Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Upgrade to My Mom's Christmas Tree (using my Arduino :o)

I went over my mom's house yesterday to have some holiday dinner. While I was there, I upgraded her Chrismas tree.

Me: Hi Mom
Mom: Mike! why are you bringing all these wires into my house?
Me: It is just my Arduino
Mom: Arrrr what?
Me: It is my Arduino and my Relay Squid
Mom: SQUID! I ALREADY MADE SQUID!
Me: Where is your tree?
Mom: Oh it's in the living room, come see.
Me: Yes! Yes! this will be perfect!

Ingredients:

An Arduino
A couple spot lights with Red and Green Bulbs
A Relay Squid
Some Wire



And...

A tree with lights



First I distracted my mom

Then I stripped some wire



I used some tape to fasten my Arduino to my Relay Squid



I connected the wires:
Arduino "Gnd" -> Squid "G"
Arduino "5V" -> Squid "V"
Arduino "1" -> Squid "1"
Arduino "2" -> Squid "2"
Arduino "3" -> Squid "3"
Arduino "4" -> Squid "4"



I plugged in the lights into the Relay Squid and plugged the Relay Squid into the wall


I wrote a few lines of code:



#define MULTITREE 1 //Multi color lights wrapped around the tree
#define WHITETREE 2 //White lights wrapped around the tree
#define REDSPOT 3 //Red spotlight shining on the tree
#define GREENSPOT 4 //Green spotlght shining on the tree


void setup()
{

pinMode(MULTITREE, OUTPUT); // set all the pins to outputs
pinMode(WHITETREE, OUTPUT);
pinMode(REDSPOT, OUTPUT);
pinMode(GREENSPOT, OUTPUT);

digitalWrite(MULTITREE, LOW);
digitalWrite(WHITETREE, LOW);
digitalWrite(REDSPOT, LOW);
digitalWrite(GREENSPOT, LOW);

}


void loop()
{

digitalWrite(MULTITREE, HIGH);
delay(500);
digitalWrite(MULTITREE, LOW);
delay(50);
digitalWrite(WHITETREE, HIGH);
delay(500);
digitalWrite(WHITETREE, LOW);
delay(50);
digitalWrite(REDSPOT, HIGH);
digitalWrite(GREENSPOT, HIGH);
delay(500);
digitalWrite(REDSPOT, LOW);
digitalWrite(GREENSPOT, LOW);
delay(50);

}

It only took me 10 minutes...




2 comments:

Matt said...

Merry Christmas! Nice display you built there... I'm jealous :) My family's tree was already too decked out with ornaments... I would have had to take them all down to get parallel access to the different light strings (instead, they're all wired in serial ... boo).

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