Christmas LED display
UPDATE 2022
The display this year is updated to include a "train" at the bottom, and a few other changes.
The display this year is updated to include a "train" at the bottom, and a few other changes.
ORIGINAL POST:
This year, 2020, with the pandemic restrictions, we decided to stay at home, and the kids are not joining us.
In the Glass fire, our favorite Christmas Tree farm burned so we would have to find a new place to get a tree. Since it is just us, we decided to not get a real tree.
Then I found this: How To Make a Cheap WS2811 LED Display Matrix with a Raspberry Pi
Well, we decided to build one to be a virtual Christmas Tree.
This year, 2020, with the pandemic restrictions, we decided to stay at home, and the kids are not joining us.
In the Glass fire, our favorite Christmas Tree farm burned so we would have to find a new place to get a tree. Since it is just us, we decided to not get a real tree.
Then I found this: How To Make a Cheap WS2811 LED Display Matrix with a Raspberry Pi
Well, we decided to build one to be a virtual Christmas Tree.
When a neighbor first saw it, he commented that is was pretty nerdy. At first, I thought, oh well, and then I thought, thank you very much!
For those who are interested, some technical details. I followed Andrew Oakley's basic design. I bought one set of LED lights through Amazon, but they didn't work. I returned them and got a different brand, ALITOVE WS2811 RGB LED Pixels Light
They worked. We set them in a 9 high by 11 wide matrix. We hung them in our front slider door and we have our virtual tree and more. I had a 15V 16A power supply from Justin and I got a buck converter that lowered the voltage to 5V.
I tried to get Andrew's program working but haven't yet been able to convert it to the latest Python3 and Adafruit library. And Christmas is coming, so I started with the sample program on Adafruit's library, and then built the tree. Jennifer saw the color displays and suggested changing them to spell Ho, Ho, Ho. And so we did that.
The file below is the python program. I had to add the .txt so my website would allow me to upload it.
For those who are interested, some technical details. I followed Andrew Oakley's basic design. I bought one set of LED lights through Amazon, but they didn't work. I returned them and got a different brand, ALITOVE WS2811 RGB LED Pixels Light
They worked. We set them in a 9 high by 11 wide matrix. We hung them in our front slider door and we have our virtual tree and more. I had a 15V 16A power supply from Justin and I got a buck converter that lowered the voltage to 5V.
I tried to get Andrew's program working but haven't yet been able to convert it to the latest Python3 and Adafruit library. And Christmas is coming, so I started with the sample program on Adafruit's library, and then built the tree. Jennifer saw the color displays and suggested changing them to spell Ho, Ho, Ho. And so we did that.
The file below is the python program. I had to add the .txt so my website would allow me to upload it.
| neopixel_rpi_christmas.py.txt |