Window Decoration using Animated Christmas LED Snowflake

The project illustrates an animated snowflake pattern in Christmas lighting decorations by using a matrix of 61 white LEDs.

The PIC18F1330 microcontroller was used to build the whole project as it uses an internal oscillator. By turning on one column at a time, the 8×8 LED array is multiplexed along with the sending of 8 bits of data to the 8 LEDs in that column before moving on to the next. Using only 3 ports of the microcontroller, 8 outputs of the 4028 BDC to decimal decoder IC are used and controlled. There are about different pattern effects with random speed, fading style, and pattern selections by using the assembler to entirely program the animated Christmas LED Snowflake window decoration. To program the microcontroller, a PIC programmer compatible with the PIC18F1330 is required. A Microchip PICkit2 programmer, connected to a homemade ZIF socket adapter was used in this case.

In the assembly, the LEDs should not be soldered closer than about 5mm from each LED and the leads should be trimmed after all the connections are made. If the trimmed LED leads are sharp, they can be covered with plastic sheet.

Click here to see the rest of the project.