if anyone has the opportunity to see them live i’d highly recommend it.
Posted at 3:10 pm on Dec 19th, 2008 by matt
That was great, and it’s also an example of where the BS shines compared to a raw PIC, because it’s a lot easier to do the tweaks to the program as you adjust the choreography. I’m not sure I’d want to use that BS2 for anything else though, he probably damn near wore out the EEPROM with downloads in the course of the project.
Posted at 3:37 pm on Dec 19th, 2008 by localroger
Thanks for the good comments everyone.
I know everyone uses that song and it does get old. I actually have 3 other songs going to. Jingle Bells Remix (Techno) Here Comes Santa Clause and Let It Snow. The last two still need the channels tuned out. Will put out video soon. Its raining tonight and tripping the GFI.
As for the last comment, the BS2 code is actually just a few lines, i wrote a C++ gui that actually does the work. The sequence are way to time intensive to do in PBASIC, even in C++ it would take way to long. I actually ripped that work off of other people. Light O Rama V2 software stores the sequences as xml. So i just downloaded songs other people have done and the C++ gui parses the files. Worked out pretty good.
Posted at 4:07 pm on Dec 19th, 2008 by Lucas Boucher
The EEPROM of the Basic Stamp is rock solid in function and performance, has many awards, even flew into space aboard NASA Space Shuttle, and that’s why the Basic Stamp was the First Choice Award for this project.
Posted at 4:16 pm on Dec 19th, 2008 by StampMaster
looked like a flashing machine gun to my girlfriend :-)
Posted at 5:40 pm on Dec 19th, 2008 by eMpTy
LAME!!! OMG that was so lame. When I read parallax I was thinking like, parallax scrolling graphics as seen in Sonic the Hedgehog. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax_scrolling
Posted at 5:45 pm on Dec 19th, 2008 by xteraco
Boring. I dunno. Just seems like anyone who does something similar does the same music. The big chunks of lights turning on and off didn’t impress me. I like that you tried, but I’d say refine it for next year.
Posted at 5:46 pm on Dec 19th, 2008 by g1rlb0t
not to bad, but it not to hard to do these days.
lots of DIY stuff over at http://www.doityourselfchristmas.com
Posted at 4:45 am on Dec 20th, 2008 by Peter
@ edz I was thinking the exact same thing.
I started watching thinking it was this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ik90ys2lhso
I was disappointed. Lame.
Posted at 10:33 pm on Dec 20th, 2008 by Tom Robinson
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Thats a badass Merry Christmas : D
Posted at 12:01 pm on Dec 19th, 2008 by blizzarddemon