Fresh hacks every day
[Jason] and his father took advantage of a week off of work over Thanksgiving to design and build a Christmas light decoration that can flash fancy patterns. He calls it the Uno Christmas Tree. It's sixteen strands of lights draped between a pole and the ground to form the shape of a tree. The main controller is an Arduino UNO, but what really makes this work is a mechanical relay board with … [Read more...]
[Todd Harrison] has been on a quest to replace his incandescent Christmas lights with less power hungry LED lights. There are plenty of options out there, but so far he hasn't found any have the appearance he's looking for. Since last year he bought three different kinds to try out and has posted a review of each. Check out the strand of Brite Star Symphony Lights he's showing off above. There … [Read more...]
If you're planning to outdo yourself with this year's Christmas decorations now's the time to start planning. After all, what else have you got going on since the dreadful heat is making outdoor activities a sweat-soaked misery? Take some inspiration from [Tim] who just finished prototyping a wireless MIDI controller for his strings of Christmas lights. You can just see the four spools in the … [Read more...]
[Andrew] shows us one way to reuse all those strands of Christmas lights you used for decoration this year. He had a friend that was helping with stage props for a local musical and ended up using his skills to build a lighted sign with some animation capabilities. The original plan was to cut out letters for a sign by hand and ring them with white Christmas lights. It is possible to hand cut … [Read more...]
[Thadd Brooks] is a geeky dad of the highest degree. His kids are constantly trying to figure out what mom and dad bought them for Christmas, while he continues to think up ways to stymie their progress. He certainly could have put a few prank presents under the tree, but he opted to go a different route, confusing his smartphone-wielding kids with QR codes. Each gift under the tree bears no … [Read more...]
Maybe we're a little bitter because we held on to our pumpkin futures well into November, but we've got to respect [Nick]'s stock ticker ornament. It's an Internet-connected Christmas ornament that queries stock prices and displays the change with an RGB LED. The build uses a Propeller Platform USB and the Propeller E-Net Module to pull stock quotes down from Google. With the attached source, … [Read more...]
14 year-old [Connor Smith] has been busy this holiday season, thinking up ways to improve the lighting situation at home. A few weeks ago he put together this 3-channel light controller to toggle his parents’ external lights, incorporating an Arduino for control. The Arduino was used to switch the channels on and off at specified intervals in order to create a simple light show on the … [Read more...]
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