Bgocled USB LED Christmas Trees

                                                                                      

For the holidays, We made a pair of USB-powered blinking Christmas trees. Trees were from the dollar store, the decorations (a mini-garland and some charm bracelet charms for ornaments) were from the hobby supply store. The rest was from my parts bin. (Meaning: It doesn't use a 555 timer chip, and it doesn't use a microcontroller!)

Now these pretty little trees, when plugged into a free USB port, light up and blink a mini string of red and green LEDs. Technologically they don't push any envelopes, but they were fun to make and fun to have around. They make a great gift, too!

Parts

To make each tree, I needed:

• 1 small xmas tree
• small decorations for the tree
• cyanoacrylate glue (crazy glue)
• few feet of green or black wire
• 4 or 5 red leds
• 4 or 5 green leds
• 74HC14 Schmitt Trigger Hex Inverter chip (7404 will not work!)
• 2uF capacitor (or two 1uF caps in parallel)
• 1 Megaohm resistor
• USB cable from a mouse or something

This will give you a string of 8-10 LEDs that will flash 1 second on, 1 second off for as long as it's plugged into a USB port.