New Year's Sphere

For quite a few years now I have been building new year spheres, these are loosely based on the New Year's Eve Ball in Times Square New York, but are much smaller and all hand made. Some years the sphere is totally redesigned, but other years only improvements are completed. The various spheres will be presented from current to past as you venture down the page.

2010

Something new may be in the works.  You will have to come back after the new year.

2009

No new changes this year.  It was used though.

2008

Nothing new this year, time was virtually unexistant due to a late season tornado attempting to destroy the parents house.

2007

The control interface was greatly changed, and a countdown and year display were added to this years sphere. The control system was converted from a simple wired system to a three node wireless system. The entire thing was controlled via a Windows based interface as seen in the third image below. This allowed control of the sphere colors, and patterns could all be controlled easily. The sphere and base station (drop motor and date display) received their commands via Xbee wireless, and performed their appropriate tasks.

2006

All previous spheres had been created out of wood (and Styrofoam) and old Christmas lights, this was the first one to use state of the art, super bright, tri-color LEDs. It is actually a double sphere, one sphere inside houses all the wiring, high capacity battery, controller, and most of the LEDs and a second larger sphere dithers the light, and adds a few twinkling LEDs. (I should add some videos and more pictures shouldn't I?) This year also marked the changed the control system from a PLC to a microprocessor.

2005

Switch from "basketball style" to "soccer ball style". Also added more lights, and hid wiring. This was the first sphere with a countdown feature (within ten seconds the sphere itself would flash the seconds remaining - Picture to be added as soon as i find it...). This sphere used the same date marker as 2004, only the 4 was changed to a 5 of course.

2004

There wasn't much of a change from 2003 to 2004, but there was the addition of a couple of stings of lights, a couple new paterns for it to display, and a date board that would light up upon the arival of the new year.

2003

The first of the "real" spheres (I had made versions before, but this was the first one with lights and special effects. It was also the first one of "basketballish" size). This original sphere was controlled by a Modicon Micro 984 Processor.