
Hacking Christmas lights (2010) - andrewstuart
http://www.deepdarc.com/2010/11/27/hacking-christmas-lights/
======
jgrahamc
Ha. I had fun with these a few years ago and made a dot matrix display:
[https://blog.jgc.org/2011/11/turning-ge-color-
effects-g-35-c...](https://blog.jgc.org/2011/11/turning-ge-color-
effects-g-35-christmas.html)

~~~
UncleEntity
Since it's a serial control line couldn't one make seven independent strings
to speed up the refresh rate and drive it off an 8-bit bus?

/me thinking it would be a good tetris platform...

~~~
FraKtus
Not sure about the original LED used there, but with the popular LED tapes
built on the WS2812, you should be able to drive at least 200 of them within
20 milliseconds. That gives you the idea, then yes if you want to run more
LEDs then use more outputs and drive them in parallel.

------
chrisparton1991
This is a fun article, I enjoyed reading about the reverse engineering aspect.

These days you can easily buy 5 metres of dirt cheap addressable LED strip and
control them with an Arduino and FastLED. You don't get same learning
experience though!

~~~
nerdbaggy
Any links or products?

~~~
cronix
1) LEDs:
[https://www.aliexpress.com/store/701799](https://www.aliexpress.com/store/701799)

2) Library: [http://fastled.io/](http://fastled.io/)

3) Have fun ;)

On fastled.io, check the "community" link for tons of examples. This is a
great time of year to find fun/cool projects as well.

I'd recommend a Teensy board over an arduino. It's many times faster, which is
crucial for long strips and timing.

[https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/](https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/)

Paul (creator of Teensy) has some other really cool writeups as well,
including building a giant TV out of the LED strips.

~~~
mrgriscom
Should include a warning: cheap addressable LEDs from aliexpress are extremely
addictive...

[https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipOOcHCF-
EgPoRngivJNbxA_...](https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipOOcHCF-
EgPoRngivJNbxA_sPS-
QwGNLbbqa-h41KrMJDupaRUsF2sIT0WAI8S7cw/photo/AF1QipMj_mm7fyKDoiKMpsgcIiTgIehp7CDTCQKsngbA?key=RlZzcGNvbTRjYm0ycnpfeXNDbjdZUXQ4X1d2RGpB)

~~~
chrisparton1991
You don't have to tell me twice! I have a giant box full of the things.

------
andrewstuart
A bit off topic but if you like the idea of fiddling with LEDs:

$15.53 full color led display module
[https://www.aliexpress.com/item/P10-full-color-led-
display-m...](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/P10-full-color-led-display-
module-indoor-semi-outdoor-SMD-RGB-P10-LED-panel-1-8/32816967620.html)

$17.08 64*32 pixel 1/16 Scan Indoor full color 3in1 SMD RGB full color P4 led
display screen module panel [https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-Shipping-
kaler-256-128m...](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-Shipping-
kaler-256-128mm-64-32-pixel-1-16-Scan-Indoor-full-
color-3in1-SMD/32847595213.html)

$9.62 8x8 64-Bit Full Color 5050 RGB LED Lamp Panel Light Lamp Square Shape
LED Ceiling Panel Light [https://www.aliexpress.com/item/WS2812B-8x8-64-Bit-
Full-Colo...](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/WS2812B-8x8-64-Bit-Full-
Color-5050-RGB-LED-Lamp-Panel-Light-Lamp-Square-Shape-LED/32832264994.html)

and of course:

Smart Bathroom Toilet Nightlight LED Body Motion Activated On/Off Seat
[https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Smart-Bathroom-Toilet-
Nightl...](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Smart-Bathroom-Toilet-Nightlight-
LED-Body-Motion-Activated-On-Off-Seat-Sensor-Lamp-8-Color-
PIR/32947130406.html)

------
ocdtrekkie
I really wish a lot of consumer electronics had better documented protocols
and a place to attach an interface. Programmable smart hardware and consumer
hardware like this rarely has a lot of differences between them except for
price and the lack of documentation.

There's some awesome LED strip kits that are absolutely the right price, but I
have no easy way to hook them into my home automation system. And ones that
can cost an order of magnitude more.

~~~
wpietri
I get that, but consumer electronics are focused on the average consumer, who
doesn't want that. And they're cheap because the people making them
relentlessly focus on price optimization, not add-on features for niche
markets.

I reverse-engineered the protocol for a cheap vacuum [1], and it's my
professional opinion that the protocol is pretty slapdash. It works well
enough for the intended use, but has a bunch of rough edges. It clearly wasn't
made with randos like me in mind, and making a good consumer API would have
been a bunch more engineering work. Plus documentation and support. That would
take money and time, and this was Wirecutter's #1 recommended vacuum because
it was cheap for what you got.

It isn't anymore, though, because one of their competitors dropped the wifi
connection and put the money into other features that general-audience
consumers cared more about. "The most obvious downside is that the 11S doesn’t
have Wi-Fi, so you can’t control it from your phone or with voice commands.
We’ve asked around and were surprised to find that actually, most people are
pretty lukewarm on Wi-Fi control anyway." [2]

So I too like tinker-friendly features. But the economics of mass production
being what they are, I expect I'll generally have to pay niche-audience prices
for them.

[1]
[https://github.com/wpietri/sucks/blob/master/protocol.md](https://github.com/wpietri/sucks/blob/master/protocol.md)

[2] [https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-robot-
vacuum/](https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-robot-vacuum/)

~~~
Lukas_Skywalker
What boards or software are typically used for reverse engineering hardware
protocols (both wired and wireless)?

~~~
ttsda
The Chinese Saleae Logic clones are great, they're dirt cheap and you can use
them with sigrok, which is open-source and has built in decoding of many wire
protocols like SPI and I2C.

------
FraKtus
For Christmas lights, the final frontier is two wires LEDs. We could reverse
engineer the protocol to use them but not the protocol to program them.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeA2jnb4K3g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeA2jnb4K3g)

Because there is no data in - data out in the LED, it has just two wires; you
need to assign it an address and that part is not explained by the Chinese
producer. Could anybody crack that one?

------
pixelbath
Fun bit of off-topic trivia: The author of this post is Robert Quattlebaum,
the creator of the SynFig animation software.

------
bgilroy26
It's almost time for [https://adventofcode.com](https://adventofcode.com)!

------
edwhitesell
Mods- Can we get 2010 in the title please?

~~~
amelius
Are these lights still on the market?

~~~
wpietri
Not that I can find. The link to GE's site is broken and they aren't available
on Amazon.

~~~
cronix
Seems Lowes has them

[https://www.lowes.com/pd/GE-Color-
Effects-50-Count-32-6-ft-M...](https://www.lowes.com/pd/GE-Color-
Effects-50-Count-32-6-ft-Multi-function-Warm-White-Color-Changing-Led-Plug-In-
Christmas-String-Lights/1000525907)

~~~
wpietri
Those are a different model, and from this discussion it seems that hacking
them it at least different and apparently harder:
[http://doityourselfchristmas.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-...](http://doityourselfchristmas.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-44356.html)

