Arduino + Vixen + School = Awesome Christmas Light Show!

WS2811 5050 RGB Adressable LED Strip

Vixen Lights

Soldering iron (generic)

Arduino UNO

Arduino Ethernet Shield 2

Arduino Due

5050 RGB LED Strip

Darlington High Power Transistor

<h3 >Introduction</h3><p >I love Christmas, but something always bothered me, Christmas lights and their boringness, so I decided to build my own set of lights and make them dance to music! Originally I had planned to make this for my apartment but it turned out to be too small. So I asked for permission to do this crazy project at my school. And guess what? They jumped right into it! So I began doing sequences, soldering billions of LED strips and making a cool looking Arduino based controller (actually 3 of them) that look something like this puppy here: </p><figure><img src=https://projects.arduinocontent.cc/21aed745-43d3-42b4-8e99-53f3fb484ee2.jpg /><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><h3 >How it's built</h3><p >It has built in Ethernet connection, 1 WS2811 compatible output port capable of driving up to 4096 Pixels and 2 regular old output ports for controlling regular 5050 RGB LED strips.</p><p ><span >The software I used to make the lights blink is called Vixen Lights and can be found </span><a href="http://vixenlights.com/">here</a><span > for free. It is compatible with WS2811 pixels and the ArtNet protocol out of the box which makes it perfect for this application. </span></p><h3 >The final result </h3><p >And finally after two months of tinkering and lots of money spent, the final result is this: </p><div class="se-component se-video-container __se__float-none" contenteditable="false" style="width: 100%;"><figure style="width: 100%; height: 56.25%; padding-bottom: 56.25%; margin: 0px;"><iframe frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/F8cWTFB7-z8" data-proportion="true" data-percentage="100%,56.25%" data-size="100%,56.25%" data-align="none" style="width: 100%; height: 100%;" data-index="0" data-file-size="0" data-origin="100%,56.25%"></iframe></figure></div><p >The show ran for a whole week, and everyday a different group of people came by to watch it, making it by far my best project using only an Arduino and some LEDs.</p>

Arduino + Vixen + School = Awesome Christmas Light Show!

Last year I did an awesome Christmas light show at my school using only a few Arduinos and a program called Vixen Lights.