Numberless Advent Calendar

myminifactory

For Tinkercad Christmas! Light pipes are a crucial component that funnel LED light in many devices to make them appear perfectly on the visible surface of our products. A friend recently showed me the wonder of transparent PETG, which is even more crystalline looking than its PLA equivalent, and it made me wonder how it would perform as a light pipe. Then a cross thought occurred: how to modernize the ubiquitous Advent Calendar? Enter the Numberless Advent Calendar. Our family always has one of these Christmas favorites up at this time of year, and the "What day is it?" question is often asked when it comes time to open the daily prize. Wonder no more! This Advent Calendar will illuminate the correct box all the way from 1 to 24! And as a bonus, it can make beautiful LED patterns in its 25 individually programmable RGB, light-piped mega "pixels." Not a great video, but show the animation: https://youtu.be/xNpmJuXwgj0 Or in GIF form! - https://imgur.com/a/c4NNO To the Printer! I printed the tree sections in alternating green for a more varied look. You could group them in Tinker and make a single/twin mega model - love that Tinker feature! Support is required in places due to geometry, but it's very simple square profile support that is easily removed. I always try to avoid it, but not at the cost of the design. It's there to be used in that case! A note on the two connector holes on the rear of the trunk section - the size and placement are critical for a secure fit. Putting it Together - the best part! Required: Countersunk 6-10mm M3 machine screws, optional glue, soldering iron. This is pretty straightforward. The tree sections have snap-lock alignment pins - you can also add some glue if you want but the snap lock is fairly strong. The star on top is also a drop-in keyed fit with a cable duct inside. One of the key aspects of the design that took some experimentation is the way the flexible LED strips snap into the channels in the rear, no messy glue. This recesses each LED into their box and ensures no light bleed between boxes. Remove any weather sheath on your LED strip and apply a small amount of pressure to them and they will snap into place. Each section of strip needs to be connected to the next using 3 wires. The pads on the strip are very easy to solder to - even a novice solderer should have no problems. The kapton tape in the pictures is just so the Pi does not short to any of the strips exposed pads. Any tape will do. Time to Play! If you follow the directions in the .py file, the Pi will startup in the default calendar mode. Edit: No ZIPs on MMM? Have to put the code file here: https://bit.ly/2IsvXyc As provided, the tree has 5 modes selected using the button on the rear. The aforementioned calendar mode shows the current date in red and a periodic snowfall animation. Pressing the button will also reveal a color chase mode, theatre mode, and two RGB fader modes. Some of these are modified Neopixel examples. But a little bit of coding and you can add all sorts of things! It is essentially 25 pixel display limited only by your imagination. Comments in the Python script indicate where you can add your own modes. As written, it will work in any month but when the date is beyond 24, it will just display a red cross - the excitement in our house waiting for it to tick over to Dec 1st was very high! It also dims during the night hours and has a parent feature that will light the next day's box at 9pm for easy stocking if required. Commented out in the code, there is also the option to have the date flash in a digit sequence on the star periodically…. but I leave that for the builder to explore. For Tinkercad Christmas! This object was made in Tinkercad. https://www.tinkercad.com/things/jA1p8fWGrrT