Capinera crib

Silcosoft

Capinera is the resident program on the PC that controls all electric and acoustic activity of the Christmas crib 2013. A number of 30 binary digits sent to the connected microcontroller calibrates the lights switching in the time. Each digit represents an electrical load, the 1 indicates the switching on and the 0 the switching off.
The program, through the serial port, sends this sequence of numbers to the microcontroller every half-second, the microcontroller decodes it according to the above logic and energizes or de-energizes the coil of the corresponding relay. The load [such as the windmill] turns on and off at the appropriate time.
The audio of the crib consists of three tracks: the first one is that of the Christmas songs that follow one after another in a variable sequence [pseudocasual], the second track is that of birds singing, while the third concerns the sounds of nature [wind, storm, thunder]. The diurnal birds sing during the day at scheduled times; [but with standard deviations] and their songs are chosen from those of birds present in Magliano Vetere in December.
Different birds sing on different days. The same occurs for the night birds. Occasionally the donkey brays, the ox bellows or the frog croaks. When the wind blows or when the running water of the stream is heard, the windmill and the watermill start respectively and stop when the wind and the water sound cease. At dawn the baker works for a few seconds, and the pizza maker at sunset. Te blacksmith and the grinder work during the day and the donkey turns a heavy millstone. The shepherds huts are illuminated at night by swinging lamps and so their fires.
The road has its marginal streetlights turned on at sunset and off at midnight and then on again briefly in the morning. The sky on the Plexiglas shows the stars in the constellations made with optical fibers that are on all night. The position of the stars is typical of the month of September 2007 in the northern hemisphere. The complete cycle of a day is divided as follows: 16 seconds the sunrise and the sunset, 110 seconds the day and 120 the night. On the basis of these times switches on and off of the equipment are calibrated.