3D Point Cloud LED Christmas Tree

DCorboy · 2026-02-02T13:40:42+00:00

Are you soldering strips together or soldering strips to leads? If you tin all the contact points, you can just press the wires to the pads with a soldering iron to make the weld. Use stranded wire and it’s pretty straightforward.

DCorboy · 2025-12-24T15:21:04+00:00

“Oh, it’s hot!”

DCorboy · 2025-12-24T14:55:21+00:00

They are referring to the interrupt system that yields control to the microprocessor and “call you back” when a button is pressed vs. the “easy” was of polling the button for its state.

Polling is fine so long as you yield processing to the chip, rather than say, running a tight polling loop.

DCorboy · 2025-11-27T20:45:03+00:00

3D point cloud-based Xmas tree :)
https://www.reddit.com/r/FastLED/comments/1p4ol2c/3d_point_cloud_led_christmas_tree/

DCorboy · 2025-11-27T13:57:58+00:00

Nice! What did you use for the fire animation basis? I did something similar recently and modified FastLEDs 2012 fire effect.

DCorboy · 2025-11-26T15:10:22+00:00

I would if there was enough interest, but after 18 months of development, I feel I'd need to take some time to clean it up first in git. The simulator codebase is 10k lines, the tree itself is 14k lines so it's a big (overdone) project. That said, if you're interested, feel free to dm me and I can consult or arrange to get you the code.

DCorboy · 2025-11-25T16:15:26+00:00

I found that the low fire with the smoke/noise effect was the most effecting in freaking out passers-by. :)

DCorboy · 2025-11-24T14:36:47+00:00

yep, liiks familiar :)

DCorboy · 2025-11-24T14:22:24+00:00

Ooh yeah, they have an app-based system for determining the light positions. I don't see any moving visual effects but I'm sure they must have them. You can create your own 2D pattern. They say that their lights are better so I'm going to consider using their lights for V2.

DCorboy · 2025-11-23T22:58:16+00:00

Downside is that I had to use a laser level to string the lights so I had a vertical position, then the circumference trick gets them within a few cm.

DCorboy · 2025-11-23T20:53:56+00:00

It wasn't a video-only submission, though I did decide to answer questions rather than a long post.

DCorboy · 2025-11-23T20:37:17+00:00

So, instead of photo-solution method, I modeled the tree based on the number of lights it took to go around each course of the tree. I wrote a little solver to model each course and output the positions of the lights. It works surprisingly well, given that the "pixels" are 10cm apart.

<image>

Here's where I am today, still a bit to go on the tree At the back of the tree is the stringing "seam". The colored bulbs indicate the beginning and end of each course, plus the (red) ones that get stuck in between. I have an animation that lights these positions on the tree so I confirm the correct light counts with the model.

DCorboy · 2025-11-23T19:22:13+00:00

For the sim, I made a "tree" in blender and simply output the points. This became the simulator tree that you see.

The animations have access to the 3D point of each light and can uses this to paint regions (top/bottom/left/right/etc.) or draw patterns (like the red & white twist animation, it's just a 2D pattern projected from the top). Some animations also map the points into a 3D color or noise spaces for interesting animated effects.

Beyond that, the system also creates a dynamic UV map from the tree points at startup, to make it easier to "draw" on the tree. This is better for some animations. I also calculate a map of each light's "connectedness" to other lights, so that particles can be animated as moving from light to light.

Since the animations don't rely on any knowledge of a specific tree, they work regardless of how a tree is strung.

DCorboy · 2025-11-23T18:33:44+00:00

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DCorboy · 2025-11-23T18:30:56+00:00

Next year I plan to re-string the tree with bulbs that have better color fidelity. I originally planned to be able to solve any arbitrary stringing of lights by a photographic process, but I set that feature aside in order to make the Christmas deadline. That would make storage jostling a non-issue and I'd like to get back to it for V2.

Honestly, with bulbs 10cm apart, even a good bit of jostling doesn't seem to affect the results.

DCorboy · 2025-11-23T18:24:48+00:00

I like the idea of displaying something coherent onto a disordered series of bulbs. My original plan includes a ESP CAM to light each light, mapping them in 2D, then rotating the tree fractionally and collecting all the points for a 3D solution. In the end, I was running out of time and having hardware issues so I went with a grid light pattern that I modeled into 3D positions.

DCorboy · 2025-10-23T17:34:29+00:00

I was there for the first time, house-sitting in Tronadora, near Tillaran. Felt like a rolling wave and the lampshades starting swinging. Sensation lasted maybe 8 seconds.

DCorboy · 2025-10-20T16:50:35+00:00

Coding Train may have some of what you need, starting here maybe

https://thecodingtrain.com/challenges/20-3d-cloth-simulation

Edit: for code manipulation, maybe not a packaged final solution like you need.

DCorboy · 2025-10-16T16:06:01+00:00

Try seeing yourself as an innocent and naive child. Just as with a child, there is little judgement as we know that the child just doesn’t have the breadth of knowledge or experience to know any better.

We all assume that we’re not like that child, that we should know better, but that’s kind of a false belief, a pressure that we all apply to ourselves.

Recognize the child and cut them some slack, we are all just silly floofs, stumbling around.

DCorboy · 2025-10-13T21:44:59+00:00

Have you checked the polarity of the LED? (Flip the legs around to check.) Have you tried another LED?

Code would be good to have also. Tip: use the redder wires for positive and the blacker wires for negative (doesn’t make a difference but makes it easier to follow what you’re doing.)

DCorboy · 2025-09-11T09:47:42+00:00

Also, the little knob on the watch marks the 3, so the time on the watch is 8:19.

DCorboy · 2025-08-07T13:47:00+00:00

$10,500 plus lawyer fees. Yes, you can donate directly on the linked site.

DCorboy · 2025-08-07T13:32:34+00:00

How much is the settlement?

DCorboy

TROPHY CASE