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  • Author Author: fvan
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[Christmas Tree] Internet of Holiday Lights - NeoPixel Star

fvan

Previous posts in this project:

 

 

Introduction

 

With the holiday period over, I finally have some time to focus on my projects again.

For this post, I worked on the star which will go on top of my digital Christmas tree.

 

NeoPixel Star

 

I originally intended to use an LED strip, which I would cut into pieces and place in a star shape, but I then came across the NeoPixel Sticks from Adafruit.

One stick has eight LEDs which are placed very close to each other. They seemed perfect for the job.

 

Based on some measurements, I created a simple 3D printed star to test the positioning of the sticks. You'll notice the different branches are a bit off center. That is to compensate for the fact that the pixels themselves are not centered on the stick either.


After that, I modified the star to be able to clip the sticks on and pass the wires for power and data.

image

With the holder tested and fitting, I soldered the connections between the sticks, resulting in one strip consisting of five sticks.

To test the construction, I loaded the default "strandtest" sketch from the NeoPixel library and configured the proper number of pixels.

image

 

 

You can find the final model I designed on thingiverse: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:624811