# Christmas Village



## kweinert (Oct 23, 2019)

This is an ambitious project. And one that may or may not actually transpire but there is a lot of thought going in to it.

Come next April I'll have one of those infernal machines - a Snapmaker 2.0. I ordered the largest one which has about a 12" cube that it can work in.

That's what I plan on using to do a lot of the cutting and, perhaps, printing some of the details.

At any rate I have this idea in my head that combines my two main interests and I think I'll learn a lot whether I actually execute or not.

My plan is to put together a Victorian Christmas Village. At the moment my thought is that the first building will house a Raspberry Pi and I'll have some sort of wireless interface to it. Subsequent buildings will have an Arduino Nano (or other small control device) that will be a slave to the Pi over an I2C network. Right now I'm thinking a building a year because I want it to look nice and to have the time to work on the programming and such.

In search of Victorian designs for buildings I just got a book called Bricknell's Victorian Buildings - this is a reprint of the 5th edition of an 1878 book.

Aside from making my tentative plans public I wanted to post an excerpt or 4 from one of the typical contracts for building one of the houses.

Under plumbing:
There is to be a 3" copper pump at the _(kitchen)_ sink to be provided with a 1 1/2" bore, 2 1/2 lb lead pipe to connect with the well.
The water-closet is to be the best pan closet with wedgewood basin, strong lead trap and 4" iron soil pipe and is to be provided with all necessary pipes, service boxes, and other fixtures to make the same complete in every respect.
There is to be a cistern over the bath-room of 300 gallons capacity, lined with 5 lb. sheet lead and to be provided with all the necessary pipes, valves, etc to make the same complete in every respect.
The supply pipe for the bath-tub is to be 3/4" bore, 2 1/2 lbs per foot, for wash-bowl 5/8" bore, 1 1/2 lbs per foot. 

Under Partitions and Furring:
All partitions are to be set with 2" x 3" joists, placed 16" from centers and bridged. All are to be of even widths, and to be set straight and true. The cappings to the hall partitions are to be 3" x 4". All the partition joists, when practicable, are to go through the floor and stand on the partition cap below.

I just found the details interesting (along with the specification for lead pipe for water supply) and how much of each section ends with, essentially, "do the right thing and put in the usual stuff".

Reactions: Way Cool 1


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## ripjack13 (Oct 23, 2019)

Lead pipe. Oh if they only knew.

Interesting idea Ken. I look forward to seeing the progress you make.
Now where's my popcorn?

Reactions: Thank You! 1


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## ripjack13 (Oct 23, 2019)

Found it!



Ok....go.

Reactions: Funny 1


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## Tony (Oct 23, 2019)




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## Gdurfey (Oct 23, 2019)

I work with really smart guys that know how to do all that programming and stuff.....fascinating to me, but I don’t have a clue!!


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## kweinert (Oct 24, 2019)

So I think I'll be going with a 1/48 scale on this. This, in railroad terms, is O gauge. I picked this because I'll be able to use the new machine to cut walls and such and it fits on the machine. Given that it's O gauge there are also figurines, vehicles and such that can be used - along with a train if someone wants to add it. For some of the buildings I may need to get a little more creative and figure out how to get taller walls.

I was just watching a video on assembling a 1/48 scale house model. While they have an entirely different audience, some of the techniques will be useful.

I will also be looking at the Pi/Arduino set ups and programming as I have those on hand. It'll be the first time I've used I2C and combining using a main and a sub-processor.

Fun times ahead.

Reactions: Like 3


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## trc65 (Oct 24, 2019)

Definitely looking forward to following you on you journey. I've always loved Christmas Villages, and have a collection of about 15 ceramic structures. 

While I've not directly used/programmed the Pi/Arduino, we started using them several years ago to control lights and props in the Haunted House I help build each year. I build the mechanicals and then plug them into outlets wired to the electronics. Use them to remote trigger from tablets. Our electronics guy built relay modules with four to eight duplex outlets. Plug in the prop or light and give the address to the guy. He also built some DC modules to use with LED lights for some special lighting effects. Needless to say I'm very impressed with that tech, and we were only using very basic functions.

Reactions: Like 2


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## Lou Currier (Oct 25, 2019)

kweinert said:


> This is an ambitious project. And one that may or may not actually transpire but there is a lot of thought going in to it.
> 
> Come next April I'll have one of those infernal machines - a Snapmaker 2.0. I ordered the largest one which has about a 12" cube that it can work in.
> 
> ...



didn’t know that raspberry and Arduino could work together.


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## kweinert (Oct 28, 2019)

Well, I2C is just a communications network. What I have in mind right now is that the Pi will have the main logic, the interface for the people using it, and it will be the bus master. Each house will have an arduino that's a slave on the network.

Basically the Pi will know that House1 has 6 rooms (for example) and it has a schedule for when lights are supposed to go on and off. When the time comes for the living room light in H1 to go off and the master bedroom light to go on it just puts the command on the network "H1L0M1" (not in quite those terms) and the arduino in House 1 says "Hey, that command is for me" and it knows which LEDs to switch off and on. Any other houses that are attached to the network would go "Hmmm, H1, that's not me" and just ignore the instructions.

So it's really just different computers listening in on the network and addressing the commands that are meant for them.

I am thinking about how to best use the Pi. I think I'm going to have to have a small battery that charges so that it can detect the power drop and can properly shut down the Pi when the power is turned off. The Arduinos can easily just be shut off and they automatically start back up when the power is restored but the Pi is running an actual operating system and it needs to shut down gracefully.

The arduinos will be the small ones (Nano or similar) and I've been doing a little research to see if I can sort out a way to just use an arduino for the master as well. I'm just not sure how well I can update a file. It's easy on the Pi, not so sure on the arduino.

Reactions: Like 1 | Informative 1


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## kweinert (Nov 12, 2019)

So, first change.

It turns out that I2C was a bad choice. The simplicity is that it's a 2 wire protocol *but *it's very limited as to distance.

So now I'll be using a CAN bus. This has other implications for as-of-yet-unnamed future projects as well. CAN does not have the same distance limitations and it's still a 2 wire connection. I think I'll be using CAT5 cable for connecting the houses together so I can use it for information transfer, along with (potentially) power, and (maybe) sound. Since my brother-in-law has a bunch of excess CAT5 cable that will help, at least with the proof of concept part of this project.


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## vegas urban lumber (Nov 12, 2019)

kweinert said:


> So, first change.
> 
> It turns out that I2C was a bad choice. The simplicity is that it's a 2 wire protocol *but *it's very limited as to distance.
> 
> So now I'll be using a CAN bus. This has other implications for as-of-yet-unnamed future projects as well. CAN does not have the same distance limitations and it's still a 2 wire connection. I think I'll be using CAT5 cable for connecting the houses together so I can use it for information transfer, along with (potentially) power, and (maybe) sound. Since my brother-in-law has a bunch of excess CAT5 cable that will help, at least with the proof of concept part of this project.


if you need a box of cat 5 wire, i have several


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