In the previous article, I told you in detail how to make a Christmas tree with your own hands for the new year, where it was about my project called Xmas Tree v1 - on 16 address LEDs using the STM8 microcontroller.

And there are also 16 cool effects + in addition, you can set the desired brightness. Who hasn't read it yet, I strongly advise you to get acquainted.

Continuing the New Year theme in this article, I will tell you about one more of my creative project Xmas Tree v2. There can be 2 variations here. You can install LEDs with fast or slow color change here. They are absolutely identical in body and the printed circuit board will need the same in all cases. But, visually, the difference is certainly significant and I advise you to do both options 100% you will not regret. But let's talk about everything in order.

Xmas Tree v2 - is a miniature Christmas tree with 12 RGB LEDs, but already with a built-in controller in the LEDs themselves and the need for an external microcontroller disappears by itself! What could be simpler?! Visually, it looks great and it is very pleasant to watch the colors with your eyes. I suggest you take a look at her selfie :) as they say, it's better to see once than hear a hundred times.

How did the Christmas tree appear?

In principle, everything here is the same as in the Xmas Tree v1 project. Once, by registering on the site huckster.io and looking through different projects, I came across a New Year's snowflake project and there the author describes that he decided to arrange the LEDs in an unusual way, namely on the lumen through the textolite. It looked really cool in the photos! And I just had 50pcs at home with Aliexpress. similar (or the same) LEDs with slow overflow. I decided to test them, I took them to work and after feeding the power to 3B, I saw that they shine just stunningly, so bright that they dazzle the eyes if you look at them directly. And then I immediately thought about the idea to make it to the light, in fact, I did so, just did not copy that project with hackster.io , and I developed my own and decided to make another Christmas tree, because there are not many Christmas trees :)

I developed the printed circuit board as usual in the Altium Designer version 15 program. Various drawings of snowflakes, etc. which I downloaded from the Internet and converted to a silkscreen layer to give a New Year charm. The printed circuit board turned out to be 2-layer. The dimensions of the Christmas tree are approximately 99 x 78 mm. I did the installation at home as usual, due to the peculiarities of the location of the LEDs, soldering them is not very easy.

For easier installation of LEDs, I publish a silkscreen layer on which you can see how the LEDs are located. Be careful the LEDs have a polarity, that is + and -

Package from PCBWay:

As a result, you should get something like this:

As a PSU for a New Year's beauty, a charger from cell phones with parameters of 5V and a load current of 0.5 A will be suitable. According to my observations, in the case of a slow overflow, the current consumption reached 400mA with an input 5V. In the fast version, the current consumption is less, since the LED glow time is actually less logical :). A slight (at 5V) heating of the printed circuit board at the installation site of the stabilizer is possible - this is normal. If you have a 3.3 - 4V PSU with the required load current, then there is no need for a built-in stabilizer.

Watch the video on my instagram: https://www.instagram.com/domdevice/

Author: Ivan Petrov