Advent Calendar Of Circuits

December 16, 2011 by Mike Szczys 2 Comments

We missed 60% of it already, but luckily you can easily watch the back catalog of [Alan Yates’] 2011 Advent Calendar of Circuits. As with traditional Advent Calendars he’s got a treat for every day in December leading up to Christmas. Instead of chocolate, the treat is a video about a different electronic circuit.

We didn’t find a playlist link, but you can just head over to his YouTube channel as each day is clearly labelled in the video titles. He starts off with a current limiting voltage regulator. A couple of days later he busts out a metal detector that will be fun to play with. Day 7 brings an AM transmitter/receiver pair, and Day 12 illustrates a burnt-out Christmas light detecting tool which we’ve embedded after the break.

The sheer volume of projects he’s putting out every day is remarkable and delightful. He doesn’t even limit himself to one video a day, but has posted several ‘extra’ editions with quick, circuit demos. Continue reading “Advent Calendar Of Circuits” →

Electronic Ornament Will Definitely Put [Dave] On Santa’s “naughty” List

December 16, 2011 by Mike Nathan 10 Comments

mischievous-xmas-ornament

[Dave Vandenbout] says that his sister has gotten big on Christmas traditions, and decided that the whole family should start making ornaments for the tree each year. Not one to let a chance to tinker with electronics pass him by, [Dave] started brainstorming the perfect electronic ornament for their tree.

He settled on the Christmas tree design you see above, which will eventually hold 15 RGB LEDs. On the back of the board, he is planning on mounting a PIC 18F27J53 microcontroller, which will take care of the LED display along with his other more mischievous components.

You see, undeterred by his sister’s holiday spirit, [Dave] wants to arm the ornament with a foul mouth, and have it attempt to shake other ornaments off the tree. To do this, he’s installing a vibrating motor on the back of the PCB, along with a speaker and MicroSD card to provide the ornament’s sound bites.

To be honest, we think his idea is pretty entertaining, we can only imagine the look grandma will give when the cute, light up Christmas tree ornament blurts out, “Eat me Santa!”

We just hope he sends some video our way once he wraps up the project.

Decorating An Ent For Christmas

December 15, 2011 by Mike Szczys 8 Comments

These images may look the same, but if you peer closely at the one on the left you’ll notice the eyes staring back at you. It seems animatronic decor is in this year, and we think [Fjord Carver’s] talking Christmas tree is one of the better offerings.

He picked up the diminutive tree at the dollar store, then started added the pieces that put on the show seen after the break. A small strand of battery operated lights, and a bit of garland are traditional. But the Arduino and pair of servo motors are a new holiday tradition. They move parts of the tree to reveal a set of eyes and animate a mouth. He drives the display by sending serial commands from a computer to the Arduino. This way you can script your performances, with flapping jaw, moving eyelids, and blinking lights while the computer supplies the sound.

Is it just us, or does anyone else really want to see this guy singing the Chipmunk’s Christmas Song? Or if that’s a bit too wholesome you could go the more vulgar route.

Continue reading “Decorating An Ent For Christmas” →

Lighted Acrylic Christmas Ornaments

December 14, 2011 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

If you’ve gone to the trouble of building your own CNC mill we know you’re always on the lookout for things to use it for. [Boris Landoni] wrote in with just the thing for the holiday season; a set of lighted acrylic Christmas ornaments.

One of the interesting properties of acrylic is how it reacts when edge-lit. The material pipes the light, until it bounces off of a disturbance in the surface. The first step is to design the outline of the ornament as all cut edges will glow. Next, [Boris] uses artCAM to design the internal parts to be cut. This application translates the relief cuts necessary to really make your design shine (sorry, we couldn’t resist). The best examples of this are the angel and candle seen above.

Each of these acrylic pieces has a slot cut on the bottom to hug an LED. [Boris] used small project boxes with a PCB for that diode, as well as a button battery for power.

Music-synced Christmas Light Suit

December 14, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 11 Comments

Ah, the end of the 4th financial quarter – the magical time of increased sales, being at work the entire time the sun is up, and holiday parties. For [Andy] at National Instruments, though, things don’t seem too bad. He built a neat Christmas light suit to entertain everyone with his brilliant persona.

[Andy] always loves great Christmas light displays (he even blogs about them), so he figured a wearable light display synchronized with music would be very doable. The build is controlled with LabVIEW to convert .WAV files to power levels and frequency bands. This info is then piped into the Arduino that controls the lights.

[Andy] actually made two light suits, one for him and one for his friend [Richard]. Both guys have two light-up Christmas staffs to wield light mage powers on their coworkers. The lighsuits are controlled by Arduino/Xbee setups – one each for each suit and staff. The result is phenomenal, and should really get everyone in the holiday spirit.

GE Color Effects Hacking For The Nautically Inclined

December 12, 2011 by Mike Nathan 7 Comments

ge-color-effects-controller

[Jim] wrote in to share some work he did with GE Color Effects LED lights in an effort to create a light display for his boat. He saw our coverage of the Color Effects G-35 hacking efforts by DeepDarc last year, and knew that they would be prefect for the boat. He did some careful scouring of eBay to score 8 strings of lights at bargain basement pricing, then he got down to the business of hacking them.

He originally built a control circuit using a single PIC18F, but just before he started to put everything together, he realized that wiring everything up would be a huge undertaking. Going back to the drawing board, he decided it would be best to replace the lights’ stock board with one of his own. Now, he uses a single master controller board to send messages to his slave “pods”, significantly cutting down the amount of wiring required for the project.

The display looks great as you can see in the video below, though as many do, [Jim] has plenty of improvements in mind for the future.

Continue reading “GE Color Effects Hacking For The Nautically Inclined” →

Dimming AC Lights The Hard Way

December 12, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 21 Comments

It’s that time of year again where the thermometer drops, the sun sets earlier, and we try to warm our hearts with the solstice festival that is common in our own respective cultures. Of course we all need a few strings of lights, but wouldn’t it be great if we had PWM controlled dimmable lights?

When he started out on his PWM-controlled, AC-powered light box, [Waterbury] immediately realized that relays were not going to be an optimal solution. The best way out of the mess he dug himself into would be via zero crossing. After getting a transformer wired up to a transistor for the detection circuit, a short bit of code was written in the wee hours of the morning and a proof of concept was had.

With the control box complete, [Waterbury] hacked up a quick VB app and piped the output of a WinAmp visualizer into the lights via serial. The Inception demo was great, but finer-grain control was needed. After seeing a Hack a Day post on a nice equalizer chip, the seven band output on IC were converted to UART.

[Waterbury] took his seven-band AC-controlled light box to a Halloween party with his synth and the results looked awesome. You can check that out after the break, but we’re really waiting to see his Christmas decorations this year.

Continue reading “Dimming AC Lights The Hard Way” →