[HN Gopher] The software you need for holiday overdecoration
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The software you need for holiday overdecoration
Author : KraftyOne
Score : 199 points
Date : 2024-12-23 14:17 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.dbos.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.dbos.dev)
| throw-qqqqq wrote:
| Wow, just wow :D! I am always amazed at the folks who sink so
| much time, money and energy into this.
|
| I will never be one, but I really appreciate all you fanatics
| going completely crazy with the lights etc. :D
| yodon wrote:
| Fun use of DBOS!
| dawnerd wrote:
| I almost setup xLights this year. Glad I didn't since that's a
| whole rabbit hole I don't have time for!
| jedberg wrote:
| Join us!! It's the perfect hobby for nerds. It starts with big
| DIY projects with lots of PVC and zip ties and 3d printing.
| Then you do a bunch of small electronics with solder and
| microcontrollers. And then you get to do programming and some
| basic networking to set it all up.
|
| I got started in Dec 2020 when I couldn't go anywhere and my
| show grows every year.
|
| I'll admit it is a time sink. I've probably spent 120+ hours on
| it (and my wife has contributed 20ish hours as well)
| yumraj wrote:
| Any pointers on where to start?
|
| I want to do something small for next year.
| paradox460 wrote:
| Best place to start is probably some form of "permanent
| Christmas lights"
|
| You install them along the trim of your house, like you
| would with traditional lights. You can then use them for
| all sorts of things. Flag colors for patriotic holidays.
| Bright pastels for spring. Christmas can be any mix of red
| green and white, hanukkah can be blue and white, etc
|
| They let you start soft, with something that doesn't need
| xlights, just a simple controller and the lights, so you
| get the feel for the hardware side of things, and you
| canuse them all the time
|
| I wrote a blog post[1] about how I got mine set up. My show
| this winter isn't very big, consisting of only a spinner
| (big circular pattern of pixels), megatree (big cone shaped
| light "tree") and the house lights, but some of my friends
| in the area go all out with spotlights and moving
| components and even pyrotechnics
|
| [1]: https://pdx.su/blog/2024-08-10-diy-permanent-xmas-
| lights/
| cmdrsammo wrote:
| Enjoyed your blog post - some great insights, solid final
| results and at about the right level of DIY. Could you
| give a specification for the LED pucks though please? The
| Aliexpress link is dead.
| paradox460 wrote:
| Ah yeah, sorry about that. I'll have to update the blog
| post.
|
| They are sold by a variety of vendors, but generally
| you're gonna look for the 3-pixel 30mm pucks. They come
| in either cold-white or warm-white varieties, and a slew
| of different voltages.
|
| You can buy a whole "kit" from the same vendor I bought
| my stuff from here[1], or the individual lights[2] and
| the tracks[3]
|
| You can also buy similar products from some US local
| stores, like WasatchLights[4], YourPixelStore[5], or from
| Gouley[6], who appear to be the original manufacturers of
| these. But I've had good luck with PaulZhang's store on
| AliExpress, so its the one I can attest to.
|
| [1]: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806033455595.html
|
| [2]: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256807344866216.html
|
| [3]: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804734568668.html
|
| [4]: https://wasatchlights.com/products/permanent-track-
| lights
|
| [5]: https://yourpixelstore.com/product/pucks-set-
| of-5-30mm/
|
| [6]: https://goulyled.com/
| cmdrsammo wrote:
| Brilliant, thank you for the original blog post and this
| detailed response!
| paradox460 wrote:
| Absolutely. Its a fun rabbit hole to go down, and the
| only constraining factors are time, money, and
| imagination.
| jedberg wrote:
| First you'll need a controller. Falcon Christmas is sort of
| the gold standard. You can buy just the board and assemble
| it yourself, or you can get a prebuilt controller. I'd
| suggest a prebuilt for your first one.
|
| Then you'll need LEDs. My favorite vendor for LEDs is
| Wally's Lights[0], but there are others. The big choice you
| have to make is 12v vs 5v. Most people do 12v because you
| can make a much longer string of lights before you have to
| do what's called power injection, which is where you splice
| in a power boost. However 12v lights obviously use more
| power. Also, most of the pre-built things are 12v. I
| actually use primarily 5v, but at this point I'm about 1/3
| 12v because I got props from other people.
|
| You're actually starting at exactly the right time, all the
| vendors do big sales in January.
|
| Then you'll need something to put the pixels into. There
| are lots of options here. Strips, props, grids. After you
| watch some videos you'll have a better idea of what you
| want. Also after you figure out your layout.
|
| Then you need to get Xlights[1]. Xlights is actually a good
| place to start, because it gives you an idea of what kind
| of things you can make. You can actually start with putting
| a layout on Xlights to see what you want to buy.
|
| But, before all that, you'll want to learn. These are my
| favorite YouTube channels:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@CanispaterChristmas
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@NiFamilyLights
|
| Watch some of the starter videos to get an idea before you
| buy anything. :)
|
| [0] https://wallyslights.com/ [1] https://xlights.org
| qianli_cs wrote:
| Chuck's light show is absolutely amazing! If you want to see more
| displays from him, check out: https://merryoncherry.org/
| yapyap wrote:
| thats so extra lol
| techplex wrote:
| If you are in the greater Boston area stop by:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBxB1aroSqE.
|
| Lots of animated displays in New England:
| https://www.nelights.org/
| sokoloff wrote:
| Northeast of Columbus, OH is Silent Night, Holy Lights and
| worth at least a 30 minute drive.
|
| 1215 Venetian Way, Columbus, OH 43230
| mtkd wrote:
| Leeds UK: https://x.com/HodgsonLights
| jgalt212 wrote:
| Don't miss Conan in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn (2000).
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlKlb9zqeJ0
| lukevp wrote:
| Buying prebuilt stuff and premade sequences seems like it'd take
| all the fun out of it, at least for me. I guess this is an area
| where some people are in it for the goal and others for the
| journey. I think either is equally valid, but it's always
| interesting to see people making different tradeoffs than I'd
| make.
| jedberg wrote:
| I mentioned this in my other comment, but the hobby is
| basically three parts -- big DIY, small electronics, and
| software/sequencing. Some people really like one or two parts
| of it. Some people will buy kits and spend all their time
| making sequences.
|
| Some will spend all their time building and then buying
| sequences.
|
| I personally end up buying sequences because I run out of time.
| I've made them before, but they take about 50 hours to make one
| song. I sadly don't have that kind of time, so I spend all my
| time making and then shortcut the end so that all the making
| serves a purpose.
| Reviving1514 wrote:
| Sorry but buying sequences sounds interesting, how would one
| go about doing this?
| paradox460 wrote:
| Vendors sell the sequences for a song, and they typically
| have certain events plotted out. You then just take the
| timeline in the sequence file you purchased, and map your
| props to parts of it
|
| It's somewhat akin to taking a midi file and setting
| various instruments to the various channels in the file
| dunham wrote:
| There is a street that does this in Alameda (3200 block of
| Thompson), and I'm told they have a covenant/contract requiring
| you to overdecorate when you buy a house on that block.
| jedberg wrote:
| Sounds like my kind of neighborhood!
|
| One side effect of my overdecorating is that it's inspired my
| neighbors to put up some lights. More lighted houses every
| year!
| lobsterthief wrote:
| Sounds like an inadvertent method of preventing non-Christians
| from living on that block.
| jedberg wrote:
| I mean, I'm not Christian and I do animated Christmas
| lighting, and I love Christmas music. Also, you can do
| Hanukkah or Kwanza or just plain lights.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| While it is an important holiday for Christians, it's widely
| celebrated by non Christians and most of the traditions
| predate Christianity as European winter celebrations. It
| includes bits of Germanic Yule and Roman Saturnalia
| celebrations, both which predate Christianity.
| achierius wrote:
| This is mostly pop history, dating back to anti-Catholic
| propaganda from zealous Puritan reformers who wanted to
| excise any trace of what they saw as pagan contamination.
| The bulk of Christmas traditions are distinctly Christian,
| and very little of Saturnalia in particular was carried
| over into the new holiday. Perhaps the biggest influence it
| had was the tradition of communities electing a 'King of
| Mischief' to preside over festivities -- a practice that
| hasn't even survived into the modern day!
|
| Of particular note is the Christmas tree, which as far as
| we can tell originated in the (decidedly non-pagan) 16th
| century: "The earliest mention of customs like Christmas
| trees are actually ascribed to Martin Luther. The story
| goes that during a winter evening stroll Luther was
| overcome by the brilliance of the stars in the night sky,
| painting the background over the evergreen forests. In
| order to capture that moment Luther cut down and erected a
| tree in the main hall of their house, covering its branches
| with lighted candles" (Bruce David Forbes, Christmas, a
| Candid History, 50).
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I don't think what you are saying is accurate- I was
| looking up the history of most of the regular things
| people do as American families, and almost everything I
| could think to look up had pretty clear non Christian
| origins. It sounds like the Romans even cut evergreen
| trees and set them up indoors for Saturnalia. By all
| accounts the Catholics only changed it even to be in the
| winter to try to co-opt existing winter Solstice
| celebrations. It is hard to figure out the real history
| of things with so many motivated accounts...
|
| Overall, specific rituals aside, having a big family
| celebration around the winter solstice really seems to do
| wonders for the mental health of people at high
| latitudes- and has been done consistently since long
| before Christianity. As a parent in a non Christian
| family, I find it to be incredibly valuable and important
| and I take it pretty seriously, but without any sense of
| it being religious.
| paradox460 wrote:
| There's actually a neighborhood, where everyone who lives
| there is Jewish, and they go all out on lights. Even get the
| houses networked together so they can do effects across the
| whole street. They also post a lot of how to videos regarding
| xlights and stuff
|
| https://youtu.be/y14R1nFcmFI
| yumraj wrote:
| So only folks who celebrate Christmas can buy there?
|
| Or as long as you over decorate once a year is good enough?
| abustamam wrote:
| You can decorate without celebrating Christmas.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| You can celebrate Christmas without decorations. I find
| those intensive LED creations on houses kitchy and invasive
| to neighbours and people passing nearby.
| Timwi wrote:
| Amen! I wonder how many people have to take long detours
| around these houses to avoid sensory overload and
| meltdowns.
| mzs wrote:
| There's a street like that where a cousin of mine lives. He
| agreed to it when buying the home. But there is one house
| that does not decorate at all. It was a very long and ugly
| situation. All that misdirected hate toward the people living
| in that home wasn't very Christmassy.
| paradox460 wrote:
| There's a similar one in South San Francisco, just below the
| top of sign hill, where the big Xmas tree is erected every
| winter
| ooooooooldguy wrote:
| If you're going to put a dot matrix display of images on your
| house, just cover it with LCD screens. At some point too much
| tech just makes it boring and plain.
| bgentry wrote:
| The backlight bleed of LCDs would look pretty awful at night.
| Also I'm not sure how others feel about it but to me a DIY LED
| matrix is way cooler than dropping in a prebuilt screen with
| HDMI input.
| mathgeek wrote:
| Let's not gatekeep our fun holiday light displays. Would be
| interesting to see both approaches side by side.
| jedberg wrote:
| Some people do combine those with their individual pixels. They
| will also use projection mapping. All three techniques look
| different and add to the show in different ways.
| ucyo wrote:
| Are there any good examples for apartments? I am interested in
| doing similar stuff, but don't own a house. Seems like all
| examples are from houses...
| jedberg wrote:
| Apartments are a lot harder because you can't usually drill
| into the side. I've seen some balconies on apartments in my
| area with small animations, and one person has a matrix in the
| window.
|
| But at the end of the day it's the same as house, you just have
| a much smaller canvas to work with.
|
| You'll want to look up the ESPixelStick to get started if
| you're in an apartment, it can probably meet all your needs,
| since you won't be able to do too many lights.
|
| [0] https://forkineye.com/product/espixelstick-v3/
| codetrotter wrote:
| I once had a crazy idea to build an inner frame and my own
| floor and walls onto those frames, in a room I was renting
| for a long time. I ended up not doing that, and depending on
| your situation it might not be allowed to do it (either
| because of rules from the landlord, or fire safety that you
| have to consider).
|
| I still think it's an idea worth considering in some
| situations though, as long as you are sure it's compliant
| with rules from the landlord and fire safety regulations etc.
| jedberg wrote:
| I don't know about building an entire false frame (what do
| you do with it when you move? You would lose a ton of
| interior space. Your ceilings would only be 7 feet, etc).
|
| But I've definitely seen people build a false wall that
| covered 1/2 of a real wall to make fake builtins over a
| fake fireplace. But they could take it with them when they
| left.
| codetrotter wrote:
| Yeah, the idea was to disassemble it and take it with me
| when I moved out. The inner frame would be assembled
| using screws, rather than nails and also not using any
| glue.
|
| It might take several days, or even a couple of weekends
| if you have busy days during Mondays to Fridays, to
| disassemble it. And that's if you originally built the
| whole thing in one go and kept in mind and made notes of
| how to disassemble it.
|
| The worst situation is if your lease suddenly ends on
| short notice and you don't have time to disassemble it on
| the time you have left before you have to leave.
|
| Another thing is that even if you disassemble it on time,
| the dimensions of your frame probably won't fit well into
| the next room you rent in a different place. And then you
| have to do a bunch of cutting and maybe buying even more
| materials or throwing away some of what you had, or find
| somewhere to store it or something.
|
| There's also the possibility that you might accidentally
| damage the original floor or walls even though you try to
| be super careful, if you go about constructing such a
| thing.
|
| These sorts of potential complications are part of the
| reason that I ended up not actually building such a thing
| myself so far. Aside from also not having much in terms
| of extra cash on hand at the time to even go buy the
| materials I would have needed for it.
|
| The half wall you suggested is far more practical for
| sure.
| ucyo wrote:
| Fire safety rules are a good point. Wasn't thinking about
| that aspect. But using outdoor compliant lights and hanging
| from frames outsides could be an option. Guess it would be
| an interesting start
| ucyo wrote:
| Oh nice. Thanks for the hint. It seems like a good starting
| point.
| slater wrote:
| Maybe one thing you could do if you have large enough windows
| so people would see: in-door wall projection, e.g. something
| like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtFthRSqRwQ but
| interior?
| ucyo wrote:
| Waking up in the middle of the night to pee will be the icing
| on the cake for the neighbours
| theoa wrote:
| Project images from your balcony onto the underside of the
| balcony above you.
|
| Here is a link to a photo of my balcony in San Francisco during
| the initial stages of the virus
|
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/xhDt7rmr7shjJbhu7
| abustamam wrote:
| If you're in the greater Sacramento area...
|
| 6516 Jackson Ct, Rocklin, CA 95765
|
| It's basically an entire Christmas light show, synced with music
| which is broadcasted on an FM radio station. The main problem is
| that because few people have access to an FM radio outside of
| their car, it pretty much causes traffic chaos in that little cul
| de sac, and the best view requires you to not be in a car.
| jtxt wrote:
| (Hmm... A qr code to an audio stream? Could be a fun challenge
| to get it to sync reliably.)
| paradox460 wrote:
| Already solved haha: https://pulsemesh.io
| arathjabir wrote:
| It's interesting from tech point of view. But I would never to
| anything like this to my house.
| nogridbag wrote:
| I've always been interested in making my decorations a bit more
| interactive using coding, but I'd definitely want something more
| subtle than one of these intricate light shows played to music.
| Any good examples of something more subtle?
|
| Unless you're really close to your neighbors and they're all on
| board, I feel my neighbors wouldn't want the extra attention on
| our street.
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