The holiday season is here, and we’ve already got an awesome Raspberry Pi-powered Christmas decoration to kick off the holiday spirit. The Gustavsson Family is at it again with this incredible light show that covers their entire house, spilling over into the yard with an insane plethora of LEDs that pair to music in real time. Not only have they programmed a handful of light shows to various songs, but they’ve also recorded them all and shared them on a YouTube playlist so you can check out the work without having to drive by the house yourself.
The setup doesn’t have a speaker system, so you can’t hear the music just by being outside. Instead, you’ve got to tune into an FM radio station like you’re at an old-school drive-in to hear what’s being played. If you hear something you like, the arches in the front will span a message displaying the current song title.
The setup consists of several custom light matrices, arches, a tree, and specially designed characters covered in individually addressable RGB LEDs. These light fixtures work together to create a cohesive show and exciting holiday experience. While all of that sounds fun on paper, it took a great deal of work to assemble and program. The Gustavsson family has worked hard on this project for years, adding more each year. You can see its progress over the years on the YouTube channel.
Watch On
The light show is driven by a Raspberry Pi 4B connected to a Falcon 48V and Falcon F16V4 control board. Together, these boards control over 25,000 individual lights. The setup is powered by 25 separate 350W 12V power supplies and 6 300W 5V power supplies for the matrices.
The Raspberry Pi operates the Falcon controllers using FPP, an open-source tool found on GitHub designed for the Pi. The light show itself was programmed using xLights, specialized light sequencing software that allows you to program custom light shows in tandem with music.
If you want to get a closer look at this Raspberry Pi project in action, visit the Gustavsson Family Christmas Lights channel and see what upgrades they’ve added this year.
