I hope this is the right area to share this.
Occasionally in order to get myself motivated to finish an existing project I need to jump onto another project for a break. In this case I’ve been trying to get motivated to finish up my latest robot project for some time now and just can’t seem to get it done. So, I’ve started a new project which is fun and will be fairly easy to complete, a Christmas lights controller with synchronized music. You can buy these kinds of systems but building it is really the fun part for me.
The intent is to use an Arduino Mega 2560 microcontroller board (http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardMega ), a 16-Channel 12V Relay Module and the Vixen software package (http://vixenlights.com ).
Vixen is a .NET based software package that lets you create lighting sequences to music. It has a plug-in architecture for developers to create custom plug-ins for outputting the data for the sequences in whatever format that is needed. It also allows you to define the number of “channels” to control lights on. Basically a channel can be thought of as a single string of lights. You can perform various types of commands against each channel for each “frame” of the sequence. The cool part is you can define the number of frames per second, so you might say I want 10 frames per second, this allows you to command each channel to do something different 10 times every second.
The arduino will be pumped data from the Vixen software, running on a PC, via a USB serial connection. This data will tell the Arduino which lights to turn on and off via the relay module for each frame of the sequence. The relay module will do this by turning power on and off to 16 separate 120V AC wall outlets. In order to do things like have a string of lights be at half brightness the data from vixen will send the channel a value of 128 (the value range for a channel is 0-255 off-fully on), the arduino will then use PWM (pulse width modulation, nothing more than turning something on/off really fast) to flip the relay for that channel on/off fast enough to make the lights look like they are at half brightness.
I'm fairly sure the hardware part isn't going to be a big problem. More likely the use of the data coming from Vixen into the Arduino and controlling the relays at a fast speed will probably cause me the most trouble.
Here is my YouTube channel were I am posting videos of my progress: Scott Shaver - YouTube
Here are the first videos I have put up:
Christmas Lights Control System - Part 1 - Christmas Lights Control System - Part 1 - YouTube
Christmas Lights Control System - Part 2-1 - Christmas Lights Control System - Part 2-1 - YouTube
Christmas Lights Control System - Part 2-2 - Christmas Lights Control System - Part 2-2 - YouTube
Christmas Lights Control System - Part 2-3 - Christmas Lights Control System - Part 2-3 - YouTube
Christmas Lights Control System - Part 3-1 - Christmas Lights Control System - Part 3-1 - YouTube
Christmas Lights Control System - Part 3-2 - Christmas Lights Control System - Part 3-2 - YouTube
Christmas Lights Control System - Part 4-1 - Christmas Lights Control System - Part 4-1 - YouTube
If you are wondering about the weird numbering it's because I don't have decent video editing software on my Windows machine and I don't want to deal with my Mac. I welcome any ideas on improvements. I'm already getting prepared for the relays not being able to switch fast enough to do fades. If that turns out to be the case I will continue the series with videos using dimming circuits with random phase TRIACs.
Oh, and if I'm using the wrong terminology in the videos, please let me know.