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I bricked my Christmas lights

whizzy.org

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Re: I bricked my Christmas lights

#63

Post by MarkusWandel »

willcooke wrote: post #59
willcooke wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual string I have is three wires. Data and + - it’s likely they have been swapped out for cheaper lesds now, or the picture is wrong.

I looked at the picture again, it does show a three wire set up.

The WS2815 (12V version) actually is a 4 wire setup. It has a "backup data wire" that allows a single failed LED unit to be bypassed.

http://www.normandled.com/upload/201808/WS2815%20LED%20Datas...

Re: I bricked my Christmas lights

#64

Post by wkjagt »

green-salt wrote: post #38
wkjagt wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it amazing to think that your Christmas lights are now way more powerful than my first computer.

I think about stuff like this a lot, like what technologies I'm (ab)using to do some silly gadget thing.

Even though it's way more powerful than my first computer, it uses only a fraction of the energy. So yes, in a way maybe you're abusing a pretty powerful computer to do some silly gadget thing, but there's no real negative impact. I know what you mean though. I've only recently gotten into microcontrollers, and because of the time of year I've been thinking of Christmas lights too, and felt the same thing. Then again: I'm also using my M1 Macbook to write a comment on HN, which is only a fraction of what it can do.

Re: I bricked my Christmas lights

#65

Post by ryukoposting »

willcooke wrote: post #2

I was trying to automate my BLE connected Christmas lights but instead I created e-waste. Now you can too!

If you want a more GUI-oriented way of doing BLE packet sniffing, try the nRF Connect app. Not sure about iPhone, but if you let it sit in the background on Android, you can pick up BLE activity from a nice little GUI on your phone. I use it every day.

Re: I bricked my Christmas lights

#66

Post by OJFord »

pasc1878 wrote: post #62
taylodl wrote: post #13

Bah! Humbug! This is why I like dumb things.

Christmas tree lights always were unreliable. From the UK's Telegraph (which does have a older pre computer readership who would fully understand this ) https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2023/12/05/TELE...

And to be fair it wasn't their 'smartness' that killed them anyway, it was hacker mindset!

Christmas tree lights had different pattern modes etc. even before they were LED, for decades. I honestly think swapping button on the controller/power supply brick for a Bluetooth remote is a reasonable level of smart in this day and age. It's not like they wanted to connect to WiFi and be app-controlled via their servers or something.

Re: I bricked my Christmas lights

#67

Post by DeathArrow »

netmare wrote: post #61
DeathArrow wrote: post #56

Why do they use encryption?

For future DaaS perhaps. Everything is becoming a service, why not decoration...

Nice, so they can get my money monthly. Where do I sign up? Can I also rent custom lighting schemes? I would love one to light up on the notes of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.
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