Monthly Archives: November 2016

“This Christmas, Make and Give to someone that needs it most. That is the real spirit.” – dapj

micro-readerboard Christmas tree ornament displays a short message, one letter at a time, on a bright single-character alphanumeric LED display. In the animation here, the ornament is displaying the word ornament.”

Each ornament is pre-programmed with a list of 36 different short phrases. Every time that an ornament is switched off and back on, it picks a new message from its memory to repeat.

Holiday Projects –

Holiday (Fun Circuits)
25 Light Sequencer using Xmas Lamps – drive 25 small Xmas lights. The lights operate at about 200mA and 3 volts, Anti-Flicker Circuit for LED Christmas Lights. Bells ring Generator –  Three circuit options; Can be synchronized to Christmas tree flashing lights.

Christmas related Circuits – Christmas Flashing-LEDs Badge –  Two-LEDs follow the rhythm of music or speech. Suitable for pins, badges, Christmas decorations. Programmable LED Flashers LED goes to steady state after a preset number of flashes Two simple, wide supply range operating circuits

Christmas Decoration Project
This project flashes 18 LEDs at three different rates and you can use these to create an eye-catching Christmas Decoration. The circuit is kept simple (and low cost) by using the 4060B IC which is a counter and oscillator (clock) in one package.

Ready Kits –

Christmas Season Electronic Animated Display Kits
ApogeeKits flashing Christmas tree electronic kit makes a beautiful lighted holiday display. 12 multi-colored LEDs flash randomly. May be powered by a 9 volt battery or a DC power adapter for long term continuous use. User assembly of components and soldering is required.

Grantronics Christmas Tree
“Last November, we published the very popular Christmas Star. This year, our “just for fun” project is in the shape of a tree but we have gone one step further by using bi-coloured LEDs. There are many different light patterns and each LED can produce 16 different colours.”

Letter from Chris of PyroElectro.com in 2013 – Happy Holidays!

Here’s a project I know your readers will love! It’s an all-digital-hardware LED Christmas tree we’re calling the Christmas Tree O’Digital Logic.

The tree itself is composed of 64 LEDs built into a spiral sitting on a piece of protoboard. Underneath, the controller uses shift registers and a 555 timer to create two modes of display: a predictable pattern and a random pattern. This should light up any desk or shelf and bring merriment to your readers!

We’re also running a Kickstarter campaign to fund our second free online electronics course, “An Introduction To Digital Electronics.” We have just 4 days left to raise $2,124. If you would be so kind as to spread the word about our efforts, we’d be extremely grateful!

To build the tree, we’ll use 63 green LEDs and 1 red LED. Lots of wire will be needed to make the spiral + cone shape of LEDs from top to bottom. To build a random pulse generator, we’ll use some digital logic trickery with a 7404 hex inverter. A 555 timer will be used to drive 8 shift registers, which will control all 64 of the LEDs. Finally, a 4 bit timer should be thrown into the circuit in case we want to slow things down with a divider.