Back in the day, Christmas lights were simple strings of filament bulbs, and if you really splashed out, you could get some that flashed. These days, we expect a lot more capability out of our blinking decorations. [JT] has put together a rather nifty website-controlled setup for his own tree.
The setup is a little different than builds you may be used to. The website runs on a cloud-hosted virtual machine on Digital Ocean, rather than running locally. This allows anyone on the web to visit the site, and use the interface to control the lights on the Christmas tree. An image of the tree is used as the interface, and allows users to set the color of each individual LED on the tree. The LEDs themselves are driven from an NodeMCU ESP8266, which uses its WiFi connection to query the website itself and grab the color data as needed. [JT] has also included a secondary interface, where the chat of the Youtube livestream can be used to control the LEDs, too.
It’s a build that’s a touch more complicated than most typical online LED blinkers, but one that teaches useful skills in interfacing on the web and using virtual machines. We’ve seen other builds in this genre too; even some that are reactive to “Christmas fever” itself. Video after the break.
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