Project Logs

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• Outdoor Speakers and Audio setup

  Aaron • 10/10/2023 at 05:54 • 0 comments

  Of all of the project, this is probably the most simplistic. I considered building a more permanent speaker enclosure, but at the end of the day I was more interested in getting the project up and working than I was in diving into the specifics of outdoor audio. 

  My speakers are refurbished Yamaha NS-AW150BL. I went with black because I figured it'd be easier to hide them in the bushes. Even though these are outdoor speakers, I was surprised to learn when I got them that the recommended usage is to install them under an eave, or otherwise generally protected from the elements. I had really hoped for actual weather-proof speakers, and if I were going to do it again I'd just splurge for the rock-shaped speakers that are really meant to just be out there.
  

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• Software for Sequencing and Showing

  Aaron • 10/09/2023 at 07:25 • 0 comments

  There are two big pieces of software that I use in my show. XLights is an open source sequencing program that will generate light shows with patterns, colors, and timings. And it can do so associated with music as well. Falcon Player (or sometimes Falcon Pi Player - FPP) is the software that schedules and manages your show. You can run shows directly from XLights, but I find it's much easier to use FPP and have a dedicated system managing the show. 

  Both pieces of software are complex and go deep on features. For the singing pumpkins, I'll outline some specifics of how I build my shows:

  XLights

  My pumpkins are made up of 4 LEDs each, and there's not really (so far as I know) a good way to represent that, so I just made a 4-light-string for each pumpkin. After I had the pumpkins setup for the year, I took a picture and used an image editor to add numbers to each indicating where in the chain they were. This makes a difference when you're decided which pumpkin should be singing at a given moment, and injecting some variety into a show can really delight an audience.  

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• Driving computer and support

  Aaron • 10/09/2023 at 06:40 • 0 comments

  The pumpkins are great, but they don't really do anything without a conductor. 

  On the hardware side of things, there are 4 components that live inside the weatherproof outdoor box for my shows: 
  

  • An amplifier
  • A Raspberry Pi 3
  • A 12V PSU for the audio speakers
  • A 5V PSU for the Raspberry Pi and Pumpkins

  Additionally, I have a distribution terminal strip to get power to a couple of places, and the Raspberry Pi has a USB "sound card", that provides sampling for the audio. It turns out that you can either multiplex the lights or the audio, but not both on a Pi 3. The sound card was an inexpensive solution. (It's worth noting that the BeagleBone Black, for instance, doesn't have this problem. It has plenty of PWM) I'm not sure if the RasPi 4 or 5 do)

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• Frankenstein'ing your pumpkins

  Aaron • 10/08/2023 at 02:44 • 0 comments

  A few years ago, my wife (who loves Halloween) found these plastic jack-o-lanterns at the store, and we were rapidly approaching Halloween. The pumpkins were being offered at a deep discount because (I assume) the store was concerned about being able to get rid of them. So we bought 6 or 7.

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