Get Ready for Season 2 of Stranger Things with Your Own Alphabet Wall

For those unfamiliar with the Netflix series Stranger Things, the sci-fi horror show takes place in the ’80s and follows a group of young kids as they search for their missing friend Will. At one point, Will’s mom manages to communicate with her lost son using some Christmas lights strung up on the wall like a ouija board, spelling out a message letter by letter.

As you can imagine, this has become the perfect project for makers looking to tinker with addressable LEDs and hardware. So, in honor of today’s Season 2 release, we’ve compiled a list of our favorite builds! Did we miss some? One quick search of YouTube should reveal hundreds more…

Hacker bxl4662’s $80 Arduino-powered prop can easily be programmed to write out words, such as “I’m here,” or emit various lighting effects.

As huge fans of the show, the SparkFun team obviously installed one in their office last year. Theirs runs on a Pro Mini along with an Internet-enabled SBC, which searches Twitter for a specific hashtag and shares it on the wall.

Perhaps the most impressive one we’ve come across belongs to the Seattle-based Makerologist team, who created a 64-square-foot, Bluetooth-connected version of Joyce Byers’ living room using an Arduino 101 and a custom mobile app.

With the help of Raspberry Pi and Twilio, guests can text their messages to Seb Lee-Delisle’s wall for fellow partygoers to see. Otherwise, it loops through a list of predetermined phrases including “dance!” and “get funky!”

If you’re looking for a simple SMS-controlled display, Rajarshi Nigam has the solution. His textable costume/sign employs an ESP8266 board, Firebase, Twilio, and Zapier.

Our friend Estefannie Explains It All was pretty pumped about the upcoming season. And so, she built her own “Stranger Things Thing” using an Arduino, addressable LEDs, a PS/2 keyboard, and a PS/2 adapter.

As part of their company’s holiday decoration contest, this Woodland Manufacturing crew decided to turn their office Upside Down.

You could say that Liz — Blitz City DIY is a little obsessed with Stranger Things. As a result, she chose to celebrate by making a giant NeoPixel LED project all coded in Circuit Python.

Thomas Harris, Usra Attalla, and Sarah Rim’s creation features a Processing sketch that allows you to navigate the living room from Stranger Things with a flashlight in search of the demogorgon. When the mouse is hovered over the demogorgon, it signals to an Arduino to trigger lights spelling out “RUN” and a speaker playing the theme.