Tag Archives: leds

Outdoor christmas decoration

So I got theese outdoor Christmas leds from China, solar powered ones. Like I expected, the lack of sun in Germany, especially on that side of the house where I intended to put them, was a big issue.

Another slight issue was that the children were so happy about the first snow, that they didn’t see it and ripped of the wire.

So my solution was to put everything on 4 AA batteries, and also on a Attiny85 microcontroller, and program the leds to automatically light up at 18:00 o’clock and turn off at 22:00.

Firefighter truck painting

http://www.instructables.com/id/Firefighter-truck-painting/

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And another long overdue project of mine, which started with us painting my son’s room.

My son also wanted to have a firefighter truck painted on his wall. But since I had some electronics stuff on my mind which I wanted to try out anyway, I promised him much more than a painting.

The idea behind, is to have a somehow 3d painting, with lights, and more states of programming. I decided to go with this:

  • Idle mode: all lights are off, but if the light sensor senses no light, the headlights go on 20% of their power
  • Headlight mode: headlights go on 100%
  • Action mode: all lights animated somehow like a real firefighter truck (see video)

Cycling through all actions is done with a touch sensor on the lower left part, near the wheel.