I’m just getting into the automated lights/computer controlled thing, and it’s been a bit of work to get started. I started about this time last year, ordering circuit boards, electronic parts, and getting . . . → Read More: Is it Christmas already?!]]> I’ve been working on my Christmas display already. It’s going to be pretty lame I think, but it’s still a lot of work.

I’m just getting into the automated lights/computer controlled thing, and it’s been a bit of work to get started. I started about this time last year, ordering circuit boards, electronic parts, and getting educated about what effects I can do.

I ended up going with an open source software package called VixenLights. It allows you to sync music with blinky-flashy lights, there’s a lot of devices it can drive, and I went with a really simple parallel port controller called the Grinch. The Grinch just does on/off for 64 channels, no dimming… and it runs off of a parallel port… tough to find those on computers these days. Lucky for me, and rather ironically, all my computers are old junkers so I was good to go.

Once I got the Grinch working, I decided to add in the dimming by building up a Renard Converter (Ren-c). It runs off of a serial port, but it’s a bit more complex as it involved PIC micro-controllers and some programming… I’ve done a bunch of PIC programming in the past, so I had a programmer, and new what I was getting into.

So, with the setup I have this year, I’ll be maxing out at 64 separate channels of blinky-flashy; Pretty lame by the standards some displays are running at.

I’ve just completed the 10 Mid-sized trees I was working on, each one is a 4′ tomato cage, wrapped in chicken wire, with 100 white and 100 multi coloured LEDs on separate channels. (at $20/string, that’s a fair bit of cash. Hence my display will be lame… too much $$ for year one)

Anyhoo, I’ve got my 10 Mids and I’ll be starting on the Minis soon. They will be the same chicken wire wrapped tomato cages, but half the size. 20 of them, each with 50 red and 50 green on separate channels. Should be able to do some nice effects with them. I’ve also got about 10 strings of 100 multis for the house, and some icicle lights to round out the year.

All in, it’s going to be about 5500 lights (all LED except for the icicles) and only using about 1200 watts…. 10Amps max. Since the power cost here is about $0.10/Kilowatt hour, it’s only going to cost me a bit over 10 cents / hour if I had all the lights on at one time… not too bad. But, I’ll be maxing out the 64 channels, so I will prolly only have 16 or 18 minis. Depends on how I set up the house. (Since each Mid/Mini is 2 channels, and I’ll have 30 total trees, that’s 60 of my 64 channels… I’m thinking I’ll need 8 channels for the house… so I have some decisions to make )

Below is a short vid of the hardware and my Mids… and some links to where more information is (click on the title of the video below to open it up in a new window, you’ll see the links in the comments on youtube.)

Their ordering interface is crap. I spent many frustrating hours setting up order lists only to be confronted with the inability to combine them. Searching for parts is difficult, and all in all just a bad experience. But, they have a deal with Canada . . . → Read More: More Parts]]> I got another shipment of electronic components from Digikey.ca the other day.

Their ordering interface is crap. I spent many frustrating hours setting up order lists only to be confronted with the inability to combine them. Searching for parts is difficult, and all in all just a bad experience. But, they have a deal with Canada Customs, and shipping (including any customs charges) is $8 for UPS. I usually get the parts in 2 days. That is why I continue to use them.

Conversely, Mouser has an awesome UI. Save projects, share them, searching is quick and easy… it’s all very easy and almost fun to use. BUT the big downside is that the shipping is slower, and they don’t have a deal with customs, so the last order I had to pay $20 COD for those costs on top of their shipping charge (which was also only about $8 but for slower USPS)

Now that I’m familiar with Digikey’s new BOM manager, it’s major limitations, and how to work around them, it will be easier to reorder more parts as required. I’ll keep using Digikey because of the order fulfilment side of the process. I just hope they ’2.0′ their site some day soon.

With this last shipment, I have all the parts to build the remaining SSRs and the Ren-C for my display. Those links go to ChristmasInShirley’s wiki for all things automated display… it’s the best site I’ve found… tons of maintained info. So now I just need to wait for the remaining boards to arrive, and I’ll be able to finish up the electronics side of things.

The Ren-C is a board that allows my Grinch controller to work over the serial port rather than the parallel port, and adds dimming capabilities. It’s run by a PICMicro chip that needs to be programmed. It’s all out there (source files, howtos, etc) but I need to have the hardware and software to program the PIC chip.

Luckily, I was into PIC programming before… I used the PIC16F84s for a few things, so I am familiar with what needs to happen for programming the chips. Unfortunately, that was many years ago and my memory, and chip programmer did not stand the test of time. So, off to Microchip’s site to grab MPLap, and then find WinPic to program the chips, and I needed to build a new programmer.

This would have been quite a daunting task but since I’ve got all the equipment it’s relatively easy to build a board. I’m no electrical engineer, but there are a lot of schematics for simple PIC programmers out there… I found PICPROGv5 by illumicon. Unfortunately, he’s out of stock, and not building any more or I would have just ordered the board… so I used his schematic and parts list to design my own board.

I grabbed ExpressPCB and started building a design… a few hours later, I had a workable single sided solution… I’m sure the EEs out there will point out many problems with it, but I’ve built it and it works… Here’s the pcb file (myPicProg5v2) but be warned, that I have only tested it once, and not sure that’s it’s 100% right… also, it’s built off the PICPROGv5… so it’s their hard work that went into my crappy ‘redesign’. Note: the top layer traces are just jumpers… it’s a single sided board. Also, not all the values are correct/entered, so take a look at the original PICPROG site for the schematic and component values. Component IDs are the same.

So after building the board, I went for the tried and true toner transfer method of getting the design on the board… In a nutshell, you print the traces using a laser printer on a glossy magazine cover(the toner doesn’t stick to glossy as well and transfers better than if you used regular paper), then place that on a very clean copper clad board, iron it down then soak in water and peel away the paper. I had good luck with very thin paper rather than super glossy paper… pages from my Mouser catalogue work great If you want more detail, there is a myriad of sites out there that have full instructions… check YouTube as well.

Since coper oxidizes quite rapidly, I decided to spray paint the bottom of the board to protect it… lol.

So the programmer is built and tested with a simple flashing LED program for the old 16F84s I had laying around. Haven’t tried it on the PIC I’ll be using for the Ren-C… Perhaps this weekend I’ll try to bang something together. Now it’s just waiting on the boards to finish this all up. I’ve got plenty of work to do around the house to keep me busy, oh… and a bunch of mini and mid trees to build

Being that it’s the end of June, it’s time for me to . . . → Read More: No boot device…]]> Opened up the laptop this evening and that’s what I was greeted with. No boot device… nice. A reboot, and all appears well, but that’s not what I want with a new lappy. Hope it was an isolated incident and will not be happening again.

Being that it’s the end of June, it’s time for me to start thinking about Christmas. I know, I know… it’s nuts… but I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me. This weekend started out with me building up the boards I got last winter. I have 7 SSR (Solid State Relay) boards, and enough parts to build up 6 of them… My supplier sent me an extra one because a shipment got lost in the mail and I had to wait for a while.

I started a little assembly line, one group of components at a time for all boards… I hooked up a fan in some silver flex duct line (think it’s for a dryer) to keep the noxious flux fumes out of my face… it worked pretty good and I was done in no time.

Here’s the days work… still missing a few parts so not all are done, but I’ve got a lot of components on the way, so I should be back at it for the weekend.

I’m still waiting for another 9 SSR boards and all the components to fill ‘em up… I’ve also ordered the parts to add dimming capabilities to the display. Currently I can only turn the lights off and on, so it will be nice to be able to dim rather than shut off abruptly. So, 10 more boards, and 300 components to solder in… that’s why I’m starting in June

And that doesn’t even count the display parts… I’m running all LED lights, so I’m not too worried about power requirements, but giving the history of wiring I’ve fixed in this house, I’m not taking any chances… I wired up 2 20amp, GFCI protected circuits, dedicated for the lights. That should be more than enough for my ‘year one’ display.

I picked up another 26 tomato cages from the Despot today… 6 4′ cages to round out the 4 mid-trees I already have. I wanted 10 total so I can do a pyramid setup of the mid-trees. Pretty standard stuff as far as displays go, so it’s an easy one to start with.

The other 20 cages will be mini-trees. They’re 3′ but I’m cutting the bottom ring off, and they will end up being 2′ tall. I’ll prolly ring the flower bed or run them down the drive. Not 100% sure yet.

So, I’ve got 10 mid-trees (4 already built) and 20 mini-trees, and the house lights. Gonna add icicle lights this year to have some lighting options and variety. I’ve got the capability for 64 channels, and I think I’m going to have about 40 channels this year, if everything goes as planned… and if I can get enough strings of lights. If all goes well, I’ll be adding a mega-tree next year… I’ve got another 24 channels before I need to buy/build more controller gear so that’s almost enough for a mega-tree… or perhaps I’ll do a ‘star of David’… we’ll see

Oh, and I have to program the sequences to make the lights dance… That’s prolly going to take more time than building the trees. I’m not planning any musical display (no FM transmitter), and I think that’s going to be a bit of a reach for the amount of work I need to get done in the time I have… between renos

Speaking of renos, here’s some ‘done for now’ shots of the bar.

… and no, the taps are not hooked up.