‘Tis the season for gift giving, and what better to give than a newfound love for hacking, soldering, and blinkenlights? In order to spread cheer and education at the local hackerspace, [Tom Goff] created this festive tree circuit board that can either sit in a stand to be admired, or worn as jewelry. The resistors are even designed to look like candy canes hanging from the boughs.
The brains of this festive little tree is an ATmega328P, which you probably recognize as the microcontroller that powers the Arduino Uno. Although this circuit has none of the extra bits you’d find on an Uno, not even a crystal oscillator, it can still be programmed with Arduino and use the 8 MHz internal clock.
[Tom] has provided good, thorough instructions, especially for the sticky bit of setting up the IDE to program using the 8 MHz internal clock. So even if you’re nowhere near Norwich Hackerspace, you can join in the fun. Be sure to check out the video after the break, wherein [Tom] walks through designing the PCB using Inkscape and Fritzing.
Want to whip up a little something for the hackerspace wall? Check out this Sierpinski Christmas tree.
Why 5mm LED? Why 1.6mm PCB? Why Through-Hole RES? Why is everything so big? If he wants a woman to wear it for longer than 10 Minutes, he should have gone SMD. Big heavy clunky earrings are a real pain to wear.
Having read the article, I think this idea is fantastic. Making these larger means that I (or others) could have a go at making these without it being too fiddly. I don’t think he was intending these as commercial products but trying to inspire others to give electronics and basic programming a try with a festive theme.
Tom was designing Xmas tree decorations, not his fault someone wants to hang them off their earlobes.
This project is designed as an introduction to Arduino and also soldering and basic electronics for beginners who may not have even soldered before. Primarily designed as a Christmas tree decoration the size is designed for ease of assembly.
They are not designed to be solely earrings.
Thanks for the interest in the project
This project is designed as an introduction to Arduino and electronics. The use of discrete non-smd components is deliberate as some people doing it may not even have soldered before.
Nice! But it looks like it is heavy on the ear lobes.
However, such a striking earrings are likely to draw unwanted attention away from some less-than-optimal-looking things should there were any hanging around these.
To paraphrase TopGear’s comments on Porsche’s commercial image for Cayenne, there is not enough light. Also why aren’t they blinking?
The base of that christmas tree looks like it could fit in a USB port. Can you program an ATMega328 using something like the digispark bootloader?