Simple wreath
A $7.99 tinsel wreath caught my eye at the local Wallgreens. My daughter (11), who is totally on to me, saw the look in my eye and said No, dad, there’s no good way to put LEDs in that. Then she flipped it over, saw that it was only a hollow half-wreath with lots of room inside, sighed and put it in our shopping basket.
Once home, only took about 90 minutes to light it up with 97 pixels (n.b.: a prime!) of WS2811 strip, looped around twice inside and held in place with zip-ties. The LEDs are driven by a $10 Arduino Nano. I also attached one simple push button to allow for easily changing animation ‘modes’.
Power is supplied through the USB connector. I’ve subsequently attached a white power cord which looks nicer.
“Modes” include green with red ‘berries’, a rainbow tiedye wash, a frosty blue, and a veeery slow color fade. They’re all (so far) designed to be non-attention-grabbing, just ambient decor.
Very nice! It seems like you are similar to me; wherever I am, I find myself looking at various things in the stores and wondering how they would look with LED multicolour lighting in them.
Can your 11 year old convince my 18 year old to do the same? Mine only knows to say one thing and she does it really well: No! In fact she will shove me away from whatever it is I’m looking at.
I am currently in the brief but happy zone between “she’s a little kid” and “she hates me”; trying to enjoy the heck out of it every day I can, since all of human history (including your comment) suggests that this window is finite.
She prefers to solder jewelry rather than electronics, and I figure the fastest way to get her to never want to see an electron again is to force it on her, so I don’t.
In that respect, you’re a lucky man. Mine doesn’t want anything to do with electronics, at least not unless it’s an iPod or a smart phone. But, this is also the child that would snub a $1 drawing marker for a $5 one. She’s into art, but the drawing/painting kind, and her tools are rather expensive … Let’s just say I’m not looking forward to her art college tuition …
Apparently you have entered the daggy dad stage. (Does daggy translate?) it’s a short hop to, do I have to be seen near you.
Love the fact that you decided one led loop was not subtle enough.
