Thread: Hacking Mr Christmas

Tweet

Years back I bought a "Mr. Christmas' Lights and Sounds of Christmas" box (LSC), which is hardwired with several Christmas songs that turns lights on and off to the music. My desire is to do this with some Halloween songs. I plan on using the software Vixen to run the show.

To this end, I found tutorials online on how to hack into this box using a parallel cable, connecting the data pins to the relay switches inside the LSC. That was a tendious process, determining which pins went where, but I think I am successful.


What beautiful chaos...

To my annoyance, however, my main computer does not HAVE a parallel port, once common on all computers. I checked the older computers stored in the basement. The only functional one that I had turned out to be one from 2001, and Vixen will not run on it (Windows 2000 Professional is installed, I need something more modern).

We had one laptop with a parallel port, my father-in-law's old one that we inherited. Once I found its power cable, I booted it, only to find that my beautiful wife, Mary, had, in the past, installed the operating system Ubuntu, replacing Windows XP.


Mary, relishing her challenged

There are, apparently, ways to run a Windows program on Ubuntu, but so far we've hit nothing but snags. Mary says she relishes the challenge, so that's her task. I'm just annoyed by the process. Oh more slowdown...

you could always get a USB to serial adapter, they are really cheap and work just fine. i have one for my laptop since i always need to connect to equipment out in the field and as you pointed out most newer computers dont have them anymore.

also Gemmy makes a halloween version of the mr. christmas already with 6 ports as well. I have one of each, i use the mr.christmas at Xmas time and the halloween version for well as you guessed halloween. the cool thing about the gemmy halloween one is you can plug anything you want into it since it has a line in.

i use it to create a musical pumpkin show with pumpkins that i hang from my tree out front. it comes with pre installed music as well.

just a thought since you are putting so much workin the mr.christmas one. i bought my gemmy one last year after halloween on clearance at spirit for around 50 bucks.

One of my problems is severe budget constraint. I'm trying to work with stuff I already have (bought when I actually had money to burn :-P)

I might try to see if there is a hack using Serial rather than parallel ports, or using USB however, so thanks for nudging my crusty old brain in that direction.

oh i didnt realize you said parallel port and not serial port! although i think i have seen usb to parallel port adapters as well though!

You can make the computer a dual boot. I did it on mine. I found out how by looking up dual boot Ubuntu. Now when I power up the computer I choose between Windows 7 or Ubuntu.

Have you tried wine?

Yes, it's running under Wine

Okay, forget Ubuntu. I got an old system from work that I installed Windows XP. It has a serial and parallel port so I got my computer platform ready. Vixen works great on it.

I've created a test-board to see how well my Halloween lightshow will work. This is a smaller version of the singing Halloween face that will be put up on the side of the house, and will sing, using a program called Vixen along with some hardware. This is similar to the shows you typically see around Christmas with the big light shows set to music.

Here is a link to the first sequence: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAfQmJEQJDg It's just 6 channels singing Grim Grinning Ghosts


My light show small scale platform, used for the singing Halloween face.


Halloween face with the lights out.

I discovered after I filmed this that one tooth on the top part of the mouth was longer than the other. Turned out I put lights into holes for a different (as of yet unused) channel. DOH! I was wondering why I needed 2 extra lights for that one...