Larger and Improved Christmas Star Neopixel Attiny85

Last year I made a small 3D printed christmas star, see https://www.instructables.com/id/Christmas-Star-LE...

This year I made a larger star from a strand of 50 Neopixels (5V WS2811). This larger star had more patterns (I'm still adding and improving patterns and updating the code at my Github).

This larger star is made from wood.

Supplies

for the construction of the star

• Wood
• Wood glue
• Staples

For the electronics

• 5V power supply (> 1A)
• strand of 50 5V WS2811 leds (Aliexpress)
• Attigny85, Arduino or ESP8266 module
• Wires and connectors
• DIP socket for Attigny85 DIP (Aliexpress)

Step 1: Step 1: Construction of Frame

The wooden star is constructed of 10 pieces of wood, see the drawing. I made my star from a piece of wood which was 3 x 3 cm and was sawed in half to get a wooden plank of 3 x 1.5 cm.

From the geometry of a five points star I derrived the angles of 36 deg and 108 deg. My pieces are 32.5 cm.

I glued the pieces together and used staples to keep the pieces together. After the glue dried, the star was strong enough.

Edit Dec 2020: Angles in picture of wood piece are changed to the depicted values of 36 and 108

Step 2: Step 2: Insert the Leds

The diameter of the leds is approximately 12 mm. I used a wood drill to drill the 50 holes at a spacing of approximately 6 cm. The leds are suited to insert with a bit of force and stick to the hole.

Step 3: Step 3: Programming of the Brain

Here the fun part starts. You can use a Attigny85, Aruino or ESP8266 module to drive the LEDs. You can make all kind of patterns. The patterns are a matter of taste.

In my star I use a random generator to randomly select a pattern from the > 20 available patterns. The code for my star is in my Github (Christmas_star_v2.ino).

You can use my code also for LED figures with more or less LEDs and more or less spokes.

I found out that a bare Attigny85 has much more available memory than a Digispark module which I used in my smaller star.

See this website how to program a Attigny85 using a Arduino Uno.

See this website about the Adafruit Neopixel library which I used

See this website to select the HEX code of your desired colors.