Parallax Christmas Light Show

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btUh–1xbls]

[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]

16 thoughts on “Parallax Christmas Light Show

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

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