Animated Christmas LED Snowflake project

(Project added 20th November 2008)

Introduction

The LED snowflake is about 38cm across and designed to be displayed indoors in a window.

This is is a follow-on from my Christmas Star project. This year I decided to only use white LEDs for a different effect.

It uses a smaller, inexpensive PIC18F1330 which is my current favourite general purpose microcontroller.

Files/Firmware

You will need a programmer compatible with the PIC18F1330 microcontroller such as the Microchip “PICkit 2” or other similar programmers.

I shall update the file version here as features are added/bugs fixed etc.

This firmware version displays about 30 different patterns. It can now also be switched on/off at set times if you connect it to the serial data output from my Christmas Star project.

If two or more Snowflakes are connected to a Star, they “should” randomly sync together (although I can’t test it yet as I have only built one Snowflake.)

Please check back here for firmware updates

The ASM source code for projects or kits is not available.

Detailed instructions, templates diagrams etc. are all in the manual below:

Snowflake build instructions

Project Updates

v0.2 (1st December 2008) (Added more patterns and the serial link to allow on/off control by a Star )

v0.1 (20th November 2008) (first release)

To Do List

Add more patterns.