Making Christmas toys from LED strips

Somehow before the New Year I was left without a tree and without Christmas-tree toys (as it was in the middle of the ocean). And the soul demanded a holiday ... I still somehow imitated the Christmas tree, but I had to think over the toys. It was then that the remnants of multi-colored LED strips came across.

Next, to start chewing, and then briefly describe how to make the original LED Christmas-tree decorations. And at the same time we will consider the connection options.



To do this, we take LED strips of different colors, not in silicone.

The first will be round, and chew it

	White ribbons look festively, in the sense of painted white
	Cut the ribbon with scissors in the right places into the correct segments of three LEDs
	For this decoration, we need three segments.
	Glue them together with a sticky base
	The first two segments are fastened in the form of the letter "L". Please note that you need to observe the polarity and position the tape segments with poles to each other, i.e. so that the plus of one tape is directed to the plus of the other.
	The third is glued across, getting something like the letter "A"
	Platforms at the ends of tapes are tinned, so that later it is easier to solder
	And pair them together with wires, here I hooked up two “pluses”
	Soldering all the wiring we get just such a Christmas-tree toy. Here I have short wiring without insulation - this is wrong, everything must be isolated. By the way, short is “plus”, and long is “minus”.

Then it would be correct to describe how and to what this joy to connect, but it will be later, but now I want to consider what other options are there.

Other options with a large number of segments

Square

Further along the increasing number of segments there is a square of four segments. I will not chew anymore, I think the principle can be understood from the photo. Just wanted to draw attention to the top two wires, they are both needed for a complete circuit. The photo is not visible, but I made the top wire in the form of a loop.



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Star

The star, naturally, consists already of five segments. Here, the peculiarity is that there are practically no wires, and the tape segments are fastened together by soldering two contact pads to each other (do not forget to observe the polarity!).

Six-pointed star

It consists of six segments. Rather, these are two interlaced triangles, and I made them from different ribbons (different colors).

Ball

I also tried to do something in the bulk and it turned out just such a ball. But I did not really like it and I stopped at that.

More cuts

It is possible to go further on building up the lengths of ribbons, but, IMHO, this is already overkill, then just glue on some kind of basis and make applications of snowflakes.

In work

It looks like this when it shines:

Connection

Option 1: on a simple 12v

The easiest way is to stupidly turn on everything in 12 volts and the multi-colored toys will shine steadily. Just solder the connector that hangs on each babin with 5 meter tapes and stick the usual 12 volt power supply there, which is sold in the same place as the tape.





We solder the toys one after the other.

Option 2: RGB controller

A more interesting option is to connect to the RGB controller, which are currently more than affordable, with more choices both in function and capacity.

If you connect the same color toys in rows to the corresponding controller output (a row of red to R output, green to G, blue to B), we get a MoodLamp-style Christmas tree - with custom color as desired.

Note that on such controllers, control is exercised over the “ground” (as a rule), i.e. common to all channels is the "plus" wire.

Option 3: Microcontroller

This is the most fun option, albeit the most difficult and time consuming. Those. It is optimal to take some Arduinka and shield with the TLC5940, connect the LED toys for 16 channels, connect the sound sensor and get a disco-Christmas tree.

This is how I did last year:





Here is a small past New Year's video report:





Shl. Who needs a sketch from this video he's here

thank

I hope my small idea will come in handy and someone with its help will be able to make the New Year even more fun and colorful. I thank everyone who took the time to look through my article. Waiting for your feedback and comments.