Simply the nicest LED Hanukkah Menorah ever made.
Features:
About our LED Menorah Kits Our Menorah kits are an updated take on the traditional hanukkiyah, the nine-armed Hanukkah candelabrum. Two candles are lit on the first night of Hanukkah (one "real" candle plus the lighter candle, or shamash), three on the second night, right up to nine on the eighth night. (That's (2+9)*(8/2)=44 candles all together, for those of you keeping score.) Ours works pretty much the same way, but uses less wax. When you turn it on, it displays the correct configuration of LED "candles" for a given night of Hanukkah. Each time that you press the "Night" button (or plug it in), it displays one more light than it did the previous time that you turned it on (unless it showed all nine last time, in which case it goes back to two). The LEDs are lit up in the traditional sequence, with a gentle fade.
Color display modes
Mega Menorah 9000 has 24 built-in color settings that you can select by pressing the "color" button:
Building the kit
Mega Menorah 9000 is sold as a soldering kit [?]. Basic electronic soldering skill is required, and you provide standard soldering tools: a soldering iron + solder and small ("flush") wire clippers. No additional knowledge of electronics is presumed or required — and no programming is required either. A printed copy of our famous assembly instructions is included — and you can download a copy to preview here (2 MB pdf document). There are two circuit boards included with the kit. The first (the base board) is an oval, 3" × 5" (7.6 × 12.7 cm) in size, and holds the microcontroller, USB power/programming jack, and control buttons. The second, larger circuit board is carved into the shape of a Hanukkah menorah, and is 7.5" wide × 5.5" tall (19 × 14 cm). It holds only the nine RGB LEDs and connectors to the base board. The unique "Trompe-l'œil" circuit board design that gives the illusion of a 3D surface, was made with the assistance of our StippleGen software. Over 9000 stippled dots of black silkscreen!
Powering Mega Menorah 9000
Mega Menorah 9000 is USB powered and requires (but does not include) a regular USB "A to mini-B 5-pin" cable and a USB power source. Most USB ports on computers and phone chargers will work perfectly. Alternatively (if necessary or preferred), you can power it directly from any 5 V DC source.
Design: Adafruit Trinket at Heart.
The hardware and software architecture of the Mega Menorah 9000 is based on the Adafruit Trinket; we even got permission from Adafruit to use their USB ID. At its core is an Atmel ATtiny85 microcontroller, pre-installed with the Adafruit Trinket bootloader. While no programming is needed — the chip comes preprogrammed — Mega Menorah 9000 can be programmed right through its built-in USB interface. No additional hardware is needed (other than the computer and standard USB cable), and you can use the Arduino IDE or avrdude (with some config changes). Our example code (standard firmware) is available for download and is written as an Arduino program, making use of the Lightweight WS2812 library.
Downloads available:
Lead Free
These kits kits are RoHS compliant (lead free). If you're building one of our kits, you'll find that everything works well with either regular or lead-free solder— whichever you care to use.
Features:
- Light the LED "candles" on command for any night of Hanukkah.
- Selectable LED color, with 14 solid colors and 10 blinking/fading modes.
- Two brightness levels.
- Optional "candle flicker" display mode; can be used with any color setting.
- A unique "Trompe-l'œil" circuit board design that gives the illusion of a 3D surface.
- Overall size approximately: 7.5" wide × 6.1" tall (19 × 15.5 cm).
- USB Powered — no batteries.
- Comes with preprogrammed microcontroller; No programming required.
- Built-in USB programming interface included: Compatible with Adafruit Trinket!
- Includes gratuitous red-green blinking mode!
About our LED Menorah Kits Our Menorah kits are an updated take on the traditional hanukkiyah, the nine-armed Hanukkah candelabrum. Two candles are lit on the first night of Hanukkah (one "real" candle plus the lighter candle, or shamash), three on the second night, right up to nine on the eighth night. (That's (2+9)*(8/2)=44 candles all together, for those of you keeping score.) Ours works pretty much the same way, but uses less wax. When you turn it on, it displays the correct configuration of LED "candles" for a given night of Hanukkah. Each time that you press the "Night" button (or plug it in), it displays one more light than it did the previous time that you turned it on (unless it showed all nine last time, in which case it goes back to two). The LEDs are lit up in the traditional sequence, with a gentle fade.
Color display modes
Mega Menorah 9000 has 24 built-in color settings that you can select by pressing the "color" button:
- 12 solid colors around the color wheel (Red, yellow, green, etc.)
- Solid white and warm white
- RGB color fade: "chasing" (medium speed)
- RGB color fade: "chasing" (slow speed)
- RGB color fade: all LEDs together (medium speed)
- RGB color fade: all LEDs together(slow speed)
- Red/Green alternating (medium speed)
- Red/Green alternating (slow speed)
- Red/Green alternating (fixed; non-animated)
- Blue/White alternating (medium speed)
- Blue/White alternating (slow speed)
- Blue/White alternating (fixed; non-animated)
Building the kit
Mega Menorah 9000 is sold as a soldering kit [?]. Basic electronic soldering skill is required, and you provide standard soldering tools: a soldering iron + solder and small ("flush") wire clippers. No additional knowledge of electronics is presumed or required — and no programming is required either. A printed copy of our famous assembly instructions is included — and you can download a copy to preview here (2 MB pdf document). There are two circuit boards included with the kit. The first (the base board) is an oval, 3" × 5" (7.6 × 12.7 cm) in size, and holds the microcontroller, USB power/programming jack, and control buttons. The second, larger circuit board is carved into the shape of a Hanukkah menorah, and is 7.5" wide × 5.5" tall (19 × 14 cm). It holds only the nine RGB LEDs and connectors to the base board. The unique "Trompe-l'œil" circuit board design that gives the illusion of a 3D surface, was made with the assistance of our StippleGen software. Over 9000 stippled dots of black silkscreen!
Powering Mega Menorah 9000
Mega Menorah 9000 is USB powered and requires (but does not include) a regular USB "A to mini-B 5-pin" cable and a USB power source. Most USB ports on computers and phone chargers will work perfectly. Alternatively (if necessary or preferred), you can power it directly from any 5 V DC source.
Design: Adafruit Trinket at Heart.
The hardware and software architecture of the Mega Menorah 9000 is based on the Adafruit Trinket; we even got permission from Adafruit to use their USB ID. At its core is an Atmel ATtiny85 microcontroller, pre-installed with the Adafruit Trinket bootloader. While no programming is needed — the chip comes preprogrammed — Mega Menorah 9000 can be programmed right through its built-in USB interface. No additional hardware is needed (other than the computer and standard USB cable), and you can use the Arduino IDE or avrdude (with some config changes). Our example code (standard firmware) is available for download and is written as an Arduino program, making use of the Lightweight WS2812 library.
Downloads available:
- Schematic, base board (PDF)
- Schematic, top board (PDF)
Lead Free
These kits kits are RoHS compliant (lead free). If you're building one of our kits, you'll find that everything works well with either regular or lead-free solder— whichever you care to use.
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