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Christmas is Coming

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the yo-ho-ho-and-a-bottle-of-egg-nog dept.

Couple of Christmas bits to get ya in the spirit: We have a link to Planet Christmas as well as the tech details and even some danger. This thing features 96,790 miniature Christmas lights, 7.2 miles of wire to connect everything, 110 strobe lights, the 8' inflatable snowmen, handled by 425 computer controlled circuits. A slightly less ambitious project was submitted by apago. This project lets winamp control christmas lights, complete with schematics for the serial interface and source code for the plugin.

5 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. 4 North Forever by (startx) · · Score: 3, Interesting

    My floor in the dorm, Thomas Jefferson 4 North at the University of Missouri-Rolla, has done this for years. 16 control boxes controlling a total of 96 strands of lights individually. They are also controlled by the serial port of an old 486 running slackware. This year we even played pong. We'll have pictures and a video up soon hopefully at this page. Okay, so the video won't be that high quality, but the lights kick ass.

  2. Well, my setup isn't THAT impressive... by Restil · · Score: 5, Interesting

    But you can turn my Xmas lights on/off via the internet. Check out the interactive webcams at http://206.54.177.105

    The Xmas lights are in the living room. Now I've got motivation to do something more impressive for next year. :)

    -Restil

    --
    Play with my webcams and lights here
  3. 8-channel Winamp light controller by Tackhead · · Score: 4, Interesting
    > This project is definitely NOT limited to controlling christmas lights. The triacs specified in the parts can handle up to 400V, 4A, and can also drive inductive loads (like florescent lights) and don't generate any noise on the digital side because they are isolated.

    D00d, j00 r0ck!

    I built an (analog) gadget like this in college, but this kicks vastly more ass.

    When I saw the story I originally thought of stringing a room full of ultrabright LEDs or doing some case mods (hmm, all the holes in my case glow and pulsate in time to the beat, changing colors as lights mix), but as soon as I saw "triac", I immediately thought "xenon flash lamp", a.k.a. strobe light.

    You've just given the hardware-geek contingent of Slashdot something to build over the holidays, and that's the kind of Christmas present that we've always wanted, and that our relatives never get for us ;-)

  4. This is nothing....follow link for a real display. by cdrudge · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Go here to see what a real light display can look like. I visited this one year a while back. Rumor had it that his neighbors put complained enough about him putting up 1 million lights on his property that he bought the houses on each side of him and put 1 million lights on each of those properties. After the supreme court wouldn't hear his case, he was forced to shut down his display. Disney ended up getting in contact with him and now he does the Specticle of Lights down at MGM Studios (I think).

  5. Re:Stop spending. by Levine · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What exactly is wrong with buying gifts for the people you care about? I'm not trying to argue that Christmas hasn't been commercialized to a point of abstraction, because it has, but is there something fundamentally wrong with contributing to the economy?

    It seems that some people spend so much time complaining about the commercial nature of the holidays that they too, like the people they complain about, miss out on the good parts of the season.

    And certainly now, more than ever before, it would do the country some good to have some money put into it, yes?

    Regards,
    levine