Zedomax DIY122
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Zedomax DIY122: Make a LED Christmas Tree!
In this special Christmas edition of Zedomax DIY122, we will show you how to
make the geekiest Christmas Tree in the world using LEDs, bathroom pipes, and
an embedded cubloc module.
Check out Pictures of the finished Christmas Tree
Make a LED Christmas Tree
Parts list
- 1 CUBLOC CB220 Module
- 1 CUBLOC Proto-Board
- 1 PC Fan
- 8 High Output Green LEDs from Alan's store
- 8 High Output Red LEDs from Alan's store
- 1 Tub and Shower Knob
- 1 Tub and Shower Piping that fits the Knob (I used Watts 713322BA from Home Depot)
- 1 9V Battery
- 1 Plastic folder
- 1 Glue Gun
- 1 3M Tape
Tub and shower piping
Get your tub and shower pipe and stick it into the shower knob and screw in tight.
If should look like this:
PC Fan wrecking
Next, get your PC fan and cut out the 3 supporting legs as shown here:
You should get this
Now, pop it out
Putting tub and shower piping and the FAN together
Hot glue the fan to the screwable part on the tub and shower piping:
Now you can fit the fan power through the pipe so the wires end up at the bottom.
Finished Product should look like this:
Making the branches for the tree
Now grab your tub and shower knob, (yes take it out again...sorry) and place it about 1/3 of a page from the left like shown here and make a circle.
Now get something to draw a bigger circle than the circle you drew. I got my thread thingee that would do the job here. You should end up with a slightly bigger circle. This is so there is space in between the pipe and the plastic branch we are making.
Now we need a larger circle outside all the circles. This will be the actual outside layer width. Also draw lines outside the circle like shown here.
Now place another layer of the plastic binder on top of the circles you just drew.
We need a stopper which will not allow our bottom branch to climb when the speed of the PC fan is increasing. So make something like this:
Start cutting the plastic branches you made!
You will need two of these so make two:
Now fold the flap on the stopper we made and fit it through the pipe. Also get the plastic branch to fit under it too.
Now cut out some pieces of the plastic binder that you will be using as side branches:
Make sure the pieces are long enough by measuring from the bottom branch to the top of the PC fan for each side.
Tape them together if it's too short:
Notice how I am doing it roughly here, but you could probably do a better job.
Tape the stopper:
Now tape it up like this just to see if it works:
Next, get the other branch we made earlier and put it in the middle like this:
Electronics
Put the LEDs on branches
Okay, now you've got the physics, let's get into the nitty gritty electronics now.
So take your side branches out, one should be slightly longer than the other to have an outside and inside layer for the Christmas Tree. The outside layer will simply server as a the green tree itself and the inside layer will be red letters.
So begin by measuring out evenly 8 dots for the longer side branch:
Then measure out evenly 8 dots for the short side branch: (make sure this is close to the
bottom of the branch, even though I didn't do that. And make sure LEDs will be closely spaced to ensure good lettering of the POV.)
Longer side branch wiring
Get your longer side branch and make the holes for the LEDs:
Try to fit each LED the same way. I have the shorter pin of the LED on the left side which is ground. I will hook up all the ground together later.
You should have something like this with all LEDs in:
Flip it and scotch tape the longer pin side like this:
Hook up all the ground side using wires and solder and thin wires like this:
Now move the scotch tape to the side we just finished:
Next, wire up each of the longer pin side of the LEDs and bring the wires up to the top:
You should end up with 8 wires for the longer pin side of LEDs and 1 wire for ground like shown here:
Shorter side branch wiring
Make holes again:
When you have something like this:
Flip the shorter pin side (ground) of the LEDs together like this:
Solder them together:
Wire the each of the other side individually like before:
Put it together
Schematics
You will need to the proto-board to be something like this:
and end up with something like this:
With all wires connected, end up with something like this:
Program using this code:
Const Device = CB220 Const Byte Charset = ( 'Merry! Christmas! 'M 0b11111111, 0b00000100, 0b11111111, 0b11111111, 0b10001001, 0b10001001, 0b11111111, 0b00011001, 0b11100110, 0b11111111, 0b00011001, 0b11100110, 0b00001111, 0b11110000, 0b00001111, 0b11111111, 0b10000001, 0b10000001, 0b11111111, 0b00011001, 0b11100110, 0b00000000, 0b11111111, 0b00000000, 0b10000110, 0b10001001, 0b01110001, 0b00000100, 0b11111111, 0b00000100, 0b11111111, 0b00000100, 0b11111111, 0b11111110, 0b00010001, 0b11111110, 0b10000110, 0b10001001, 0b01110001, 'animation 0b00000001, 0b00000011, 0b00000111, 0b00001111, 0b00011111, 0b00111111, 0b01111111, 0b11111111, 0b01111111, 0b00111111, 0b00011111, 0b00001111, 0b00000111, 0b00000011, 0b00000001 ) Dim i As Byte Dim j As Byte Dim k As Byte Dim Character As Byte Do For k=0 To 5 For j=0 To 12 For i = 0 To 2 Byteout 1, Charset(j*3+i) Udelay 600 Byteout 1, 0 Next Udelay 900 Next Next Delay 1000 For k=0 To 20 j=13 For i = 0 To 14 Byteout 1, Charset(j*3+i) Delay 25 Byteout 1, 0 Next Next Delay 1000 Loop
Now cut out a piece of plastic the width of the proto-board, this will go under the proto-board eventually.
Next, tape up to the two side branches and hot glue them together:
Hot glue the whole board and the side branches to the top of the PC fan:
Hook up a 9V battery:
Tips
Garrett made me some easy connectors here so I can plug the side branches in and out of the proto-board if I wanted to. Notice I hot glued any parts that might fall apart later.
Start with a full size proto-board and cut it appropriately to cut down on the weight:
Taking it Further
Well, this can really be made into other cool looking POVs. It's really up to your imagination now.
Questions or Comments can be emailed to:
max@zedomax.com or garrett@zedomax.com