Been busy building something a bit different recently. Thought I'd share with you all, merely from an engineering point of view some of you might be interested!

We have a competition in work, for best Christmas display. Normally people just hang some tinsel here and there, but I took it a little more seriously... put my Arduino coding skills to use and made a whole Christmas tree, choreographed to music.

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Raising a little money for charity by doing it.

https://JustGiving.com/UnileverTree

Taken 6 months to make in my spare time, started back in June! Most of the ornaments I already had, but they needed cutting in half and the old lighting stripping out of them. The whole lot uses addressable LED's, so technically only 3 wires throughout (12v, GND & Signal). Birds nest is literally sticks from the forest hot glued together. Same with the logs. The forest floor is sand I had spare from putting a patio down last summer, again glued down. Tree's and little cars are from home bargains. The street lights, traffic lights and logo was all 3D printed. Then roads, roundabouts etc simply painted.

Software is relatively simple, but to get all the timings right I did have to make some desktop software that let me edit light effects in a time line, then export it all as Arduino code to load in. The Arduino has an MP3 breakout board attached, so any music can be loaded and played.

5 tracks in total on a loop, about 15 minutes worth. I'd like to have programmed 12 tracks, but ran out of time, maybe next year! There are also ribbon blowers at the top via drain pipes which I 3D printed centrifugal fans for. They work, but a little noisy so again something for next year!

Hope you all enjoy too!

Stephen