Tired of off-the-shelf red, green, blue, yellow Christmas lights, I designed this program to create much more pleasing Christmas tree light effects.
- A raspberry pi
- Some WS2811 individually-addressable LED lights and power supply
- Jumper wires to connect raspberry pi to lights
See this video for further details on how to get started with RPi and WS2811
sudo pipenv install
sudo python3 src/main.py
sudo is required so that rpi-ws281x can use GPIO pin 18 (PWM)
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Set up a service for the lights and http api
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Create service
sudo systemctl --force --full edit fairylights.service -
Paste and save the config from here
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Set up a service for the web page
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Create service
sudo systemctl --force --full edit fairylights-page.service -
Paste and save the config from here
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Start the services
sudo systemctl start fairylights.service fairylights-page.service
This is an FSM that controls how the lights move between patterns - whether the lights stay on one pattern or cycle throught them
Cycles through all available patterns
Stay on a specific pattern indefinitely
Lights are off
This is another FSM where each state represents a specfic pattern. This is primarily a combination of an effect (twinkling, glittering etc.) and a colour scheme (retro colours, random complimentary colours etc.). This FSM is controlled by the outer Modes FSM.
This is a twinkling effect where bulbs fade in and out at random. This effect ensures a nice spread across the whole chain by splitting it up into 'buckets' and not selecting multiple bulbs in a row from the same bucket.
A glittering effect, created by reusing the Twinkle effect, speeding it up and dimming the lights.
This effects chooses bulbs at random to glow a yellow-green colour. Active bulbs are added in waves, but individual bulbs have a random delay so they don't all start at once, giving the effect a more organic feel.
Inspired by:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k72jGJTC_3o&t=43s
- https://www.reddit.com/r/NatureIsFuckingLit/comments/o2dyj5/fireflies_flying/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7VZlaHWR1s
Creates a gradient across the entire strand and cycles it along over time.
Based on jgarff/rpi_ws281x strandtest.py example
Inspired by this Youtube video
Needs some work / doesn't look great right now
These are either: lists of hard-coded colours, a list of palettes (a list of lists of colours) or an algorithm that generates colours on the fly
Inspired by vintage fairy lights e.g. Noma Pickwick. Made up of hand-picked colours: Pink, red, orange, green, blue
Source: Pinterest
Creates a palette made up of 3 colours that are next to each other on the colour wheel.
Source: https://decoart.com/blog/article/318/color_theory_basics_the_color_wheel
As above, but colours are chosen such that 5 colours are selected from 3x 1/12 arcs of the colours wheel, and saturation and luminance are varied. This is designed to replicate how colour theory is used in artwork and should create a more visually interesting selection of colours.
Iterates through pairs of colours that are opposite each other on the colour wheel (e.g. green and red or violet and yellow).
Source: https://decoart.com/blog/article/318/color_theory_basics_the_color_wheel
Rather than choosing colours opposite on the colour wheel it chooses one colour, then two colours either side of the colour opposite on the wheel (e.g. blue-violet and shades and multiple tints of yellow and orange).
Source: https://uxplanet.org/how-to-use-a-split-complementary-color-scheme-in-design-a6c3f1e22644
This algorithm uses an approximation of the golden angle (137.5°) to select colours that don't repeat very often.
This algorithm generates colours that gradually rotate around the colour wheel starting at a random starting position (e.g. red -> red-violet -> violet -> violet-purple etc.).
These palettes were chosen from some of the highest rates palettes from coolors.co