ATTiny powered Charlieplexed Christmas Tree Ornament


This is one of my first PCB designs I've done. It uses an ATTiny45 to drive 20 individually adressable charlieplexed LED's. I made the PCB in the shape of a Christmas tree and it hangs on a Christmas tree as an ornament. A terribly GEEKY one. :slight_smile:

I have more details on my website. Just thought I'd share with everyone here. I doubt I'd have been able to build this without the skills and knowledge that I've picked up because of Arduino.

Very cool! I see you have it on Tindie, is it a kit or are you selling them assembled? I've never tried an odd-shaped board, can I ask where you had them made?

I'm selling them assembled, mostly due to the tiny SMD components. It's also a real pain to get the polarity correct on all the LED's.. I'd say I had a 30% success rate in the 10 boards I assembled. Luckily I have a hot air rework station, so flipping them around after getting them wrong isn't too big of a deal for me. :slight_smile: I had the boards produced by iTead, they were pretty quick, and put up with me not having a clue how to make proper gerber files, as well as selecting the wrong size board. :wink:

I've used iTead a fair amount, they do good work. It's good to know they're OK with such a wild shaped board!

The best part about iTead folks is that they charge ONE amount for ONE size no matter in what shape you want! Now this is something very great!

How is it powered?

4-5v power source. I've been running one of them off a LiPo battery pack, the one on my tree uses an iPhone charger and a chopped up USB cable.. :wink: a 4 AA battery holder works well with NiMH batteries in it, too.