3D Printed Treetop Star

Solar botics
December 9, 2014

Initially inspired by the Moravian Star on Instructables and the fact that we now carry all kinds of 3D printing filament, we decided to make one of our own glowy holiday star. We have used this thing as source files to create a similar treetop decoration of our own.

After some trial and error (due to the Slicer not cooperating)...

...we printed a whole forest of perfect wintery spiky star-ends.

And, well, we just had to have someone live there for a bit. In this case, a snowman:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our  addressable 5mm LEDs were well suited to light this contraption. We drilled a hole in the bottom of each spike..

..to fit the LED's domed part:

   

And then wired everything up. It wasn't pretty but the WS2812 LED that we used made it much easier than a conventional RGB LED: rather than 3 separate channels, the WS2812 LED only has a data in and data out. Chain them all together and they work like a charm!

 

 

And here's the final product, ready to light up our office with wonderful glowing lights!

 

 

 

MORE POSTS

April 4, 2006
Solarbotics at the MAKE Faire

Sooo, if you're not familiar with Make Magazine, you should be! An excellent quarterly "bookzine" from O'Reilly publishing - them guys that do the computer books with the ink-line drawings of animals on the cover. I'll be down there this April 22-23, giving BEAM lectures / workshops at their MAKE Faire in San Francisco, and […]

January 8, 2016
Vintage AMPEX VR1200B 2" Quadruplex VTR ...

I occupy a studio space in a building that is a former movie shooting facility turned into an artist hovel. The building itself is wonderfully old but the hallways are also full of ancient audio and video equipment from the movie days. One of the things that got the attention of our RnD and tech […]

May 4, 2012
Credit Card Woes

Thanks to some information provided to us by a very determined customer (Thanks Erin!), we've been able to pin down why some of your credit cards were being declined. We've been able to correct and verify that this bug has been resolved, so those of you who have been declined while using an otherwise valid […]

June 19, 2010
A Sensory Bonanza

Sensors. They're FUN. So fun, in fact, we just added a metric crap-tonne (a completely legitimate scientific unit of measurement) of them to Solarbotics. What, you don't believe me? CHECK THIS ACTION OUT! We just added 4 categories, and we now have a total of 75 items available. Here's the full rundown of new stuff: […]

1 5 6 7 8 9 254
Solarbotics Ltd Logo
Solarbotics has been operating for more than 25 years, bringing electronics know-how and supplies to both the electronics professional and hobbyist. We'll be happy to help you too!

Solarbotics, Ltd. is not responsible for misprints or errors on product prices or information. For more information, please see our Terms and Conditions.

Warning: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.
Please visit www.P65Warnings.ca.gov for more information. This item was manufactured prior to August 31, 2018.