Christmas Village with Arduino Lighting

Christmas time is here, as in the time of setting up ad hoc decorations that shine brightly both outdoors and indoors. Or, as featured in this project, a model of an outdoor light-up village that is used indoors. Perhaps one of the model buildings has a similar extra tiny village model inside… But I digress.

This particular village belongs to a friend of YouTuber PattysLab. While it is a neat piece, it shines a bit too brightly in its original iteration, with each and every building requiring three AAA batteries (both a hassle and expensive). To solve these problems, PL designed and constructed a new custom lighting board based on an Arduino Nano and powered via USB-C.

The board features six LED channels, with through holes for two identical barrel connectors per channel. A trim pot is provided for each channel, and lighting can also be dynamically adjusted via PWM. The PCB has a connector for a light-dependent resistor (LDR), allowing it to sense and adjust for ambient lighting conditions.

The board has a fuse to protect against shorts, along with a TVS diode to accommodate for voltage spikes. Cleverly, it also features two power bus connectors, enabling multiple boards to be daisy-chained if needed.

The bulk of the build and explanation is seen in the video above, while the second shows the results. Reportedly it just worked upon installation, and the resulting setup does look quite nice. Of course, there was plenty of design work and troubleshooting required upfront to make things go smoothly at the end!