Light-Up Advent Village

November – along with Thanksgiving and Black Friday in the US – has come and gone, officially marking the start of the holiday season. Advent calendars are often used to help celebrate Christmas time, counting down the days until December 25th with stories, small prizes, or anything else one can think of. Naturally, this concept has inspired many a maker, including Erich Styger, who created an excellent laser-cut, light-up Advent village – powered by a Raspberry Pi Pico.

The village base and houses are constructed with 4mm birch plywood, along with PMMA plastic that forms the shaped windows. Addressable LEDs under each house provide light output, which is blocked if a candy or treat is inside. On each day, a house is lifted up for treat removal, allowing light to then shine through its window. 23 little houses circle up to a larger house, which represents Christmas Eve on the 24th.

LEDs are controlled by a Raspberry Pi Pico, soldered onto a custom carrier board via its castellations. The carrier features two onboard LEDs, plus a navigation switch and a debug interface. The Pico setup as well as all the LED PCBs are kept in place underneath the village base by laser-cut mounting fixtures. This bottom mounting conceals a fairly neat– but not particularly seasonal – wiring arrangement.

The device can shine in several different color modes, with settings stored in persistent memory via MinINI. While the intention was to make three villages, time restrictions means that there’s only one copy (as of now), generously donated to a deserving family.