GE G35 Christmas lights with propeller

brianandrus

All,
Ok, I have a Propeller Demo board, which is connected to its own power supply. Everything works fine. I can jumper an led across VDD and P0 and it blinks as expected from the built-in test code.
I can put additional leds and/or run spin code to blink them as well as the leds on p16-23.

I am trying to control a string of GE G35 lights (http://www.deepdarc.com/2010/11/27/hacking-christmas-lights/).
Using spin code from darco (http://svn.deepdarc.com/code/xmas-color-effects/trunk/prop/xmas.spin)

Pretty sure I am doing something wrong with the wiring, however.
The power from the transformer for the lights is 5v. I have tapped into the ground and the data wire to go to the propeller chip.
Weird thing is if I connect the ground, nothing happens. But if I disconnect the ground and only have the data wire connected to p0, the lights will light up, just not as expected and rather random.

Makes me feel like I am close to controlling them, but missing something obvious.

Here is a video of my setup: https://plus.google.com/u/0/113435617412385019263/posts

Anyone been able to successfully pull this off? Any schematic available (it would be REALLY helpful)?

Thanks in advance for any input!

Brian

Oldbitcollector (Jeff)

Watched the video, interesting project..

What would happen if you wrote the code to the EEPROM (F11), then just turned the whole thing on at once?

Jeff

Duane Degn

Brain,

Did you ever get your lights working with the Propeller?

I just picked up two packages of the G-35 lights at CostCo this evening. I had to add a couple delays to the code to get things to work correctly, but my first strand it working fine so far.

I added a quarter second delay after the start and other intializing calls and a 1/100 second delay inside the "set_standard_enum" loop.

I'm not sure which of the above delays did the trick.

I also had to power cycle the LEDs in order to get the updated code to work.

I'll post my updated code after I test it out a bit more (or as soon as someone asks for it).

Anyone else using these lights with the Prop?

propshaft

I control 3 strands of these lights with a single prop demo board. I plug in the lights first, then power up the prop demo board. In my case, the prop is simply a DMX to G-35 'controller' - I'm driving the lights with something called MagicQ.

brianandrus

Duane,

I got short on time and ended up getting the E682 controller. I was not able to do anything directly with the test board, but I'm pretty sure that was because of my time constraint.

I would love to try out your code and maybe get these things going for say Valentine's day

The E682 has worked great and I even have 10 strings of them connected to it with room for 6 more. It uses e1.31 DMX signaling which is nice since it works also with light-o-rama, which I have used in the past as a software controller with some d-light controllers.

So my quick and dirty hack this year has been to connect the E682 to an old PC power supply and throw some quick fill patterns and fades on the lights. The E682 is a propeller chip project as well, so I may be able to do something if I can talk him into sharing the code. He has put a web interface on it too with a few test patterns. I want to make it so I can send web commands to the board to initiate more complicated patterns. Then I can use my smart phone to control the lights (and maybe other devices.. Say animatronics for halloween??). So much potential and so little time!

Brian

Duane Degn

Brain,

I'm glad to hear you're able to use your lights.

I'm making some more modifications to Darco's code in hopes I can use these lights as a type of LED matrix.

I'm right smack in the middle of this change so I'll wait to post the code until I have the 2D matrix stuff working. I should have it far enough along in a couple of days to post it. If anyone is currently actively working on these lights, let me know, and I'll post what I have so far without cleaning it up first.

I purchased the last two sets of these CostCo had. I think I'll probably look around at some of the other stores to see if I can find some more. The two sets I purchased were $40 each, which I thought was a good deal.

As I was checking out, one of the managers said "Why are those so expensive?" By the time I was done explaining to her why they were so cool, I think she was sorry she had asked.

Duane Degn

Here's a video of my two strands of LEDs arranged in a 2D array.

This isn't much of a demo of what the LEDs can do. I hope to make a better demo in the near future.

If you don't watch the whole thing, skip to the end to see the strange "glow effect" caused by the camera and array being a bit out of sync (not mentioned in the video).

I'm attaching the code I used. Sorry but I didn't clean it up.