Since the August report the tree has gained a second string of 400 lights, and the camera has placed 750 of the 800. The app now opens on a photoreal picture of the tree, built from its map, that shows what the lights are doing. On a laptop today you can turn the picture by dragging, or say “Hey Balsam, make it blue” and it changes in about two seconds. The tree's own microphone comes next.
On 11 September a second string of 400 lights went on the tree, with its own controller, wound in the gaps between the turns of the first. With the turns about half as far apart, anything drawn on the tree has about twice the detail from top to bottom.
The next morning I filmed the tree from eight positions, two more than in August, about a minute at each. From that footage the software placed 750 of the 800 lights in 3D and 49 more by following the wire between them. One has no position yet.
A tape measure on three pairs of lights puts the map's size within 1.5 percent. A fourth pair reads about 20 percent long, and I have not found why yet.
The mapping belongs at the factory. The patent report of 3 September recommended filming each tree once where it is made and shipping it with its map, so a customer never films the tree. This month's capture fits a factory well: a dark room, eight taped marks on the floor, one phone and about a minute at each mark. Whether one map can serve every tree of a design is still to be tested.
In August the top of the app showed a cloud of dots. It now shows the tree in a living room, modelled and rendered in advance in Blender, a 3D modelling program, with every light where the map puts it. The phone relights each bulb up to 30 times a second with the colour sent to that light on the tree.
Drag it sideways and the tree turns, up to 30 degrees either way. A switch on the picture, Sensor view, shades the slice of floor the radar can see, from an aim set by hand, and it turns with the tree.
Its bulbs sit where the map puts the real tree's lights, 750 placed by the camera and 49 along the wire, so the picture has this tree's wrap and gaps. The one light with no position has no bulb.
The app therefore shows where each animation lands on the tree, and a new map means a new picture.
Every animation is drawn from where each light sits, so rain falls down the tree and a rope can race up it to the star.
This month I scored every animation on the 800-light map by computer. Nine ran too bright for too long and were rewritten, 18 that scored poorly were cut, and Race to the star is new. The catalogue is now 22.
A visit has four stages, set by how close you are, and each has its own animation. The radar at the tip faces into the room and is rated to see a 120 degree slice in front of the tree. The August report said it saw all the way round; September's measurements showed it does not, so the tree now lets go of anyone outside that slice.
A faint warmth on your side of the tree. Someone who passes at this distance gets nothing more.
Once per visit, a candy ribbon in your colour winds up to the star, the star flares, and gold sparkles fall down your side.
A soft glow in your colour follows you round the tree. Sit still for half a minute and it calms and sinks.
If you stayed at least eight seconds, the glow waves, lifts to the star, and the star winks twice in your colour. A shorter visit just fades.
Xmas follow, which replaces Showtime from the August report, follows up to three people at once, each with their own colour and their own four stages, so a second arrival is welcomed while the first is still being followed. It was tuned in simulation and on radar recordings of an evening with real visitors.
A scene is the tree's personality for a visit, picked in the app. Each clip is one simulated visitor walking up to the tree in front, recorded from the app, except Beacons, where a second visitor joins the first. An eleventh, Ambient, plays the animation catalogue when there is no radar.
Embers at the base. Warmth climbs to meet you and cools from the tip when you go.
A drifting wisp gathers into an eye, blinks, and watches you cross the room.
A frozen tree. You thaw a patch where you stand, and the ice creeps back after you.
Sparse cold stars. Arriving sends a star up the trunk, and the stars near you join up.
One narrow beam locked to where you are, so what the radar sees is plain.
One beam per person, each in its own colour.
The whole tree glows, and you are a dark column you drag round it.
A candy-striped rope winds up and chases you. Stand still and it ties a garland round the tree at eye height, set by hand to 1.55 m for everyone.
Green and violet curtains gather to your side and break toward you in slow swells.
The four stages of a visit, for up to three people at once, each in their own colour.
Today it changes the app's picture of the tree, on a laptop. The tree's own microphone and a first try on the real lights come next.
Say “Hey Balsam”, then what you want: “make it blue”, “fireworks”, “dimmer”, “put it back”. Claude, an AI model, reads the sentence and picks one action, such as new colours, an animation from the catalogue, brightness, a different scene, on or off, or undo.
It can only choose from that list, and each choice is a setting with limits written in code. It never sends a program to the tree, never picks black as a colour and cannot touch the radar. A sentence that is not for the tree changes nothing, and the app says so.
While you speak the picture glows toward you, and light falls from the star when the change lands. It understands English and Spanish.
On 27 September, in the first live session, 17 sentences took 1.6 to 5.1 seconds each, most about 2. Plain requests worked. Metaphors were refused; Claude's instructions have since been changed to handle them, and that change is not yet tested.
“Hey Balsam” counts only while the radar sees someone within about 2 m, so chatter across the room cannot set it off. Only the sentence after it goes over the internet, to a speech to text service and then to Claude. Sending visitors' voices to an online service needs signage and a decision from Balsam.
Turning the picture, Hey Balsam and letting go of anyone outside the radar's view run on a laptop today. The Raspberry Pi that runs the tree gets them at its next update, about 12 minutes. The picture still needs checking on an iPhone.
Every light today sits in the outer shell of branches. An inner layer of about 200, part way in toward the trunk, would let effects happen inside the tree: a glow from within, a flash that travels through it. A simulation of the filming says the camera would place 62 to 73 percent of them, and the rest would be placed along the wire. The 200 spare lights are on hand; a small test with a few of them comes first.
These are the three dashed boxes in the Hey Balsam diagram.
For “snow that settles and melts”, Claude has to write the animation. The safety check it must pass is built; the writing step is not.
The aim decides which side of the tree lights up for a visitor. It is set by hand today; measuring it takes one person and about 20 minutes.
Xmas follow and the visit distances need an evening on the sofa in front of the tree.