Deck those houses

[greatbear]

A couple weeks ago I bought a few strands of rather expensive "programmable" LED Holiday Xmas Christmas lights, but have yet to put them up, mostly because of it being windy enough to knock my already unsteady self off the ladder and general blase attitude this year. Still, I thought these would make for some impressive displays for a clever hacker. Well, I went looking around on YouTube, and I was right. Take someone who has a love for hardware hacking, video games, and over-the-top light displays, and you get these two incredible examples. The choice of music on the second makes it that much better.

This user also had a very impressive Halloween display as well. Naturally, YouTube is filled with videos from all over of people outdoing one another in light displays, most often to various Trans-Siberian Orchestra tunes. Geeks, hackers, creative types. I love my kind.

Comments

[maxauburn.livejournal.com]

The video with the kid playing guitar to the synchronized lights is *ULTRA* - great!!

[dan4behr.livejournal.com]

Total WIN on both. Wow...

[putzmeisterbear.livejournal.com]

That is some serious effort. It is really impressive.

[kirbymiles.livejournal.com]

Very cool and I would hate to see what their electric bill is not to mention, where on earth do they store it all.

[furr-a-bruin.livejournal.com]

With LED lights - you might be surprised at how small the impact would be even for an over the top display, compared with using incandescents.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

There is a house in this video that apparently uses conventional lights, and lots of them. The display is impressive by all counts. At the end of the video there is a collage of stills, one of them listing the number of lights (over 50,000) and the peak amp draw (118 amps!) and a not entirely legible mention of the impact on the electric bill (looks like 45 bucks, but for what time period?). LEDs are the way to go, and when I bought my set of 50 LED "C9" bulbs and discovered the technology behind them, I got a pair of 36 "icicle" sets with the same tech. Seeing how the sets are powered by a 5 volt wall wart and the lights are interconnected by a parallel run of three wires, I figure not only was the main controller itself pretty simple (it's a small box at the end of the lights) but that each light assembly was an individually addressable, self-contained controller-driver. Prying stuff apart confirmed this (yeah, such a geek I take everything I buy apart almost immediately after I get it, almost without fail). I did a little bit of searching, and found this site among others that have reverse-engineered the lights to create their own controllers quite simply using Arduinos and other pico controllers and interfaces. They confirmed my investigation that each light is it's own addressable controller, and performed a logic analysis to suss out the protocols. Each "bulb" has a 6-bit address, an 8-bit brightness value, and each of the RGB channels has a 4-bit level for a 12 bit color depth. This ain't shabby at all for was are supposed to be simple decorations! THe LEDs are bright enough for general illumination, and according to the specs, are not operated at full brightness by default. They are not sure of this is done to keep the LED life up or what. My feeling is it's either that, or to keep heat buildup down (the things run stone cold at full bright white) or lower the power requirements to fit the wall wart.

If these are on clearance after the holidays, I'll get a set or two to "play with."

[furr-a-bruin.livejournal.com]

That's pretty wild! I'm tempted... but I doubt I'd ever get anywhere with 'em. All I want are a string of pure white LEDs on white wire... something no one seems to stock. I can usually find the "warm" white version, but part of the reason for the effort is to get away from incandescent-ish yellow light.

[beastbriskett.livejournal.com]

Looks like folks driving by are really getting an eyeful.
I wanna play!

[mcbulldawg.livejournal.com]

OMG Phil! I love the icon! Oh Baby!!!!

A merry christmas to you and yours! ;-)