So my first project idea was  a result of a Facebook posting that showed the Charlie Brown Christmas Tree blinking.  It appeared to be blinking the letter "H".  I said to self, wouldn't it be nice to have a tree topper star that blinked out "Merry Christmas" in Morse Code.  After the holidays last year I started researching how to make that a reality.  I found that Arduino's were perfect for implementing my idea.  The old star on the tree was burnt out so the shell became the basis of the project.  I looked up a bunch of videos on YouTube and found Paul McWhorter's channel.  He demonstrated how to build and led Arduino that turned off and on.  I did some more research and found out it was possible to time the on and off.  That was enough to start.  I copied the code Paul McWhorter showed on his video and used that as the basis of the code I would eventually develop.  After two months of experimenting and researching power out on the Arduino vs power required for Leds I used White Leds from an Arduino project kit purchased via Amazon with 1000Ohm resisters in line.  Each Led is wired to a port on an Arduino Nano.  The code turns on and off each port simultaneously and blinks "Merry Christmas" continually.  Because the Arduino Nano has a max power out constraint, I needed to keep the Leds under or at least very close to that limit to keep from burning out the Arduino Nano.  The tree topper has been blinking for 8 to 14 hours at a time and not had an issue so apparently, the Led power requirements are close enough to what the Nano will do.  A video is posted below.

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