The Winslow.io Interactive Christmas Village, Powered by Three Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W Boards, Is Back
Just fire up the website in your favorite browser and take control of an interactive holiday diorama, complete with train.
Another year is coming to a close, which can mean only one thing: the Winslow.io Christmas Village, interactive and live-streamed thanks to electrical relays and a Raspberry Pi — and a little holiday magic, of course.
"It's a yearly tradition of mine now to wire up my Christmas village and trains to the be controlled by the internet to help spread that holiday cheer," Winslow.io's pseudonymous Wafflyn explains of the project, which we last saw — when else — back in Christmas 2022.
"I use a total of 3 Raspberry Pis," Wafflyn continues. "I use my Linux server to run a local RTMP server to collect the [Raspberry] Pi video streams so I can add music, edit, and broadcast with OBS to YouTube. The website is a Vue.js component that sends user input to a queue to be processed by the [Raspberry] Pi Relay Controller which then runs pre-programmed light shows and other user actions."
The three Raspberry Pis are responsible for handling the relays which make the layout interactive, and also providing the video streams: a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is connected to a Raspberry Pi HQ Camera Module with a wide-angle lens to provide an overview of the entire layout, while a second with a narrower view rides the train for a first-person view of the tracks.
The village — and an impressive eight controllable locations, including reindeer and elf houses and a central Christmas tree, plus six pre-programmed lighting animations — can be controlled on the ChristmasVillage.io website.
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