On the chinese market in Tsjechie (Potucky) i saw a lantern with a chistmas scene in it and falling snow. Altough one could say that this is pure kitsch i decided to make one myself.
First i bought such an ornament at the "action" to see how this works. This is simple enough, a small centrifugal cooling fan blows a windstream through a pipe, which takes the styrofoam bubbles up. This didn't work too wel because of the battery power, the voltage was 4,5volts. I could use some of the components so i demolished the ornament, keeped the snow, the blower and the pine trees and trashed the other things.
Also at the "action" i bought a nice lantern with a drawer, providing enough room at the underside to hold the blower and a simple pcb.
This ornament should be able to do the folowing things:
Switchable via the webinterface or the pushbutton
timer functions like my other esp devices.
RGB leds in the top of the lantern to light up the scene.
the colour and brightness of the leds should be adjustable.
programs for ledlight with and without snowfall.
a program that slowly cycles through a sequence of colours.
The hardware
There are only a few components involved. The total costs are about 25 Euro.
1 x ESP826612E
1 x wooden lantern (action)
1 x strip with 6 rgb leds ws8065
1 x power supply
1 x regulator lm1117 3,3 v
1 x sacket styrofoam bubbles 1 to 3 mm
Building it:
I started with disassembling the lantern. I removed the thin and vulnerable glass and put this in a save place. Next i cutted the bottom planes out and removed the drawer.
The new bottom has to be a sort of funnel where the bubbles roll down to the opening and get picked up by the airsteam in the pipe. I made a design of the unfolded bottom and printed this with my 3d printer. Next i folded this in shape an glued it together. I fixed this in place in the lantern with the help of acrylate kit. At the underside i poured pu resin mixed with some water to get a strong foam that forms a firm bottom together with the printed part.
The next part was a sort of platform to hold the santaclaus and the other decorations. This has to float above the bottom so that the snowbubbles can roll under. The ceiling is a plane with holes that should cause the snow to fall evenly spread over the total surface.
I downloaded a santa claus at thingiverse, scaled this to my needs and printed it.
After painting the Santa, i prepared a test environment with a pipe made of a sheet of paper. It apears that the upblowing snow hits the roof which makes some noise. So i have to find a way to prevent the snow from traveling too fast up in the pipe. Some holes will presumably do the trick
It's a real smart ip-device for less than 15 euro...
The software:
The software is derived from the software that i used for a WS2860 ledstrip.
The only thing to add is one pin to stear a relais that feeds the blower.
I added another pin for eventually needed other leds,
maybe something with glass fiber for a nice effect in a chrismastree.
I made two programs, one with a fixed icy white color and snowfall.
The second program changes the color constantly at random speeds.
Maybe i could add the possiblitity to swith off the snowfall separately.
At the left you can see how the webpage looks. We can change the color and intensity of the lighting.
