Christmas LED Light String Display
From WFFwiki
Contents |
Introduction
This project shows how to build a simple LED light string display using seven 24V LED light strings. I built this project for Christmas 2009 in order to decorate my balcony with lights. The light strings used are very common and (at least in Sweden) can be purchased from many places during the Christmas period.
The project sequences the seven light strings with full PWM brightness control allowing it to display a number of patterns.
YouTube Demonstration Video
Hardware
The hardware design is very simple and uses a 24V 2A switching power supply which is controlled via a ULN2004A to turn the LEDs on an off. An LM2576 switching regulator is used to provide the PIC18F2550 with 5Vs (I used a switching regulator since 24V to 5V is quite a large step).
Here is the circuit schematic for the LED string controller board:
The circuit board is a single layer board with through-hole components and is very easy to make. The connections to the LEDs are made though 'pin and spade' style speaker connections (since that was what the light strings came with). Here is a picture of the completed board:
Firmware
The firmware is written in Hi-Tech C and can be downloaded from the links below.
Files for download
PCB and Schematic - The PCB artwork and schematics in expressSCH and expressPCB format (these are freely available programs).
PIC18F2550 Firmware - The PIC18F2550 firmware source code (for HiTech C18)
Donate to waitingforfriday.com:
If you like this site and want to help support future projects, or you just want to show appreciation for a project you built, used or enjoyed, please consider leaving a PayPal donation. It's quick, secure and helps us to run the site and fund future projects!
| PayPal, fast, easy and secure |
Join the EFF:
The owner of this site is a member of the EFF and you should be a member too! The EFF protects the rights of open-source, open-hardware authors all over the world.
Most popular pages:
- Building a PIC18F USB device (252,966 views)
- Home (238,433 views)
- 4-Bit Computer (104,202 views)
- Projects (103,473 views)
- Open Source Framework for USB Generic HID devices based on the PIC18F and Windows (103,352 views)
- Open Source Visual C++ Class for USB Generic HID Communication (62,766 views)
- Real-Time Audio Spectrum Analyser (61,019 views)
- Controlling LED brightness using PWM (51,252 views)
- USB RGB LED VU Meter (49,641 views)
- PIC USB Development Board (48,678 views)
- 16x8 LED Matrix Display (43,973 views)
- C64 VICE Front-End (36,612 views)
- USB Performance Monitor (33,206 views)
- PC Case USB LCD (30,054 views)
- Rotary Encoder Demonstration (28,178 views)
- Commodore SID 6581 Datasheet (26,970 views)
- Reverse engineering an MB Electronic Simon game (24,031 views)
- Retro Computing (22,929 views)
- LED Colour Organ (22,799 views)
- Vetinari's Clock (18,594 views)