MERRY AND BRIGHT
There’s no place like home for the
holidays, particularly if your home has
a quarter million LEDs on 648 animation
channels synchronized to a locally
broadcast soundtrack.
Since 2005, Robert Schaider and
Bob Bristow have treated their community in Carmichael, Calif., to an
enormous homebrewed holiday light
show. Originally decorating Bristow’s
home, immense popularity (and traffic)
forced the show’s move to a commercial
location. The larger stage prompted
the makers to upgrade their original
130,000-bulb incandescent show to
this year’s 250,000-LED wonderland,
swapping the old off-the-shelf control
system for custom software written by
Bristow. Capable of 16 million colors and
48 frames/second, each LED required
manual programming; each of 2011’s
three songs took between 40–80 hours
to animate. —Gregory Hayes
80 Make: makezine.com/30
Visit makeprojects.com/ v/30 to watch the show in action and check out themed home automation projects for other holidays.
WICKED SKETCHES
The folks at Wicked Device have been hard at
work on their Nanode, an Arduino clone with
integrated Ethernet. The Nanode itself isn’t
new but they’ve developed a groundbreaking
new system that allows you to completely
reprogram your Nanode by sending Arduino
sketches right over the internet.
All you have to do is hook up your Nanode,
equipped with a special bootloader, to a
wired internet connection and access the
Sketch Garden site ( sketchgarden.co) with
a computer located anywhere on the globe.
Then simply upload your sketch, hit the
Download button, and the Nanode will automatically receive and begin to run the new
program. The site uses a simple drag-and-drop interface for intuitive use and stores
your sketches so they’re always available.
This is perfect for Nanodes that have been
deployed in the field and require software
updates, or for reprogramming the Arduino-controlled thermostat at your beach house
in Hawaii. You can pick up a Nanode now in
the Maker Shed! makershed.com
—Michael Castor
