Christmas Twinkle Lights - Christmas Tree Star

I've upgraded a Disney Chip 'N' Dale Christmas Tree Topper light.

.

According to the Disney Store. "Let our stars shine brightly with this light-up Chip 'n Dale festive tree topper. Disney's toothsome twosome stand atop a sculpted snowflake star, a celestial celebration to top off your Christmas tree creation!"

The light is nice enough on it's own, but there are some additional features I wanted to add. One thing is that it's battery operated, which makes it difficult to automate. The other thing is that I wanted to create an improved twinkle. The implementation also features a web interface, which was a simple addition due to the development approach.

I didn't want to have to damage the light, or to cut the wire. Instead I replaced the "Try me" button which was connected usng a mini-JST connector.

Rather than creating a new circuit and PCB I made use of my previous Raspberry Pi Pico Lights Project. This uses a PCB that I created for The Raspberry Pi Magazine (known as The MagPi at the time). This is powered using a 5V USB power supply, instead of a 12V input which was the original design.

The main changes were in the code. The code is based around the web version designed to run on a Raspberry Pi Pico W, using the wireless connection to run a web server. I actually used a back-port of the Pico Lights Plus web code which uses a public folder with images for the buttons.

I have made a number of changes to the code. The main thing was to add support for PWM, which allows a change in brightness. This allows for a twinkle which goes from half brightness to full brightness.

More information

• The MagPi magazine
• Source code on Github - Raspberry Pi Pico Lights Controller
• Raspberry Pi Pico Lights Project

To see future updates please:
Subscribe to the PenguinTutor YouTube Channel
and
Follow @penguintutor on Twitter

• Legal and Site Information
• Help

Donate to help support this site
© Copyright 2006 - 2023 Stewart Watkiss