DIY Christmas Lights Set To Music - Choreographed House Lights

This is NOT a beginner DIY. You will need a firm grasp on electronics, circuity, BASIC programming and general smarts about electrical safety. This DIY is for an experienced person so I will not go into detail about how to solder or how to read schematics etc. Sorry, it would take way too long to write an instructable that included schooling in electronics.

Here is a DIY to make your house christmas lights Choreographed to any song you want. It's not easy but if you're good at electronics YOU CAN DO IT!

Step 1: The Components

To get started you'll need 16 MOSFETS, 16 Relays rated at 9V 10A, blank PC board, Cat5 wire, hot glue, a transformer rated to drop down 110V to 9V a bridge rectifier and Capacitors from Radio Shack.

Step 2: Schematic

Here's a diagram of the circuit you'll need to build. It's basically a transformer to power the 9V relays. Then a microcontroller (later steps) will send a signal to the MOSFETS which will then activate the relays which will turn the 110V power on to the individual plugs.

Step 3: Mechanical Relay Pack

Heres a picture of how I wired the relay pack. You can put them on a board if you want. I used CAT5 wire for all low voltage circuits and 12GA wire for the 110V applications. I recommend hot gluing all wires together to keep them from bending or breaking.

Step 4: Relay Pack

Here's another pic of the relay pack with the rest of the board we'll build soon.

Step 5: MOSFET Pack

Here's the MOSFET pack on the circuit board. You'll have to be creative when wiring them. If you like to etch your own board you cn do that but I just used wires and solder.

Step 6: Wiring the MOSFETS

Here's the underside of the board where I wired the MOSFETS. I used 3 pieces of CAT5 wire. You can see the blue CAT5 wire to the left and right. This keeps it somewhat neat and organized.

Step 7: Wired Circuit Board

Here's a pic of the entire board built. We'll get to the microcontroller board soon. But, now you can glue the transformer to the board, hook up the rectifire and capacitors and wire the relays to the mosfets. You'll have 16 large wires to go to the 110V AC outlets, a 110V AC Input and a strand of CAT5 to go to the microcontroller.

Step 8: Wired Outlets

I got this plastic box and individual 110C outlets on ebay. Here's the back of the outlets and switchs wired. I used all 10GA wire.

Step 9: Wired Box

Here's the box completed. I added a fan and fuse for safety. All we need now is the microcontroller.

Step 10: Microcontroller

You can buy the board you see in my box for the microcontroller at parallax.com. It's the BASIC STAMP development board. I also used the BS2e module. You'll probably want to familiarize yourself with this software but it uses BASIC programing language so it's pretty easy. I'll attach a copy of one of the programs I wrote to the next step.

Step 11: Writing the Program

This is what takes the most time. Since it's such a basic program you actually have to program every milisecond. It takes many hours to get this right but it's worth it! You can program the chip to turn lights off and on at any time in sequence. Here's an example of the wizards program.

'{$STAMP BS2e, Wizards2.bse, Wizards3.bse}

reps VAR Byte
freq VAR Word
repsl VAR Byte

LOW 1
LOW 2
LOW 3
LOW 4
LOW 5
LOW 6
LOW 7
LOW 8
LOW 9
LOW 10
LOW 11
LOW 12
LOW 13
LOW 14
LOW 15
LOW 16

PAUSE 4300

'first beats'
reps = 1
FOR reps = 1 TO 7
PAUSE 450
HIGH 15
HIGH 16
PAUSE 50
LOW 15
LOW 16
PAUSE 100
HIGH 15
HIGH 16
PAUSE 50
LOW 15
LOW 16
PAUSE 100
HIGH 15
HIGH 16
PAUSE 50
LOW 15
LOW 16
NEXT
'first run up'
freq = 200
HIGH 1
PAUSE freq
HIGH 2
PAUSE freq
HIGH 3
PAUSE freq
HIGH 4
PAUSE freq
HIGH 5
PAUSE freq
HIGH 7
HIGH 8
PAUSE freq
HIGH 12
HIGH 13
PAUSE freq
LOW 1
LOW 2
LOW 3
LOW 4
LOW 5
LOW 7
LOW 8
LOW 12
LOW 13
'second beats'
HIGH 15
HIGH 16
PAUSE 50
LOW 15
LOW 16
PAUSE 100
HIGH 15
HIGH 16
PAUSE 50
LOW 15
LOW 16
reps = 1
FOR reps = 1 TO 6
PAUSE 450
HIGH 15
HIGH 16
PAUSE 50
LOW 15
LOW 16
PAUSE 100
HIGH 15
HIGH 16
PAUSE 50
LOW 15
LOW 16
PAUSE 100
HIGH 15
HIGH 16
PAUSE 50
LOW 15
LOW 16
NEXT
'run up then down'
freq = 200
HIGH 2
PAUSE freq
HIGH 3
PAUSE freq
HIGH 4
PAUSE freq
HIGH 5
PAUSE freq
LOW 5
PAUSE freq
LOW 4
PAUSE freq
LOW 3
PAUSE freq
LOW 2

PAUSE 100
'first crazy up and down'
freq = 50
FOR reps = 1 TO 6

HIGH 7
HIGH 8
HIGH 9
PAUSE freq
HIGH 5
PAUSE freq
LOW 6
LOW 7
LOW 8
LOW 9
HIGH 4
PAUSE freq
LOW 5
HIGH 3
PAUSE freq
LOW 4
HIGH 2
PAUSE freq
LOW 3
HIGH 1
PAUSE freq
LOW 2
PAUSE freq
PAUSE freq
HIGH 1
PAUSE freq
HIGH 2
PAUSE freq
LOW 1
HIGH 3
PAUSE freq
LOW 2
HIGH 4
PAUSE freq
LOW 3
HIGH 5
PAUSE freq
LOW 4
HIGH 7
HIGH 8
HIGH 9
PAUSE freq
LOW 5
PAUSE freq
PAUSE freq
NEXT
LOW 7
LOW 8
LOW 9
END

Attached is a Word file containing the entire program. Also attached is the audio for it. Just flash it to your module and it's ready to go. Email me if you want more programs and I'll send them to you

Step 12: Set It All Up

Now, find a spot in your garage to house the box. I had my laptop out there so I could flash different songs on the chip. Play the music loud in your house and trip the lights on at the appropriate time and you'll probably get your name and house in the newspaper like I did.

Here are some videos
The Best one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Cj-morKHPQ

Another good one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co-eirSUmsk

No sound on this one. Just crazy capabilities of the system
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZhcyr4RYLg