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3D RGB Xmas Tree for Raspberry Pi Reviews

4.8 Rating 128 Reviews
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Easy and fun setup to add holiday cheer to your raspberry
Helpful Report
Posted 4 years ago
I love this tree, extremely easy to assemble and code! I have done a few fancy effects, but my favourite is actually this really simple one with nice clear, balanced colours and runs perfectly on a Pi Zero: ---------- from tree import RGBXmasTree import random tree = RGBXmasTree() try: while True: pixel = random.choice(tree) pixel.color = (.6,0,0) pixel = random.choice(tree) pixel.color = (.3,.3,0) pixel = random.choice(tree) pixel.color = (0,.6,0) pixel = random.choice(tree) pixel.color = (0,.3,.3) pixel = random.choice(tree) pixel.color = (0,0,.6) pixel = random.choice(tree) pixel.color = (.3,0,.3) except KeyboardInterrupt: tree.close() ---------- Feel free to share the code as an extra example if you want! Merry Christmas to everybody out there with Pi's (I have a 4b, 3b+ and three Zero's)
Helpful Report
Posted 4 years ago
Wonder little product to have a tinker with, and it really brightens up my desk at work. As I work primarily in .Net, and couldn't find any .Net examples, I have made a NuGet package available if anyone else wishes to use it. (https://www.nuget.org/packages/CutilloRigby.Iot.RgbXmasTree/) The source code is available at https://github.com/mcrigby/rgbxmastree
1 Helpful Report
Posted 4 years ago
It is a nice little project, my only thought is why it has not got an LED on the other side of the star at the top.
Helpful Report
Posted 4 years ago
Author didn't leave any comments.
1 Helpful Report
Posted 4 years ago
Last year I hooked up this great little RGB Christmas tree to an old Raspberry Pi but that has now been used for another project so I decided this time around to run it on a microcontroller like another reviewer, with the terrific WLED firmware from Aircoookie. I chose an ESP32 as I have a big Espressif dev board kicking around as my working platform but an ESP8266 would work equally well. For the ESP32 you will need an APA102 variant of the WLED firmware which is described in this discussion thread: https://github.com/Aircoookie/WLED/issues/1107 and the binary can be found here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/11ngCNZkkiR7xlRa2PmiEHxZldFR_b_rP/view?usp=sharing. I mounted it all on a small prototyping PCB with the following pinouts and it looks fab on my desk: https://drive.google.com/file/d/17jjdHD30eFu0qjeHgd8g56F6Nil5rlu0/view?usp=sharing. It's also a great way to get started with microcontrollers or if you just want to get the Christmas tree up and running without the programming effort. Tree header -> ESP32 2 -> 5V 6 -> GND 22 -> GPIO0 (CLK) 32 -> GPIO2 (DATA)
Helpful Report
Posted 4 years ago
For this Christmas I decided to connect the tree to an ESP32 microcontroller, having used last year's Raspberry Pi for another project. If anyone else wants to do the same, the relevant pins on the tree header are 2 -> 5V, 6 -> GND, 22 -> CLK and 32 -> DATA. There are a bunch of other GND pins too, if it makes your cabling easier. The tree appears to use a variant of APA102 so you'll need to bear that in mind when choosing the controller software. Like another reviewer (Steve) I went with the terrific WLED by Aircoookie, which includes WLAN/Bluetooth, smartphone app and a ton of patterns, effects, timers etc. I struggled a bit to find a binary with APA102 support till I came across this thread (https://github.com/Aircoookie/WLED/issues/1107) which includes a link to the correct binary: https://drive.google.com/file/d/11ngCNZkkiR7xlRa2PmiEHxZldFR_b_rP/view?usp=sharing. After flashing and testing my controller, I hooked everything up on a small prototyping board and powered it all from the micro USB port on the controller. Here's how it looks: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10LaOeZfOCmWrNwZTGtbHPjNwOy4UGL3Q?usp=sharing.
Helpful Report
Posted 4 years ago
This is a great, easy little project to build and a lot of fun to code. My boys loved figuring out how to make the lights do what they wanted. We had a blast!
Helpful Report
Posted 5 years ago