{"id":1733,"date":"2019-12-16T08:19:10","date_gmt":"2019-12-16T06:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cornay.co.za\/wp\/?p=1733"},"modified":"2019-12-16T08:19:10","modified_gmt":"2019-12-16T06:19:10","slug":"old-christmas-tree-gets-a-new-spin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/cornay.co.za\/wp\/2019\/12\/16\/old-christmas-tree-gets-a-new-spin\/","title":{"rendered":"Old Christmas Tree Gets a New Spin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A couple of Christmases ago, [Nick] got tired of trying to evenly decorate his giant fake tree and built an MDF lazy Susan to make it easy as eggnog. But what&#8217;s the point of balanced decorations if one side of the tree will always face the wall? This year, [Nick] is giving himself the gift of a new project and <a href=\"https:\/\/nick.zoic.org\/art\/saturnalia-a-rotating-christmas-tree\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">motorizing the lazy Susan so the tree slowly rotates<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/hackaday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/diy-slip-ring.png\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"389974\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/hackaday.com\/2019\/12\/15\/old-christmas-tree-gets-a-new-spin\/diy-slip-ring\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/hackaday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/diy-slip-ring.png\" data-orig-size=\"599,623\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"diy-slip-ring\" data-image-description=\"\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/hackaday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/diy-slip-ring.png?w=385\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/hackaday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/diy-slip-ring.png?w=599\" class=\"alignright wp-image-389974 size-thumbnail lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/hackaday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/diy-slip-ring.png?w=240\" alt=\"\" width=\"240\" height=\"250\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/hackaday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/diy-slip-ring.png 599w, https:\/\/hackaday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/diy-slip-ring.png?resize=240,250 240w, https:\/\/hackaday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/diy-slip-ring.png?resize=385,400 385w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 240px) 100vw, 240px\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 240px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 240\/250;\" \/><\/a>The saintly [Nick] decided to do this completely out of the junk box, except for all the WS2811 RGB LEDs on order that he hopes to synchronize with the tree&#8217;s movement. He started by designing a gear in OpenSCAD to fit the OD of the bearing, a task made much simpler thanks to the open-source gear libraries spinning around out there.<\/p>\n<p>It was hard to get slow, smooth movement from the NEMA-23 he had on hand, but instead of giving up and buying a different motor, he designed a gear system to make it work. Our favorite part has to be the DIY slip ring [Nick] made from a phono connector to get around the problem of powering a rotating thing. This is a work in progress, so there are no videos just yet. You can watch <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/nickzoic\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">[Nick]&#8217;s Twitter<\/a> for updates.<\/p>\n<p>[Nick] didn&#8217;t specify why he chose to use WS2811s, but they have gotten pretty cheap. Did you know <a href=\"https:\/\/hackaday.com\/2016\/01\/04\/driving-ws2811-leds-with-vga\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">you can drive them with VGA<\/a>?<\/p>\n<p>Via <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.adafruit.com\/2019\/12\/11\/icymi-circuitpython-newsletter-200-circuitpython-libraries-binho-ble-and-more-python-adafruit-circuitpython-icymi-circuitpython-micropython-thepsf-adafruit\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Adafruit&#8217;s CircuitPython newsletter<\/a><\/p>\n<p>source <a href=\"https:\/\/hackaday.com\/2019\/12\/15\/old-christmas-tree-gets-a-new-spin\/\">https:\/\/hackaday.com\/2019\/12\/15\/old-christmas-tree-gets-a-new-spin\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A couple of Christmases ago, [Nick] got tired of trying to evenly decorate his giant fake tree and built an MDF lazy Susan to make it easy as eggnog. But what&#8217;s the point of balanced decorations if one side of<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/cornay.co.za\/wp\/2019\/12\/16\/old-christmas-tree-gets-a-new-spin\/\">Read more <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Old Christmas Tree Gets a New Spin<\/span><span class=\"meta-nav\"> &#8250;<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/cornay.co.za\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/cornay.co.za\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/cornay.co.za\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cornay.co.za\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cornay.co.za\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1733"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/cornay.co.za\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1734,"href":"http:\/\/cornay.co.za\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1733\/revisions\/1734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/cornay.co.za\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cornay.co.za\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cornay.co.za\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}