Hackaday Links: December 26, 2010

December 26, 2010 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

Obligatory tech tree

It’s hard to let a Christmas go by without looking in on a geeky Christmas tree project. Luckily, [Peter Davenport] decided to share his Arduino and LCD shield tree.

Blinking USB dude

If you’ve got a 555 timer and some commonly salvageable components give this blinking LED man a try. The version above is USB powered but that’s just to take advantage of the 5V regulated power.

Propeller business card

[Jay’s] business card is packing quite a punch with this Propeller microcontroller. We love seeing electronics design in cards (however unrealistic the price and portability may be), and this is a big processing upgrade compared to the Tiny85 based offering.

Flying high in NYC

We leave you with a spectacular view of New York City. This breathtaking footage is just as fascinating as the first videos we saw from these folks.

Christmas Tree Low-water Monitor

December 8, 2010 by Mike Szczys 24 Comments

The end of the year is rapidly approaching and there’s a good chance you have a slowly dying tree in your living room. Help it hold on a little longer by using [Eric Ayars’] Christmas Tree water monitor. He’s built a sensor out of a piece of strip board. Three bus strips on the board allow for a variety of alerts. When all three are submerged everything is ok. When the two longer traces are still under water but the third is not an LED will blink to let you know it’s time. If you don’t pay attention and there’s no water left, a piezo buzzer makes noise until you add water (or the coin cell runs out of juice).

This project centers around an ATtiny85 that [Eric] programmed using an Arduino, one of the methods we covered in our AVR Programming Tutorial. But if this simple circuit isn’t high-tech enough for you, we saw a similar method last year that will send an alert to your iPhone.

Fake Christmas Tree Makes It Fake Snow

December 1, 2010 by Mike Szczys 23 Comments

Let it snow inside your house this Christmas by building your own snow making tree. [Trey] was inspired by a snowing lamp-post he came across in a story. He looked around the house and came up with all the stuff necessary to make this happen with a Christmas tree. The snow is loose Styrofoam like you’d find in a bean bag chair. At the bottom of the tree there’s an inverted umbrella to collect the snowfall and funnel it into a blower salvaged from an inflatable Halloween yard ornament. The blower shoots the Styrofoam up through a PVC pipe, which also serves as the trunk of the fake tree, and it erupts from the top bringing Christmas cheer to an otherwise quiet room. See for yourself.

Light Up Your Limbs

December 16, 2009 by Mike Szczys 12 Comments

Here’s a Christmas tree project we can get behind. The “tree” itself is made of twisted pairs of insulated copper wire. At the end of each pair a surface mount LED has been soldered between the two conductors. All of the wire limbs converge into a 4×4 matrix. One tree uses a prototyping shield and an Arduino, the other tree is just using an ATtiny2313 microprocessor. Take a look at the twinkling tree in the video after the break.

This artful creation uses one color of LEDs. We’d love to see future improvements that incorporate multiple colors, enhance the fading effects, and perhaps add some interactivity such as pulsing to an inspiring rendition of Chestnuts Roasting on and Open Fire (which, consequently, is called “The Christmas Song“).

Continue reading “Light Up Your Limbs” →

Control Your Tree From Anywhere

December 1, 2009 by Jakob Griffith 22 Comments

We honestly never thought we would see an internet controlled Christmas tree before, sure maybe a remote controlled claw or online soccer robots, but a tree? Regardless, team [Schwippy] did just that. 5 separate sets of lights are connected to 5 individual x10 modules. The x10s are listening over the household’s AC lines for commands from a server in the other room, with its own x10. At about 12$ a module, the project can get expensive quick, totalling over 200$ for [Schwippy’s] setup. Just to control a tree, but anything to spread the holiday cheer, right?
[Thanks Yon]

Neon Light Christmas Tree

November 10, 2008 by Kimberly Lau 4 Comments

gpugh_topshoptree081

Everyone always complains about the Christmas season coming earlier and earlier, but we think when we can have Christmas trees like the one pictured above, it’s not such a bad thing. Created by English fashion designer [Gareth Pugh], the tree features sixty white neon tubes, and is supported by a freestanding metal rod. It reminds us of the light sabers in Star Wars, which is probably why we like it so much. The tree is just a carrier for the decorations anyway, right? You can check out the tree in person at the TOPSHOP in Oxford Circus, London.