Tag Archives: Christmas

Giving Stranger Things For Christmas

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[rudolph] was at a loss on what to get his niece for Christmas. It turns out she’s a huge fan of Stranger Things, so the answer was obvious: make her an alphabet wall she can control!

Downsizing the scale to fit inside a document frame, [rudolph] calls their gift rudLights, and a key parameter of this build was to make it able to display any phrases sent from their niece’s Amazon Fire tablet instead of constantly displaying hard-coded phrases. To do so, it has a HC-05 Bluetooth module to forward the commands to the NeoPixel LEDs running on a 5V …read more

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An IoT Christmas Tree For Your Hacker-Mas Celebrations

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Smart Christmas trees may soon come to mean something more than a fashionably decorated tree. Forging ahead with this new definition, [Ayan Pahwa], with help from [Akshay Kumar], [Anshul Katta], and [Abhishek Maurya] turned their office’s Christmas Tree into an IoT device you can watch live!

As an IoT device, the tree relies on the ever-popular ESP8266 NodeMCU — activated and controlled by Alexa, as well as from a web page. The LEDs for the tree — and the offline-only tree-topper controlled by an Arduino Pro Mini — are the similarly popular Neopixels.

For those viewing online, a Raspberry Pi …read more

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A Clear Christmas Tree Means More Lights!

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For all the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, people still find ways to make time for their passions. In the lead up to Christmas, [Edwin Mol] and a few co-workers built themselves an LED Christmas tree that adds a maker’s touch to any festive decor.

Before going too far, they cut out a cardboard mock-up of the tree. This an easy step to skip, but it can save headaches later! Once happy with the prototype, they printed off the design stencils and cut the chunks of clear acrylic using power tools — you don’t need a laser cutter …read more

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Holiday and Christmas scams users should be aware of

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By Carolina
“It’s that time of the year again” when Holiday and Christmas scams target users around the world since millions of people are celebrating and buying gifts for friends and family. Most people prefer shopping online and tha… Continue reading Holiday and Christmas scams users should be aware of→

Bringing A Christmas Lights Show Inside

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Instructables user [Osprey22] has been building towards this Christmas for years. Why? This year, he has brought an impressive musical Christmas light display inside, and at a fraction of the cost too!

An box at the tree’s base hides the power supply and the controller boards — a Raspberry Pi and a SanDevices e682 Pixel controller for the 400 WS2811 RGB LEDs — with an added router to connect them to the main network. The Pi is running Falcon Pi Player and a projector somewhere in the region of $100 complements the light show.

As far as mapping out the …read more

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Bringing A Christmas Lights Show Inside

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Instructables user [Osprey22] has been building towards this Christmas for years. Why? This year, he has brought an impressive musical Christmas light display inside, and at a fraction of the cost too!

An box at the tree’s base hides the power supply and the controller boards — a Raspberry Pi and a SanDevices e682 Pixel controller for the 400 WS2811 RGB LEDs — with an added router to connect them to the main network. The Pi is running Falcon Pi Player and a projector somewhere in the region of $100 complements the light show.

As far as mapping out the …read more

Continue reading Bringing A Christmas Lights Show Inside→

It’s A Wonderful Secure Life: A Christmas Classic Meets the IT Admin

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    We are big fans of the Christmas pulp. It’s A Wonderful Life is high up on that list. We were wondering what it would sound like if George worked as an IT admin…and it was 2017. This is “It’s A Wonderful Secure Lif… Continue reading It’s A Wonderful Secure Life: A Christmas Classic Meets the IT Admin→