Arduino Build It! contest entry by: Noel Portugal My xmas-box project consists of an internet controlled Christmas lights and music show. A Christmas song can be requested on-line which is then put in a queue and played in the order it was requested. The music is transmitted on an FM station within a 300 ft radius from my house.

The xmas-box has 8 Channels (power outlets) where different light modes can be played: vu meter style, ascending, descending, split, merge, sequence and random. During each song one of these modes is used randomly every 10 seconds (to make the show less monotonous).I started my research right after Halloween and I came across a couple different options, but I settled with the following combination of hardware : arduino + adafruit wave shield + ioBridge + wifi bridge + solid state relays (SSRs).

The xmas-box is enclosed in a small plastic tool box. I have place it on my deck under a roof ( it is not completely weather proof). The tool box has “3 levels.” The bottom is where all the SSRs and AC wiring are located. The middle (the inside tray) contains the wall warts for the arduino (9v), ioBridge (5v) and Wifi Bridge with power. The top level contains the Arduino board, the ioBridge module and the FM transmitter.

Noel has put together a really great Instructable. Rather than attempt to post all the steps here, the remainder of the project can be found on his Instructable.

Great Job Noel!

As as side note I will like to share how much Arduino has changed my life. I am software guy by trade but I have always wanted to bridge the internet with the real world. When I found out about Arduino I rushed to order one of these amazing boards, and I haven’t been disappointed. The ability to program it using C (with wiring) and the immense documentation and free libraries make it really easy for anyone with little to no experience to get started with physical computing. My head  has been constantly spinning  by all the possibilities that I could prototype with this platform.

I hope that any of my experiences shared by my blog could ever help someone else trying to do similar things.

-Noel