Programmable House Christmas Lights

ShortyX on 14/12/2017 - 01:39
Last edited 14/12/2017 - 01:40

We saw a house tonight that had RGB strip lighting programmed to sync to music (which was playing via speakers but they also had an FM transmitter). I’ve been wanting to do the lights for a while so will try next year.

Has anyone else done this? What lights did you use? And which controller and software?

Electrical & Electronics

Comments

  • steff on 14/12/2017 - 08:22
    +3

    I have no idea how to do this, but just an old fashioned suggestion - speak with the person in the house?

    • ShortyX on 14/12/2017 - 08:47
      +1

      :) I would have but they weren’t out the front and I didn’t want to disturb them by knocking on the door.

      • steff on 14/12/2017 - 08:56

        yeah fair enough :) good luck with your search!

      • iforgotmysocks on 14/12/2017 - 11:22
        +1

        Just let yourself in, and when they try and engage in conversation (i.e. "what are you doing in my house??") say "hey, while I've got you here, neat lights how'd you do it?"

  • Gronk on 14/12/2017 - 08:58
    +3

    http://www.instructables.com/id/LED-strip-Synced-MUSIC/

    Literally the first result when you google 'LED Strip sync to music'… ;)

    • Seraphin7 on 14/12/2017 - 09:10

      The first? Who'd a thunk it …

    • ShortyX on 14/12/2017 - 09:22

      Thanks - I have done some research but more so after first hand experience for some tips and to avoid any gotchas.

    • FireRunner on 14/12/2017 - 11:17

      Too bad the "I'm feeling lucky" button doesn't exist anymore - could have taken you there directly

  • [Deactivated] on 14/12/2017 - 09:31

    I've made smaller scale ones with a tiny Arduino and WS2812 LEDs. For a house, you'd just need to scale it up a bit. OK, a lot.

    Could be fun getting more complex though. Basic reactive effects (like a music visualizer) should be pretty simple. Plenty of code out there for that, see the links above. Arduino Uno or similar would be more than able to handle this. 30 LED per metre strips would take down your power requirements and still look good, and there's loads of different strips out there, from silicone jacketed to fully-encased.

    More complex and fun would be the ability to run custom programs for each songs, changing colour palettes and effects to suit, but that's not something I've looked into. Yet. :)

  • try2bhelpful on 14/12/2017 - 10:33
    +1

    Might want to give the neighbours the heads up. These sort of things can attract a lot of traffic and you don’t want to overly annoy them.

  • scrimshaw on 14/12/2017 - 11:57

    Linus Tech tips has a video for this kinda thing. As you might expect from a guy that likes RGB anything

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJa-BcpPkow

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