We have these Christmas houses that the Mrs digs out each year. I suppose that would be a Christmas village… Anyway, they’re painted ceramic houses, chock full of fiber optic wire, which pokes out around windows, doors and signs and through bits of snow on each roof. Within each is a small motor that turns a rainbow striped color wheel. The wheel is transparent and sits just above a small incandescent lamp. All of this is poised just beneath the bundled end of the a fore mentioned fiber strands with the result being that the exterior of each house slowly shifts color, the change washing across the surface in a wave.
Cute as they are, they scare the crap out of any sensible homeowner who’s spouse wants to run them nonstop during the holiday season. But as luck would have it, one of the motors died 2 years back. It was in the “Candy Shoppe”. I jumped at the chance to do an autopsy only to be terrified to see that the lamp had, over it’s decade of service, begun to brown the plastic housing that enclosed the mechanism. But I failed to order parts, the season got busy, time fled and soon the-Candy-Shoppe went back into storage. Another season came and went before I got tired of seeing the lonely lump of porcelain sitting at the edge of the village, in darkness.
<sniff> Ok, let’s light this popsicle stand. But in doing so let’s nerf the moving parts and for the love of peace of mind, let’s use some lamps that don’t get so hot.
No Comments on NeoPixel Christmas House