Anarchtica: September 2007 Archives
How it all works together using an Olsen 595 Controller and Solid State Relays
This is a series of posts that will show you how to animate your Christmas lights. I thought I would make the first post a high overview of how everything works together and then I would have posts that go into the actual details of getting it all to work together.
Basically, a cable connects from your computer to your homemade electronics and then the Christmas lights plug into the electronics. Software then tells when the lights to turn on and off. Okay, so that was a huge simplification, here are all the details:
A printer cable connects to the back of your computer to the printer port. The other end of the printer cable is modified
with an Ethernet female jack. A cat-5 (or cat-6) Ethernet cable is then plugged into the female jack and the other end is connected to the "in" port on the Olsen 595 controller.
The Olsen 595 controller would be considered the "brains" or the motherboard of the whole operation. One Olsen 595 controller allows you to run 64 channels. A channel is a string of lights. So with 64 channels, I can controller 64 individual strings of Christmas lights. I can connect 3 strings of mini-lights together in a series though, so I can actually control 192 strings of lights. If those strings were 100 bulb mini-lights, that would be 19,200 bulbs I could animate to music. That is with just one Olsen 595 controller! You can connect a number of Olsen 595 controllers together and scale your display to include even more lights. I have two Olsen 595 controllers, so I can animate 38,400 mini-lights.
The Olsen 595 controllers connect to SSR's
through a standard cat-5 (or cat-6) Ethernet cable. An SSR is what the actual Christmas lights will plug into and are what are layed out in the yard. The SSR's receive the signal from the Olsen 595 controller to turn each individual channel on or off. One SSR controls 4 channels. So if you want to run 128 channels, you will need two Olsen 595 controllers and thirty-two SSR's. (2 Olsen 595 controllers x 64 channels each = 128 channels and 32 SSR's x 4 channels each = 128 channels). This is enough to animate 38,400 mini-lights.
Now that we have all of the electronics done, we need software to tell the electronics when to turn the lights on or off. Vixen is the name of the program that animates the lights. With Vixen, you tell the program how many channels you are running. You then import the song you want to animate to. You then build out the animation sequence telling each individual channel when to turn the lights on or off. Once you have all of your animation sequences completed, you can also use Vixen to control the whole show. You can just run Vixen on your computer, and then everyday at a certain time Vixen will start up the show for that evening.
Everything is almost done! You don't want to make your neighbors mad by blasting out music from your home speakers. So we just modify FM Transmitters such as the Belkin Tunecast II to play the music over an FM radio station. This way, spectators can sit in their cars and enjoy the show.
I hope I have given a clear understanding of how everything works together. I will be posting more in depth articles on each of the individual aspects. Hopefully, by the end of this series you won't feel intimidated by the whole process and will be confident to do this to your own Christmas display!
back to the Top
Basically, a cable connects from your computer to your homemade electronics and then the Christmas lights plug into the electronics. Software then tells when the lights to turn on and off. Okay, so that was a huge simplification, here are all the details:
A printer cable connects to the back of your computer to the printer port. The other end of the printer cable is modified
with an Ethernet female jack. A cat-5 (or cat-6) Ethernet cable is then plugged into the female jack and the other end is connected to the "in" port on the Olsen 595 controller.
The Olsen 595 controller would be considered the "brains" or the motherboard of the whole operation. One Olsen 595 controller allows you to run 64 channels. A channel is a string of lights. So with 64 channels, I can controller 64 individual strings of Christmas lights. I can connect 3 strings of mini-lights together in a series though, so I can actually control 192 strings of lights. If those strings were 100 bulb mini-lights, that would be 19,200 bulbs I could animate to music. That is with just one Olsen 595 controller! You can connect a number of Olsen 595 controllers together and scale your display to include even more lights. I have two Olsen 595 controllers, so I can animate 38,400 mini-lights.
The Olsen 595 controllers connect to SSR's
through a standard cat-5 (or cat-6) Ethernet cable. An SSR is what the actual Christmas lights will plug into and are what are layed out in the yard. The SSR's receive the signal from the Olsen 595 controller to turn each individual channel on or off. One SSR controls 4 channels. So if you want to run 128 channels, you will need two Olsen 595 controllers and thirty-two SSR's. (2 Olsen 595 controllers x 64 channels each = 128 channels and 32 SSR's x 4 channels each = 128 channels). This is enough to animate 38,400 mini-lights.
Now that we have all of the electronics done, we need software to tell the electronics when to turn the lights on or off. Vixen is the name of the program that animates the lights. With Vixen, you tell the program how many channels you are running. You then import the song you want to animate to. You then build out the animation sequence telling each individual channel when to turn the lights on or off. Once you have all of your animation sequences completed, you can also use Vixen to control the whole show. You can just run Vixen on your computer, and then everyday at a certain time Vixen will start up the show for that evening.
Everything is almost done! You don't want to make your neighbors mad by blasting out music from your home speakers. So we just modify FM Transmitters such as the Belkin Tunecast II to play the music over an FM radio station. This way, spectators can sit in their cars and enjoy the show.
I hope I have given a clear understanding of how everything works together. I will be posting more in depth articles on each of the individual aspects. Hopefully, by the end of this series you won't feel intimidated by the whole process and will be confident to do this to your own Christmas display!
back to the Top
