This is my 2015, sound and music reactive Xmas tree.
Living in an apartment and having so many guests over, I simply could not afford the space of a full Xmas tree installation and this is what I came up with…
I ‘squished’ my Xmas tree in the 4" space between window panes of my living room patio door.
The tree has 332 WS2811 8mm RGB LEDs. A 20A PSU, an Arduino MEGA, a Bluetooth transceiver and a MSGEQ7 7-band audio analyser. I also built a small box with a 9V battery, microphone pre-amp with gain control to pickup ambiant sounds and music and send line level audio to Arduino and the MSGEQ7.
Merry Xmas all of you !!
Not really what I was planning just a few weeks ago… Some may remember that I had grand visions of awesome 3D animations for my Xmas tree.
I actually spent weeks building precise cylindrical co-ordinates for every LED. I mapped each LED such that I had precise distance from a chosen reference axis (the trunk), direction (angle) from that axis relative to a chosen reference direction (the front of the tree) and relative height from the bottom of the trunk.
I even had some basic animations that had the LEDs animate nicely from tree center to the outside, from top to bottom and in a anguler, circular motion.
But sudden guest count explosion for Xmas dinner ‘almost’ kicked my tree out the door but it hung for dear life just between them windows !!!
I guess my fancy 3-d animations will have to be for Xmas 2016…
Hi Thomas and Marc,
Yes, that is exactly what I have a 2D Xmas tree that I managed (with a fair bit of patience) to squeeze between sliding patio doors with exactly 4" spacing. No other ornaments but the bare tree and its RGB LEDs as there is absolutely no way I could add anything else without breaking it.
Note that the tree normally assembles in a typical 7 feet tall 3D conical shape as can be seen here in my 2014 Xmas tree…
https://plus.google.com/106626345342202981932/posts/hmTwVmrCxvK
It is the exact same tree with the addition of a MSGEQ7 audio equalizer and a Bluetooth module.
I can tell you it looks much nicer in real life and the LED reaction to ambiant noise, people laughing and music has been much appreciated by all guests !
Also note that the basic animation is still Mark’s Color Twinkle sketch from last year. It runs continuously in the background with only the Rainbow color palette but I have added the 7-band color coded output provided by the MSGEQ7 on top of it.
Merry Xmas from everybody here still enjoying the party !!!
