🎄 Epic Christmas Baby Yoda Tree 🎄
By: Yair Saucedo Herrera
Tags: Christmas Tree, Do It Yourself, Star Wars, Arduino, Baby Yoda

At the end of November our daughter asked us if we could decorate our Star Wars and Baby Yoda Christmas tree and we said Why not? and we got to work.

We had several items in mind such as lightsabers, Baby Yoda ornaments and ships floating around the tree and of course a Baby Yoda on top.

Sketch of the tree according to the available area in the house

We tried to use items that we already had at home such as the Baby Yoda amigurumi that we gave my daughter last year, decorations and Christmas lights that we already had, as well as a projector, a smoke machine and an Arduino to control the sequence of lights.

Looking online, Estefanía found a Baby Yoda crochet pattern and spent a few days with her grandmother knitting 15 ornaments https://spinayarncrochet.com

Great days weaving

The result was amazing 👌🏻

For the lightsabers, we went to the center of our city to look in import stores and we found these swords for a price of 1 USD, which are powered by 3 AA 1.5 V batteries, they have a power button through which the LEDs always they are turned on without any effect and have a small horn that makes a sound.

Each saber was wired first to avoid the use of batteries and second to be able to control the dimmer and ignition sequence, likewise the speaker was removed.

lightsaber hack

Six sabers were distributed around the tree, to control them, I used an Arduino UNO via the PWM outputs to be able to control the dimmer. The additional electronics, only a 2N2222 transistor and a 270 Ohm resistor were required for each saber.

The other 3 additional transistors were used for the upper sword which I replaced the leds with an RGB led strip, a transistor was used for each color.

Arduino UNO and electronics

It is already taking shape!

For the spaceships 🚀, I put two steel cables along the ceiling with a tensioner and pulleys to move the ships to adjust the position.

The spaceships went unnoticed, so to give them greater prominence, I installed 4 MR16 led spotlights covered in green cellophane and to be able to perform a sequence of lights through the Arduino, I integrated a solid-state relay module into the system, the same one I used to curtain lights on the sides using 5 digital outputs from the Arduino.

Module SSR for MR16 and side lights

To give the effect of being in space, an RGB led strip was used in the ceiling with indirect light

Ceiling Led strip

It’s almost ready… Amazing 😱!

It’s almost ready

I share the Arduino code

Smoke machine for better effects

For the projection on the window, I had long ago seen on the internet that it could be done on a semitransparent shower curtain, but the measurements were very short 1.8 x 1.8 meters and I found only engravings and colors in local stores. I remembered that in the past days I worked in a blueberry field and the plants are covered with a whitish plastic that allows 25 to 30% of light to pass through, so I tried this material and had very good results.

Plastic covering the field

Window projection

And the final result is 😮😮😮!

Final Result :)

For Christmas dinner, we complement it with some Baby Yoda Drinks 🍷

Baby Yoda Drinks

Some picts…