The Arduino works best at 7V. This buck converter allows your power supply to supply 12V to the lights and 7V to the Arduino from the same power supply. To build this cable, you'll need thick Ethernet cable I recommend 23 AWG for the wire thickness and 3-pin connectors on each end.
If you plan to keep your Arduino and your lights outside, you'll need a weatherproof box, some weatherproof connectors, and other gear. Here is one idea. This will protect the strings, network cable, and power cable going into your outdoor enclosure.
Buy a plastic box to hold the Arduino, power supply, and network board at Walmart or a dollar store. Any 3-prong power cable 18 AWG will do. This cable connects your Arduino to your home computer network via a wireless router, network hub, or network switch. This cable can be up to feet long. This is explained more later on. This equipment will certainly come-in handy while you are building your Arduino light controller!
The Arduino works best with 7V of power. Since we are using a 12V power supply to power the lights, the buck converter will lower the voltage going to the Arduino. Note: Be very careful when connecting wires from the power cord to the power supply! Since we are working with AC voltage, incorrect wiring could cause a serious shock or fire.
Do NOT plug the power cord into a wall outlet while performing the steps below. Note: If you connect other wires to the power supply, especially to power your light strings, make sure that the gauge is 18 AWG or thicker! If you provide more than 7V, the Arduino could overheat and eventually fail. If you plug the power cord into the wall, the light on the Arduino should slowly blink off and on. This is the default program built into the Arduino when you first buy it.
The network board allows the Arduino to communicate on an Ethernet network. When you create light animations on your laptop, these animations are sent from your laptop to the Arduino via your home network via an Ethernet cable. When you look at the network board, there are six rows of two pins.
There is a legend above and below this block of pins. In the diagram show, "5V" in the legend corresponds to the first pin the first row, while "ST" refers to the second pin in the fourth row. When you look at the Arduino, find the holes marked These are in the lower-right corner of the Arduino. There are along the bottom row of the Arduino. Using the male-to-female jumper wires, connect the female ends to the network board and the male ends to the Arduino in this order:.
Note that the Arduino has multiple GND terminals; you can use any of them. This bottom row is GND only. The Arduino gets its power from the power supply 7V while the network board gets its power from the Arduino 5V.
If you look at the network port on the network board, there should be a steady green light and an amber light that flashes intermittently. That is a good sign! Note: Be careful when plugging jumper wires into your Arduino!
If you bend the jumper wire pin, do not straighten the bent pin; throw away the jumper wire. A bent pin is weakened and can eventually break off inside the female socket in the Arduino. Most likely, your lights will be placed at a distance from the Arduino. For that you need to build extension cables.
The ws lights that you purchased use three wires: power, ground, and data. But you can't simply use any three-wire cable for your extension cable. That's because the data wire can pickup interference from the power and ground in the same cable. To get around this problem, use a specially wired Ethernet cable for your extension cables. Note: I recommend no longer than feet for your extension cables using this method. Also, be sure that the Ethernet cable uses 23 AWG or thicker wire.
First, strip off the insulation on one end of the Ethernet cable. Then, strip the some insulation from all eight wires within. You'll notice that there are four solid-color wires and four white wires actually, mostly white with some color on them. Twist all four mostly white wires together. This will be our ground "wire". Then, twist the blue, brown, and orange wires together.
This will be our power "wire". The remaining wire green will be our data wire. Repeat these steps for the other end of the Ethernet wire.
If your Arduino and lights will be outdoors, use the 3-pin round outdoor connectors instead of the JST indoor connectors. Solder a male outdoor connector to one end of the Ethernet cable and a female outdoor connector to the other end. Your lights should have come with JST connectors on both ends. Plug the female end of the lights to the male end of your extension cable. You can skip the instructions below and move to the next step.
If your lights came with no connectors on either end bare wires , then you need to add a connector to the string.
Figure out which end of the light string is the "input" end and which end is the "output" end. To do this, look closely at the first bulb on either end of the string. Each bulb has an "input" side and an "output" side. A magnifying glass may help! The first bulb in the string is where the bare wires go into the "input" side of that bulb. On the other end of the string, the bare wires come from the "output" side of the last bulb.
Make sense? Regardless if your strings came with JST connectors on them or not, you will need to cut off the connector on the "input" side of the string and solder in a waterproof connector instead. Connect a female round waterproof connector to the three bare wires on the "input" side of the first bulb.
Solder the middle wire usually green on the JST connector to a male-to-male green jumper wire. Connect this adapter cable as follows:. Crimp fork terminals to the red and black wires of a male waterproof connector.
Solder the yellow wire on the waterproof connector to a male-to-male green jumper wire. Note: Be sure not to connect the green jumper wire to the top row in the top-right corner of the Arduino!
This top row is 5V only and could damage your light string! Whew, it was a lot of work, but now things get easier. You connected Arduino to the power supply, dropping down the voltage to Arduino friendly 7V through the buck converter. You built an extension cable for the string of lights, then made an adapter that connects the extension cable to the power supply and Arduino. Your work should look similar to the photo in this step. It's a good idea to mount all of your hardware onto a wooden board or to the bottom of your enclosure so that this hardware doesn't jostle around.
Foam tape works wonders for keeping things in-place! When you apply power to the Arduino, you will see the LED flash, telling you that the Arduino is working and running that program successfully.
We need to replace that simple program with a different program. This program will turn the Arduino into a light controller. To put this special program called a "sketch" in Arduino lingo onto your Arduino, we need to install the Arduino IDE program on your computer first. Click this link to download the IDE. The sketch only works with Arduino IDE version 1.
The above link gives you the correct version. Note this download is for Windows based computers. After downloading the IDE, unzip the file into a folder. Inside this folder you will see a file named Arduino. It will have a blue, round icon next to it.
Do not start this program yet. Now that you have downloaded and unzipped the Arduino IDE program, the next step is downloading the light controller sketch. This is the program that will turn your Arduino into a light controller. But more than that, many thanks for being a friend through the years, working on Christmas lights together.
I couldn't ask for a better friend! You can download the sketch here. Unzip this file into a folder, apart from the Arduino folder that you made in the previous step. Please do not rename this folder; it must be named exactly that. Inside this folder is another folder named "UIPEthernet". Move this folder to the Arduino folder from the previous step, to a folder named Libraries.
This step is necessary for the network board to work properly. That's it! You have installed the light controller sketch onto your computer. The next step is configuring the sketch for your home network.
Your Arduino light controller will become a network connected device. Your laptop can be wireless or wired; it will still find your Arduino which is also connected to your network. To do this on a Windows computer To do this, edit the global. These are the important lines that need changed:. A "Universe" is a number that represents all of the strings connected to your Arduino. In my case, I have two Arduinos, one set to universe 1 and the other set to universe These numbers are defined in xLights.
So when xLights is sending DMX commands to light-up strings in a particular universe, the Arduino is listening and acts upon commands only for its universe.
If you don't know the universe for your particular controller, first read the section on setting up xLights on this website before continuing with these instructions. This defines how many ws strings are connected to the Arduino a maximum of eight are allowed.
These four lines define the IP address for this Arduino. For instance, if your computer's IP address is Write down this IP address for your Arduino onto a label and stick it on your light controller. The next step is sending the light controller sketch to the Arduino's memory. To do this, open the folder that contains the Arduino IDE that you downloaded in previous steps.
Then run arduino. Before connecting your Arduino to your computer, temporarily disconnect any lights that you have connected. Then connect the Arduino to your computer via a USB cable. If this is the first time you have connected the Arduino, Windows will attempt to install hardware drivers for it. Depending on the version of Windows that you have and the brand of Arduino, the driver may install automatically or you may be prompted to provide the driver software you may have to download the driver software for that particular brand of Arduino.
Either way, the drivers must be installed successfully before proceeding to the next step. Note: If Windows cannot automatically find drivers for your Arduino, you can tell Windows to manually find drivers in the "arduino When you connect the Arduino via USB and the computer accepts the connection with no errors indicating that the drivers are installed and functional , tell the Arduino IDE the type of Arduino you are using.
If you see an orange message stating "Error compiling", then there is something wrong with the sketch or perhaps there is a typo in the global. If the light controller sketch verifies correctly, you will see the "Done compiling" message in the status bar. At this point, you can upload the sketch to the Arduino via the Upload button the right-arrow button next to the checkmark button in the toolbar.
When you click Upload, the sketch will be verified again, then you will see "Uploading" in the lower status area. A light on your Arduino will rapidly flash during the upload process. When the upload is complete, you will see a message stating so in the status area.
You can disconnect the Arduino from the USB cable. Now that your Arduino received the uploaded sketch, it is now a light controller! Let's see if your lights are connected properly.
In a few moments, your strings should light up. All of the bulbs will go through a "self test", all changing at the same time to various colors. This means that the connections between your lights and the Arduino are correct and that the sketch that you uploaded is working properly.
After it goes through the seven basic colors, the lights will go dark. After a few moments. All of the lights will turn red and stay that way. This is normal. The red means that the Arduino is looking for commands from your computer, but we haven't set that up yet. If your lights do not light-up, please refer to the Troubleshooting step near the end of this instructable.
Now that your light controller is lighting up your lights, we need to see if the Arduino is communicating with your home network. The computer will attempt to communicate with the Arduino. It will "knock" on the door of the Arduino four times.
If the Arduino responds, you will see a message liked "Reply from xxx. This means that communication was success. If you receive the message "Destination host unreachable" or "Request timed out" repeatedly, then your computer could not see the Arduino. Please refer to the troubleshooting step at the end of this instructable.
Note: It is normal, out of several good "Reply from" messages, to receive an error message mixed in. But if you receive four error messages in a row, that is a problem. We are finished with preparing the hardware and software on the Arduino. You built the hardware, connected the lights to the Arduino, and uploaded the light controller sketch to it. When you apply power, the lights cycle through the basic colors, meaning the lights are connected properly to the Arduino and that the sketch is working fine.
We've made it so far and congratulations! This is where it gets fun! With it you can layout your display visually then assign effects to the various items throughout your animation. While your controller supports up to bulbs, xLights can support millions!
You can build your controllers to support more lights; they all integrate into xLights to be controlled together. If xLights hasn't already started, double-click the "xLights" or "xLights64" shortcut on your Desktop. Do not use the xLights Scheduler shortcut. Before you design light animations, xLights needs to know about your Arduino light controller.
Specifically, where to find it on your network and how your light strings are connected to the Arduino. When you start xLights, you will see three tabs under the colorful effects toolbar: Setup, Layout, and Sequencer. Next to the Setup tab in xLights below the colorful effects toolbar is the Layout tab. In Vixen, you have a few different floating windows that are completely separate, and sometimes it gets a little confusing.
But, if you do need to full-screen any of your xL ights windows, like your house preview, you can totally separate it and then size it in order to have it on a second monitor or 3rd, 4th….
When it comes to purchasing sequences, xLights has the most options by far. Scheduling in xLights actually happens in a separate program called xSchedule , which is automatically installed when you install xLights. Using xSchedule is pretty straightforward, and if you look online you can find videos that describe it as well.
These work well for in-between songs, or even if you want your whole display to be without music. I hope this article has helped you to understand the differences between these programs and get you started in choosing the right one for you.
Check out my full article here! Want help deciding which program to use — this article will help! But what about all of the pieces in between? What do you need and what can […]. Vixen, LOR, or xLights? Please log in again. The login page will open in a new tab.
After logging in you can close it and return to this page. Just Starting? Share 0. Tweet 0. Pin 0. Vixen in action! Download Font 15k Zip File. Freeware font by Sokrates. Download Font 19k Zip File. Were currently in development of a Halloween fun site. If you'd be interested in Halloween fonts, click here!
Xmas Tree. Decorate a 3D Christmas tree while you listen to carols. Don't drop the decorations though The beautiful graphics will appeal to the whole family. Ages 4 and up. Festive Fun Get in the Christmas spirit with this screen saver. Great graphics. I Live At Santa's House.
See life through the eyes of an elf living in Santa's house at the North Pole. This is one of the very best Christmas games around, with appealing graphics and engaging activities.
Kids will love testing toys, baking cookies, decorating the Christmas tree and more. Ages 3 to 7. Santa's Secret Valley. A lighthearted graphical adventure with a Christmas theme. The aim is to rescue Santa's magic items. Includes puzzles, a Christmas trivia quiz and music. Ages 5 to Holiday Virtual Jigsaw. A fun little virtual jigsaw puzzle program with a holiday theme.
Coca-Cola Sking Bears Screensaver. If your into the Coca-Cola bears, here's a little screensaver you might enjoy.
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