Guide to Wine Bottle Tree
Where did I get this idea?
It all started last year. My friends complained because I don’t have much color in my house. When Christmas rolled around they thought I’d at least put up a tree and I didn’t. So I promised that I’d start doing nerdy decorations that way I can build stuff and add holiday-ness to my house at the same time. When this year rolled along I was exhausted. I’ve been in school all semester and couldn’t find anything simple that I wanted to do then I remember a video I saw of people putting wire lights in a bottle for cool effects. So what if I took an empty wine bottle (because they are typically green) and made it into a tree and that is exactly what I ended up doing.
Materials (prices are from Microcenter)
- Wine Bottle
- Arduino Uno- $7.99
- USB A to B cable- $2.99
- NeoPixel Color Ring- $7.49
- Gator cables for connections (better than what I have in pics)- $6.99
- Breadboard- $7.99
Steps for just a light working without button triggers
- Download the Arduino IDE and plug up your board (The blinking light program should be running)
- Look here for some info on Neo Pixel rings. I pretty much rewrote this code and adapted it for my ring, and that code can be found here.
- Plug everything up just like the picture below
- Run your code and test it
Steps for just a light working with button triggers
- Download the Arduino IDE and plug up your board (The blinking light program should be running)
- Here (TBA) is the code used to add in the use of the built in button on the Uno. I tried to add detailed comments as well.
- Plug everything up just like the image section above.
- Run your code and test it
First published on Medium