This project was a my very first one.
I have a young daughter (3 as of time of writing) and she absolutely loves Christmas lights and inflatables.
I looked into alot of different Christmas light solutions but could never find a solution which would give me absolute control over the lights / sequences and also be able to mould them to a model that I wanted to create.
In my head, I wanted to create a 3D tunnel that people could stand under similar to the garden arch pictured below.
I really wanted to be able to create the feeling of driving (or standing) through a tunnel.
And on a side note, I really liked the old school Winamp visualizer effect and wanted to emulate that on a 3D model. Similar to that below.
So hence began my experiment.
I grabbed a few metres of PVC pipe and started bending away with a heat gun. The end result was passable but far from perfect. But as proof of concept, it worked.
The Tunnel is 4 x Arches [1.5m (wide) x 2.4m (tall)] with 150 LEDs on each arch.
I filmed this outside my house hence the tinny music quality. The song is TobyMac – Lights Shine Bright.
Here’s the breakdown in components:
- A tonne of PVC pipe and joiners – found at Bunnings
- WS2811b LED Strip (5V) – WS2811b LED Strip (5V)
- NodeMCU with OLED – NodeMCU with OLED
- WLED – https://kno.wled.ge/
- xLights – https://xlights.org/
In the video above, for testing the NodeMCU is powered with a 60A power brick. After filming, I found a rugged outdoor case from Bunnings and ran a power lead to it..
The end result is pretty cool and worked really well for the Christmas I had it up.
I’ve since pulled it down and used the pieces for other projects.
I will revisit it in the future and hopefully come up with a more rigid and professional installation.
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