Winslow.io's Raspberry Pi-Powered Christmas Village Offers a Live-Streaming Slice of Holiday Cheer

Development firm Winslow.io is celebrating the season with a remote-controlled Christmas village, complete with train — and is inviting anyone looking for a little holiday cheer to interact with it over a live video stream.

"ChristmasVillage.io is controlled via a Raspberry Pi, Python, and electrical relays," the company explains of the project, which is as close as you get to an explanation of how everything works. The village itself is set up on a decent-sized table with a range of attractions to be seen: houses for elves, reindeer, and of course the jolly old Santa himself, a post office, a working train, and a giant Christmas tree in the town hall.

Everything is rigged with lights, which can be toggled using a simple web interface, or set to a range of "light shows" including "Duck Duck Goose," "Disco," and "Warp Speed." Toggling lights in someone's house isn't much fun if you can't see them, of course, so Winslow.io has set up a live stream via YouTube — with the warning that it's on a ten-second delay, so don't expect to see your changes instantly.

The Winslow.io Christmas village isn't the only Raspberry Pi-powered bit of holiday cheer we've seen of late: late last month pseudonymous maker "omantn" turned his wife's collection of off-the-shelf Christmas village ornaments into a large-scale diorama with a mobile-friendly web app for control; earlier this month Erich Styger showed off a laser-cut Advent village powered by a Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller board. Oliver Pugh's interactive Christmas tree, meanwhile, allows anyone to draw pixel art decorations — and received a cheeky Rickroll on launch.

Interested parties can control the Winslow.io Christmas village from any modern browser via the official website.