Looking for a great DIY project this weekend? Try using your Arduino to hack christmas lights! via deep darc
This string contains fifty “bulbs”. Each bulb contains a red, green, and blue LED—allowing for any color to be produced. The biggest drawback is how you control them: there are 14 pre-set “programs” that you can select, and they are all pretty lame. However, with a little reverse engineering and an Arduino (or any other microcontroller) they can be made into the coolest Christmas lights on the block. If you buy several strings, you could easily make a large 2D LED array. The possibilities are endless…
So far I’ve reverse engineered both the radio protocol and the protocol used on the LED data bus. Of the two, the LED data bus protocol is by far the most interesting. So that’s where I’ll start…
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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I have a tree with 15 strands of 25 lights running off of an arduino mega with ethernet adapter that accepts light commands from a java program running on a raspberry pi. It’s been a pretty fun project but I cannot find these lights for sale anymore in Canada..
I have a tree with 15 strands of 25 lights running off of an arduino mega with ethernet adapter that accepts light commands from a java program running on a raspberry pi. It’s been a pretty fun project but I cannot find these lights for sale anymore in Canada..