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I thought I'd kick off a holiday 2014 thread with my latest DIY hack.

I'm planning a VU Christmas tree. That is, instead of syncing my tree's lights with a song, I'm going to drive them with an electret mic + a VU meter chip, so that they light up in response to the audio level in the room (like a graphic equalizer display, or KITT's voicebox). This way, they'll also react to Christmas music. I have several chips in my parts bin, so I may filter the lights to multiple channels. I'm planning now, so I'll let you guys know. I'm really interested in doing these projects without microcontrollers. I'll keep you posted.

I doubt we'll do anything this year. With Zach gone Kerri is not looking forward to the holidays.

Dave said:

I doubt we'll do anything this year. With Zach gone Kerri is not looking forward to the holidays.

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Get that bitch a real Christmas tree. Batches love real trees

Alternatively I was going to say get her a cat and post the free cat pic

Got the driver circuit breadboarded.

Oops accidentally clicked anonymous.

With it just being me and my wife this year, I'm trying to think of something different we could do this year that we couldn't years family is with us, but nothing's come to mind.

I'm hoping to have family pictures done in time for the holidays. I've said that for the last two years though. :/

WasabiPoptart said:

I'm hoping to have family pictures done in time for the holidays. I've said that for the last two years though. :/

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This will be the year!

@fade that is so cool. I can't wait to show the fella.

Due to a lot of schedule quirks, for the first time since we moved to Michigan in 2010 the wife and I aren't having any friends or family over for Thanksgiving. We don't really mind, though, so I'm still just going to make a big Thanksgiving spread (brined/herb-crusted turkey, my dad's stuffing, rosemary roasted carrots, mashed potatoes with smoked gouda, lemon/garlic/butter green beans), we'll eat ourselves into a coma, and then go Black Friday shopping for gifts for people.

I'm looking forward to this Christmas, though. We were married last year, so we couldn't make it home for Christmas; as such, it's been a little over a year since we've seen our parents and friends. I'm honestly just looking forward to spending time with family and friends around the holidays.

Okay that's weird. I posted an update to my Christmas tree project here last night, and it's gone. I thought I might have dreamed it, so I checked my browser history, and sure enough, it says the requested post could not be found.
Anyway, here's the picture I posted of the switching board for the Christmas tree project. The driver will feed into this:

Server crapped out and the host had to swap some drives and revert back to a backup.

Fade, how do you have time to do this stuff?

drawn_inward said:

Fade, how do you have time to do this stuff?

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I spent maybe ~1.5 hours on it this weekend. It was rainy and cold here, and my son was over at a friend's house. The pumpkins did eat a whole weekend. I get my kids involved when I can. They painted the faces for the pumpkins for example.

I put the driver together on protoboard and tested it last night.


The knob is for sensitivity adjustment.

Well that's annoying--I set up my triac board for positive logic signals, and the VU chip on my driver board signals low. Fortunately, I have a box full of PNP transistors. It's not pretty to sandwich them all in next to a thin chip like that. Works, though.

Okay, got it all together and tested. Added a bypass switch to turn the lights full on. Rewired some of the boards to use headers for easy assembly, etc. Had a video but it somehow got corrupted. Anyway, here are the latest pics. It works. All I need now is a Christmas tree.

So for the first time since I got my cats 14 years ago I dug out & put up my tree


The ornaments? Mostly all Star Trek & Star Wars Hallmark ornaments from the turn of the century. And yes, that IS a pretty sweet Tomb Raider poster in the back ground. Thank you for noticing.

The cats seem fairly unimpressed.

In other news, while perusing the Hallmark site for ornaments, I found this gem:

http://shop.hallmark.com/products/the-rise-of-lord-vader-1995QXI2633.html

Yes, you too can enjoy the full audio experience of one of the all time great internet memes.

I hope they aren't breakable... My cat makes a sport of knocking as many ornaments off my tree as he can while I'm gone. Even the ones at the top aren't safe.

We put a bunch of wooden and cloth ornaments on the tree this year because of Kiki.

Also, as much as I dislike Elf on the Shelf, we have one thanks to my mom and have been putting it out since the kids at school all talk about theirs. This year "Elfie" is in trouble with Smaug. Last night he enlisted Thorin Oakenshield to help him. If you want to see the pictures and you have Instagram, you can follow me there. I plan on continuing the battle this week.

WasabiPoptart said:

We put a bunch of wooden and cloth ornaments on the tree this year because of Kiki.

Also, as much as I dislike Elf on the Shelf, we have one thanks to my mom and have been putting it out since the kids at school all talk about theirs. This year "Elfie" is in trouble with Smaug. Last night he enlisted Thorin Oakenshield to help him. If you want to see the pictures and you have Instagram, you can follow me there. I plan on continuing the battle this week.

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I've been enjoying the story via facebook. Great Smaug!

Guess it's time to break out my holiday avatar.

My mini tree