I needed to pick up some fairy lights for a project, so off to the thrift shop!
Watch the complete Project Rankin
Music by Anders Enger Jensen
Project Rankin: A Retro-Commercial Holiday Ornament
A child of the hyper-consumerist 80s and 90s, Matt grew up on a steady diet of sugared cereal and UHF television. As such, his sense of nostalgia is driven as much by advertising trends of the era as it is by music or other sociological elements. This leads to an interesting relationship with the winter holiday season, where seasonally-themed television commercials hold as high a place in tradition as any carol, tree, or gift exchange. To celebrate this odd bit of seasonal nostalgia, Matt builds a retro-television-themed ornament from a Raspberry Pi that plays those magical commercials from his youth and is powered by a strand of holiday fairy lights!
Engage with the element14 presents team on the element14 Community – suggest builds, find project files and behind the scenes video: http://bit.ly/2MFMG0v
Holiday Fairy Christmas Light String Teardown
Teardown and exploration of how a string of fairy lights/Christmas lights/holiday lights works. Part of the Project Rankin series that intends to build a holiday ornament powered by the AC electricity in a light strand.
How An AC Adapter Works
As part of Project Rankin, I need to be able to convert 120VAC to a more usable 5VDC, so I’ll be using a ubiquitous wall wart. However, I want to keep it as clean and tidy as possible, so I need to wire the adapter directly into the project itself. While I’ve got the case off, I’ll walk through the basic components and how an AC adapter works.
How To Add A Speaker To A Raspberry Pi
For Project Rankin to come alive, I needed it to have some level of audio, but I didn’t want to plug some USB solution in or even use the on-board mini jack if I could help it, so I figured out a quick hack to get sound from the Raspberry Pi A+ out to a simple speaker.