Animated Singing Christmas Tree Cutout

[Sharpsburg_Woodworke]

I made this cutout for my Christmas Display. The CNC was used to cut the outline and I used a drill operation to draw out dots (with a marker) to show where to drill. However, it took hours to draw those dots. I am going to attach the bigprint file so that you can just print it out and drill the holes. I wouldn’t recommend cutting it out as well, I would just design it on a square sheet of plywood and build a frame.
I used standard led lights and just glued them in place. This tree is 8 channels on a light o rama. I plan to add back up singers soon. Enjoy.

Singing Christmas Tree.zip (101.9 KB)

[aluminumwelder]

my kids love baby shark! great job! googled light orama, those controllers can get expensive.

[Sharpsburg_Woodworke]

Yes. I bought one this year to get me into it. I plan to keep it growing every year.

[Sharpsburg_Woodworke]

I’m working on singing light bulbs to sing backup to the tree.

[Sharpsburg_Woodworke]

Start of the singing bulbs, I want them to look more cartoonish.

[Silverbug]

Very Cool.

I originally bought my Maslow to assist with the build for a LED Mega Tree for Christmas, and had planned to cut the base and top out of ply. Unfortunately I’m yet to put the Maslow together (too many projects on the go) and ended up cutting the parts with a jig saw.

I’m keen to get the design for the signing trees (for next years enhancements) if you’re willing to make it available.

[Sharpsburg_Woodworke]

I love it. I bought mine to do cutouts. I included a printable pdf for the hole placement. I suggest just drilling holes in the board with that pdf. But, as always, anything I have is yours. I believe in sharing, so let me know what you need and when you want it. I also can help collaborate on designing anything you want to build.

[Jacob]

Reminds me of a tree I did for a few years in my parent’s back yard. Love the “light tree” style.

(Friends for Scale)

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I’d imagine I could have done much better with the star if I had a maslow back then…

It looked fine from a quarter mile away though

[Jacob]

I did end up doing a Light-O-Rama version of the Tree, but I didn’t really think it added in my particular case. Novel, but not really an enhancement. I love your design though, can’t wait to see the whole display come together!

[garru2]

hi @Sharpsburg_Woodworke, love your work, first let me thank you for the video you made a couple of months back on how to trace pictures in inklscape was hoping you would make more of them, it helped me tremendously.
I’d like to know want type of light controller you used to get the tree to sing, hope this makes sense.
thank you for helping newbes like me.
garru2

[Sharpsburg_Woodworke]

Thank you. I use a Light O Rama 16 channel. You have to buy the starter package because it include the cat5 to USB link to your computer as well as the light sequencing program. You can buy more boxes and daisy chain them together and essentially run an unnumbered amount of boxes.
The tree uses 8 channels to run it. This means with one box, you can run the tree and then back up singers. (the back up singers will be running together on 8 channels).
The 8 channels for the tree are divided up as such : outline of body, closed eyes (lower eye), open eyes (upper eyes), upper lip, middle lip, lower lip, o mouth, and closed (or square) mouth. I used 100 led light strand for the body, and the other parts I used 50 led light strands. (All from Walmart.)
The sequencing for light show or the talking faces is rather complicated and time consuming. Fortunately, there are a lot of amazing people over at Liht o Rama forums that can help with that. They already have hundreds of light show and sequenced faces available for free. You may have to pay for the songs on some sequences (they don’t always give them to you because of copyright laws). The songs usually only cost a dollar. They will even take requests to build the sequence for you, but you need to do it early in the year.
Once you get the sequences and music set up, connect up your tree to the light o rama, and connect the box to a computer. I use a fm transmitter that transmits the music to the spectator’s car. Click to run the show and you are live.
Here are the links of the things you need to buy and the sites for free sequences. There are sales throughout the year the prices drop by a hundred dollars.
16 channel starter package
http://store.lightorama.com/rese16chstpa.html
Light o Rama sequence sharing forum

Sequence Sharing

Fm transmitter

Amazon.com: CZH 0.5W CZH-05B/CZE-05B Wireless Long Range Stereo Broadcast FM Transmitter Dual Mode Tnc Antenna Kit: MP3 Players & Accessories

… This is sold out from the company I used, check back or copy the model number and do a search for other companies.

I hope this answers a lot of questions for you.

[garru2]

It sure does, I thought the hard part was going to be cutting out the holes for the tree and then buy the controllers hook up the lights and done, was I ever wrong, this seems more complicated then I thought,
it will take me till next Christmas to learn, hats off to you. Ill have to do a lot more research before I even began
to start.
Thanks again for your help
garru2

[Sharpsburg_Woodworke]

If you buy the equipment to do it all, give me a call and I will walk you through all of it. The biggest thing is buying all the equipment because it is pricey. I’ll help you with the rest. I’ll even get you all the sequencing that I have so all you would have to do is plug it up

[garru2]

You sure know how to temp me into doing this, its not the cost I’m worried about, I spent a lot more money on other stupid things id like to admit. for something I know nothing about is it worth it.

If you buy the equipment to do it all

let say I do this, does this statement mean just buy the 16 channel starter kit that comes with the basic License Version or are there other things I need to buy. do I need to purchase the FM transmitter, if so why would I need it.
garru2

[Sharpsburg_Woodworke]

You definitely need the box. You must have a computer to run the show. I’m sure you already have that. The wood cost me 15 dollars and I only used a half of the sheet. The lights came out to about 30 dollars for the tree. You just need some way for the people to hear the music. You can hook the computer to some speakers and play it loud or get the transmitter.

[Silverbug]

We ended up designing our own hardware solution using Rasberry Pi’s and a few FadeCandy’s (rather than using a light-o-rama setup, which already costs a lot to start with but would cost more to get to NZ)

We’ve written some software to take a video, cut up the frames and effectively project it onto the tree and then keep it in sync with the music. We’ll look at expanding it to other elements over the coming years. I’m probably going to look at cutting some snowflakes on the maslow and I think the wife wants a santa’s sled too.

[Sharpsburg_Woodworke]

I’m planning on doing snowflake over my whole roof as well as a Santa sled. I’ll let you know when I start on it. Keep me in mind for both as well.

[Sharpsburg_Woodworke]

Just finished a sign to display what station to tune in to listen to the lights. I was going to use the cnc, but this was prett straight foward. I used inkscape to make the font, then exported as png and loaded it into big print program. Set my size to 36 inches wide and printed it to pdf. I printed the pdf and taped it to a board. I did a rough layout of the holes and drilled it out. Here is the finished product along with the png and pdf. Send me a message if you need an image scaled and turned into a printable pdf file.
Tune to.pdf (49.6 KB)

[Sharpsburg_Woodworke]

Here is some of the show with the cut outs that I made on the cnc and the sign.

[Sharpsburg_Woodworke]

Fun little video. I ended up using the Maslow to do the light bulb. Enjoy.