How about recharging the New Year mood and do it yourself to make a garland that can surprise not only you, but also your guests?
We will not waste time, right to the point. The author of this homemade product is AlexGyver (YouTube channel "AlexGyver"). The task of today's project is to work independently and switch effects and create a New Year's mood, so to speak against the background. Today we will make a garland, which in its essence will be similar to the well-known Twinkly Strings Smart-garland, similar to the fact that each bulb lives its own life, which allows you to display effects that are not available to ordinary Chinese garlands with a fixed set of colors.
The basis of today's New Year's homemade products are, of course, address LEDs in the form of such modules on wires:
The control of such a tape is carried out using a microcontroller, you can use, for example, a platform Arduino Nano.
You can also use such a tape, with round modules.
You can also buy a fresher version, it is made of transparent modules and the light from such LEDs will look more “bold”. There is more on Aliexpress here is such a tape, with capsthat looks just like a garland.
Total To repeat this project you will need:
- Arduino Nano;
- a small button;
- a 220 Ohm resistor, optionally, but still desirable with it;
- plug from the kit with a garland;
- power supply 5V, 2A;
- actually garland itself.
The connection of all components will occur according to the following scheme:
Start with the button. It can be soldered directly to the Arduino board as follows:
Next, solder the plus (+) and ground supply tape, and the signal wire with a resistor.
The whole thing can be rolled up in heat shrink or wrapped with electrical tape.
Then we connect the controller to the computer, download the archive with the firmware.
Install the necessary programs and libraries, and open the firmware file.
The firmware was originally written by a foreign author, then it was finalized by our author, and already AlexGyver in the third round of refinement made one-button control. This program also supports infrared remote control.
Consider the basic settings. Here you can change the number of LEDs in the tape:
Use or not use button control:
Current limitation from the power supply:
Effect Settings:
By default, sequential switching of effects is used, but you can make your own list of effects and switch them by it.
Further some more effects settings:
Can be controlled from a resistive keyboard:
Next are the settings for the IR remote. Its support is included here:
Press the “Download” button and the firmware is loaded into the board.
To power one segment of the garland, which is 50 LEDs, a power supply unit with a current of 2A will be quite enough, that is, even a smartphone charger is quite suitable.
We solder it to food and tighten everything into heat shrink or electrical tape.
Everything, the garland is ready. Now we need a Christmas tree! The author took a small one, 120 cm high. We straighten all the branches, after which we will decorate it with an original handmade garland.
So, exactly 1 piece of garland with 50 LEDs went to a Christmas tree 1.2m high, this is about 6 meters somewhere.
Now you need to turn the LEDs outward so that they are better visible.
Everything is ready, we connect the garland.
Everything, the system works. A single click on the button turns the garland on or off. By holding the button, the brightness level is adjusted, hold - increases, hold again - decreases, and so on.
Double click to turn on the next mode, triple click to turn on the previous mode. This firmware version has about 40 modes. A fourth click turns the “flash effect” on and off.
That's all, actually - the main source of the New Year mood is ready. The garland looks very cool, the effects are mostly quite interesting, but some honestly do not look very good, and it’s not entirely clear what they really are.
In any case, this creation looks much more elegant than an ordinary garland. By the way, with a ribbon with caps, the Christmas tree looks something like this:
Of course, the tree itself is much larger here, and the effects look proportionally thicker. The firmware supports up to 300 LEDs. If you translate into meters, it turns out somewhere around 36 meters of garland. With such a garland you can decorate a Christmas tree with a hedgehog of a larger country option, only a power supply will be needed more powerful.
That’s basically it, most of the effects are shown in the original video of the author:
Thank you for attention. See you soon!
