Christmas lights

[trueimage 0]

[spookyturtle 9,466]

That's nothin'.

[scandal 951]

<-- Ditto

[JVKn'CVO 11]

Saludos,

Caro

[Niels Bohr 72]

If I wanted, I could set those animated Christmas lights if I had wanted to. Waste of my time. Takes 1 year to plan.

[spookyturtle 9,466]

If I wanted, I could set those animated Christmas lights if I had wanted to. Waste of my time. Takes 1 year to plan.

How do they get them to flash that fast? What controls it all?

[scandal 951]

If I wanted, I could set those animated Christmas lights if I had wanted to. Waste of my time. Takes 1 year to plan.

How do they get them to flash that fast? What controls it all?

Magic fairy dust sprinked by Tinker Bell.

Silly Wabbit.

[spookyturtle 9,466]

If I wanted, I could set those animated Christmas lights if I had wanted to. Waste of my time. Takes 1 year to plan.

How do they get them to flash that fast? What controls it all?

Magic fairy dust sprinked by Tinker Bell.

Silly Wabbit.

Liar.

[Niels Bohr 72]

Very easy! Speed of light! What they did was build a software program that will take music and look at key pieces of the notes to signal a MCU (or mutliple MCUs) to do the light switching, each MCU has a program that was flashed onto the ROM that will cause the lights at each path to switch to whatever notes. It must be timed correctly using the software interrupt that was obtained by the notes. With LED lamps, it's no problem with power since they consume less energy than the older type bulbs.

There are various ways to implement the project. Not hard.

If I wanted, I could set those animated Christmas lights if I had wanted to. Waste of my time. Takes 1 year to plan.

How do they get them to flash that fast? What controls it all?

[spookyturtle 9,466]

Very easy! Speed of light! What they did was build a software program that will take music and look at key pieces of the notes to signal a MCU (or mutliple MCUs) to do the light switching, each MCU has a program that was flashed onto the ROM that will cause the lights at each path to switch to whatever notes. It must be timed correctly using the software interrupt that was obtained by the notes. With LED lamps, it's no problem with power since they consume less energy than the older type bulbs.

There are various ways to implement the project. Not hard.

If I wanted, I could set those animated Christmas lights if I had wanted to. Waste of my time. Takes 1 year to plan.

How do they get them to flash that fast? What controls it all?

Is it expensive?

[Niels Bohr 72]

Well, depends. The MCUs are probably like 20 dollars a piece. You need to estimate the amount of energy you will need. Well, I'd say at most it's $1000. But, when you have built the software, you can probably keep all the MCUs for years to come. Cost thereafter is the energy bill.

the other chips like the 7400 series, capicators, resistors are very cheap

Edited November 20, 2009 by Niels Bohr

[spookyturtle 9,466]

Well, depends. The MCUs are probably like 20 dollars a piece. You need to estimate the amount of energy you will need. Well, I'd say at most it's $1000. But, when you have built the software, you can probably keep all the MCUs for years to come. Cost thereafter is the energy bill.

Where do you buy this stuff? Where do get the software?

[Niels Bohr 72]

Well, depends. The MCUs are probably like 20 dollars a piece. You need to estimate the amount of energy you will need. Well, I'd say at most it's $1000. But, when you have built the software, you can probably keep all the MCUs for years to come. Cost thereafter is the energy bill.

Where do you buy this stuff? Where do get the software?

Software is developed inhouse using C++. Very easy to do for a skilled programmer (aka me). I can make a gui interface to build a standard window, and make it handle different signals, etc...Signal Processing, I can use Matlab for that so I can capture the music and do some DSP analysis on it to determine how I'd like to setup notes to switch, etc...Then, I'd implement that onto hardware which is the MCU, and/or the 7400s chips, FPGA boards.

MCUs, 7400s, FPGAs can be bought from Digi-Key.

[spookyturtle 9,466]

Well, depends. The MCUs are probably like 20 dollars a piece. You need to estimate the amount of energy you will need. Well, I'd say at most it's $1000. But, when you have built the software, you can probably keep all the MCUs for years to come. Cost thereafter is the energy bill.

Where do you buy this stuff? Where do get the software?

Software is developed inhouse using C++. Very easy to do for a skilled programmer (aka me). I can make a gui interface to build a standard window, and make it handle different signals, etc...Signal Processing, I can use Matlab for that so I can capture the music and do some DSP analysis on it to determine how I'd like to setup notes to switch, etc...Then, I'd implement that onto hardware which is the MCU, and/or the 7400s chips, FPGA boards.

MCUs, 7400s, FPGAs can be bought from Digi-Key.

Unfortunately, I'm not even an unskilled programmer It would be fun to do something like that.

[scandal 951]

Well, depends. The MCUs are probably like 20 dollars a piece. You need to estimate the amount of energy you will need. Well, I'd say at most it's $1000. But, when you have built the software, you can probably keep all the MCUs for years to come. Cost thereafter is the energy bill.

Where do you buy this stuff? Where do get the software?

Software is developed inhouse using C++. Very easy to do for a skilled programmer (aka me). I can make a gui interface to build a standard window, and make it handle different signals, etc...Signal Processing, I can use Matlab for that so I can capture the music and do some DSP analysis on it to determine how I'd like to setup notes to switch, etc...Then, I'd implement that onto hardware which is the MCU, and/or the 7400s chips, FPGA boards.

MCUs, 7400s, FPGAs can be bought from Digi-Key.

Unfortunately, I'm not even an unskilled programmer It would be fun to do something like that.

I like to think that I'm still a pretty decent coder (though I've been a management type for about 10 years, I still mess around in Perl quite a bit).

Here's one for ya. Can you guess the output?

#!/usr/bin/perl

my @names = qw(Spooky CMaster BY);

foreach $n (sort @names)

{

print "$n boffs sheep every night\n" if $n =~ /$S/;

print "$n is the resident VJ engineer\n" if $n =~ /$C/;

print "$n is a blowhard twit\n" if $n =~ /$B/;

}