In this Instructable, i am going to teach everyone the basic steps of how to build your own computer controlled musical Christmas lights. This setup is very simple and common. Within a few hours, you too can build your own light display for the holidays/new year!
First, lets go over how it works. A computer is connected to a micro-controller which pulses electricity into a relay circuit attached to a series of lights called "channels". Each channel when pulsed with electricity, will give power to your light source. As you choose which songs to play on your computer, you can choose what you want to display by programming your micro-controller.
Since we aim for fun and simplicity, we will be using an Arduino for our micro-controller. If you don't know what is an Arduino, then please visit this website (www.arduino.cc
) and buy one online or at your local Radioshack.