Department of Villainy.
Added 2018-12-01 00:00:26 +0000 UTCThe Manx Beard Club (just Kevin, Juan and me) entered a local tree festival at the town hall. In amongst all the charity trees we installed the Department of Villainy Kryptonite tree which is completely green (apart from the purple lamp holder at the top). It's got 400 green LEDs with custom 3D printed kryptonite crystals and a huge medley of every other green or clear cap we could find to jam over lots of the other LEDs. On top is a green LED flame lamp.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvUXlih9b_c
There is a music facility which is based on a waterproof enclosure fitted with two mylar speakers facing downwards (the case has four feet added to keep it clear of the ground) and it uses a very common eBay module that uses a standard USB power supply (micro USB) and either a micro SD card or USB drive to play music via a low power onboard amp. The music is a theme park queuing area style loop with a festive theme. The audio was more of a joke than anything to see how the organisers would react to the tree playing music.
Technical issues that arose were:- The green LED sets were hard to find and the ones I got have a very odd controller that uses a single chip for time control (8 hours on 16 hours off), a voltage boost section to drive a higher voltage string of lights (about 20V) from the 5V supply and also flash the LEDs in various patterns by polarity reversal.
On power up the unit starts the 8 hour shut-off timer by default meaning that the tree lights would turn off prematurely. Modifying the controller was not an option, so I added a 24/7 time switch programmed to turn the lights off every six hours for one minute to reset the timers.
The little MP3 player resets to a default audio volume when powered down, and the track chosen was so bass-rich that it caused distortion. The easiest fix was to run the audio file through an online processor that reduced the volume of the entire MP3 file. Nudging it down by about 6db resulted in a perfect low level ambient sound.
Although the audio system was added as a joke it may actually get used on days when the surrounding office staff aren't in.
Comments
Well, this is one way that "Aero"like chocolate is made, so it's probably a similar though industrial version. <a href="https://youtu.be/Symvz0T0ILw" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/Symvz0T0ILw</a>
2018-12-05 21:30:55 +0000 UTCSounds a bit like the Swedish "vacuum cleaner" pastry, aka 150 ohm, aka punsch roll: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punsch-roll" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punsch-roll</a> (can usually be found at your nearest IKEA, even if they insist that the filling is almond paste, not yesterday's pastries plus arrack liqueur).
2018-12-03 17:45:38 +0000 UTCthat sounds marvellous, maybe have an Xmas giveaway?
mark barratt
2018-12-03 12:40:08 +0000 UTCThat reminds me. I must get some of the chocolate "nibbles" when I'm back in Glasgow. It's clear that it's all the reject chocolate/caramel/biscuit bars put through a mincer to make extruded pellets of chocolatey goodness.
Big Clive
2018-12-03 04:29:50 +0000 UTCThat's why I was keeping it down to just a little bit of each. The candy was divided up afterwards for sharing with others.
Big Clive
2018-12-02 02:30:22 +0000 UTCDefinitely. The purpose of a beard is for protection from sun, rain, snow, wind and random flying objects. Itr also happens to look good too.
Big Clive
2018-12-02 02:29:25 +0000 UTCIt's worth growing a beard, full stop. ;)
2018-12-02 01:22:14 +0000 UTCrandom fact of the day ( that you probably already know ) the yummy chocolatey filling in the kit kat is actually, mushed up kitkat that failed QC ( not full covering, not enough wafer etc ) and went round again make you wonder how they made the first ones though
mark barratt
2018-12-01 21:27:52 +0000 UTCThanks Clive and the beard club.
Nuts 'n' Proud
2018-12-01 16:11:55 +0000 UTCHmmmm. This gives me an idea.........
Chuck Kirchner
2018-12-01 13:28:02 +0000 UTCNew for 2019... the Manx Diabetic Beard Club! Don't know how you guys can eat that amount of sweets in one sitting, especially washed doesn with Lebowski, think I would be sick!
The Tinkering Shed
2018-12-01 11:24:24 +0000 UTCIt's almost worth growing a beard just so I can put Christmas lights in it!
2018-12-01 09:19:09 +0000 UTCAlways a good time! You guys rock
Michael Thompson
2018-12-01 08:58:24 +0000 UTCThe green flame lamp was shown in the 3D printed kryptonite crystal video. It looks pretty good on the tree.
Big Clive
2018-12-01 06:47:52 +0000 UTCClive, I’m confused... I thought that flickering LED lamp you showed us a couple of videos ago was going to be the tree topper, but that wasn’t green! Entering a Christmas tree competition is a genius idea by the way, given your background in festive light tinkering... I hope you win! I was thinking, I wouldn’t want to step on Bert and Vince’s toes, but next year you could enter and do a collaboration with either your Patreon or YouTube community... do a video asking for ideas for a theme, the Manx beard club could pick the winning theme and maybe some of us could help build and send you interesting lights and stuff to put on the tree...?
2018-12-01 05:57:37 +0000 UTCThe Beard Christmas lights are so cool :-D Now I kinda wnat to grow out my beard just so I can use them...
Kevin Bornewasser
2018-12-01 03:34:42 +0000 UTC
