Animated Christmas LED Sign

HUMBUG... a word normally associated with a rejection of all things Christmas. To anyone who's called Winnipeg home over the past 40+ years however, it invokes feelings of nostalgia and brings out true Christmas spirit. In 1973 a man named Sid Farmer wanted to display his Christmas spirit in a different way than the standard ‘Merry Christmas’ signs in his neighborhood. So he created a 'HUMBUG' sign that still lights up to this day, signaling Christmas in Winnipeg has begun. This sign has since become a local institution, and it just wouldn't be Christmas in Winnipeg without it.

As a Ex-Winnipegger transplanted to Montreal, I missed seeing that sign light up every year and any excuse to get my kids into building stuff is a good one! So we decided to make our own to represent the tradition over on the East coast.

We don't live in an apartment, so we scaled our version down to fit in our font facing window. We also used some individually addressable RGB lights so we could add some lighting effects.

As with most of our projects, we started by scavenging as much reclaimed material as possible to try and keep our landfills empty.

Parts and Material

• 5V power supply (from broken set of PC speakers)
• Metal square tubing (from an old patio umbrella)
• Melamine hardboard (from an old bookcase)
• Random wires (from various discarded appliances)
• Female Panel Mount Barrel Connector (from an old printer I think)
• RGB addressable LED strip
• Arduino Nano
• Project Box
• 1000 uf capacitor
• 470 Ohm resistor
• Perf board

Tools

• Glue gun
• Soldering iron
• Woodwork tools (I used a table saw, bandsaw and drill press... but hand tools work just as well.)

• We first cut out the boards to equal size. In our case that was 6" x 7.5"
• We then printed a picture of the original sign and tried to duplicate the font and LED layout on the hardboard using a pencil.
• Next we drilled some pilot holes for the LED's, and used a countersink bit to ensure that the LED's would go through as much as possible and sit snuggly into the material.
• Finally we used a bandsaw to cut the letters out of the hardboard.

• With the letters finished, we spread them out to see how they looked.
• Next we took two of the metal tubes and cut them to size of our window. Then we glued the hardboard letters tp the tubes creating a makeshift frame for the sign.
• Finally, we glued the LED's into the holes from the back side of the sign.

• Adafruit has excellent tutorials on using RGB lights with Arduinos, so I won't try to repeat them here.
• We wired up the Arduino to the appropriate resistor/capacitor and soldered everything to the perf board.
• We then put the electronics into the project box and drilled a hole for the barrel connector.
• We plugged it in a it lit up like a charm!
• In order to get some cool lighting effects, we cannibalized Mark Kriegsman's excellent TwinkleFOX code. This code allowed us to use the FastLED library to make all kinds of holiday lighting effects very easily.

Finally we hung the sign in our window.

Christmas season has officially begun!