LED Brightness vs. Freqeuncy

[pike]

Hello guys I just have a curious question.

say I have 2 LEDs,

:each running with a 330 ohm resitor in series
:each running off the same voltage (5volts in this case)
:both running under a PWM signal (25% in this case)

The only differrence is that the operating frequency for one LED is that it is running at 10,000 hertz and the other is running at 500 hertz.

now for the question: Which one will appear brighter and why???


p.s. I'll try and post the circuit asap, but this is the question simplified in itself.sorry guys

 

[pike]

ok finally drawn up the circuit diagram on MS Paint. The reason I ask the above question is that I have run out of input and output pins on this microcontroller (16F628). To solve this issue I have marked the needed changes to the circuit in red (the 2 diodes and piezo speaker).

Of course human hearing cant hear above 20khz right?? So if we boost the refresh rate of the LEDs blinking to 10Khz on the speaker we get 20khz. Therefore nothing is audible to the human ear at this rate.

But when we want the piezo to make an audible tone we reduce the refresh rate to 500 hertz and therefore produces 1000hertz at the piezo speaker, well within the human ear range.

But would this change in refresh rate alter the overall brigthtness of the LEDs???

P.S. That RF transmitter is used to activate some other auxillary things to wake me up and transmit the time to other clocks so every clock is sychronised in the household.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

ok finally drawn up the circuit diagram on MS Paint. The reason I ask the above question is that I have run out of input and output pins on this microcontroller (16F628). To solve this issue I have marked the needed changes to the circuit in red (the 2 diodes and piezo speaker).

Of course human hearing cant hear above 20khz right?? So if we boost the refresh rate of the LEDs blinking to 10Khz on the speaker we get 20khz. Therefore nothing is audible to the human ear at this rate.

But when we want the piezo to make an audible tone we reduce the refresh rate to 500 hertz and therefore produces 1000hertz at the piezo speaker, well within the human ear range.

But would this change in refresh rate alter the overall brigthtness of the LEDs???

It 'should' make no difference, the overall power level is still the same - it depends really how fast the LED's will respond. I would suggest trying it, and seeing what difference it makes (if any).

P.S. That RF transmitter is used to activate some other auxillary things to wake me up and transmit the time to other clocks so every clock is sychronised in the household.

Have you developed a suitable transmission format yet?.

I've just started playing with a couple of radio modules, and scoping them shows that at 9600 baud with standard (inverted polarity) RS232 signals the output from the receiver isn't identical to that transmitted. Just like with IR remote control the width of the received pulses is different to the transmitted ones!.

This is obviously the reason for the common use of Manchester coding, which relies on the change from 0 to 1, and 1 to 0, rather than the actual width of the pulses.

Something to bear in mind!.

 

[audioguru]

Hi Pike,
Just try it. Young people and dogs won't like to hear 20KHz.
Your vision doesn't care about refresh rates over about 40Hz.
The piezo has a fairly high capacitance that might slow-down the turn-on time of the transistors, dimming the display at 20KHz. If this happens, use a separate driver transistor for the piezo. Then you could use a low-pass-filter to feed the new transistor.

 

[pike]

hmm, say it does vary the brightness what can i do about it if that happens.
So far i've only come up with lowering the 25% PWM to lower the brighter frequncy down so they are unnoticable.

Would the above technique work or am i just being too optimistic???
Seeing that I am running the leds off at 25% (maybe lower) does this mean i have to decrease the series current limiting resistor by 4 times???

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

hmm, say it does vary the brightness what can i do about it if that happens.

Try it and see! - no point worrying about something which probably won't happen!.

If you do see a noticable difference, simply adjust the PWM ratio to make it the same.

 

[pike]

hahah it worked!!!

The frequency was a bit off at 18khz but who cares atleast i know it will work!!!

Nigel: I'm using a 32bit format which allows time synchronised accuracy down to 1-sec. 1 byte for alarm, 1 for hours, one for minutes and one for secs.

Would i still need to reduce those series current limiting resistors by 4???

 

[audioguru]

Hi Pike,
Doesn't the 18KHz bother you? It would drive me and my dog crazy!

If you reduce the LED current-limiting resistors by 4 times, the display would look just as bright as if the 25% PWM was 100%.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Would i still need to reduce those series current limiting resistors by 4???

Depends how bright you want the displays?, you keep refering to PWM, but presumably you mean the multiplexing of the four displays?.

To keep the four displays the same brightness as one non-multiplexed display you would need to increase the current by four.

 

[lord loh.]

audioguru is right... Human eye persistence is just about 1/24 of a second. any changes faster would be unresolvable...

And if you are so very intrested in a uniform brightness LED, I suggest you rectfy your signal and put a shunt capacitor or a pi filter before feeding the signals to your LEDs...Now only the amplitude of your signals shall matter...

 

[audioguru]

Hi Bharath,
You can't "pulse-stretch" the digits of a multiplexed display. If you did, all digits would be the same, a jumble of combined segments.

 

[pike]

Hi Pike,
Doesn't the 18KHz bother you? It would drive me and my dog crazy!

Yeh i know but it was just a test run to prove the principal of frequency- duty cycle output. Same power like nigel said both ways. Anyways my dog is either deaf stupid or just ignorant :?

BTW audio your last post is in the wrong thread :lol:

EDIT: thank you all, particularlly audioguru and Nigel you guys deeserve a medal for your contribution on these forums.

 

[audioguru]

BTW audio your last post is in the wrong thread

Hi Pike,
We were talking about your loss of 75% of the brightness caused by the 25% duty-cycle of your display's multiplexing between its 4 digits.

I don't need a medal, I'm always glad to help. Been there, done that!

 

[lord loh.]

Hi Bharath,
You can't "pulse-stretch" the digits of a multiplexed display. If you did, all digits would be the same, a jumble of combined segments.

I thought it was a single led that everyone was talking about... Ofcourse, 7segment displays cant be done so without total loss...

Oh bother, I did not see the circuit diagramme...:shock:

Sorry everyone...

But I think uniform brightness may be restored by the use of a monostable multivibrator...(74121) Trigger your Leds by the pulse and let them glow for a definite period of time. keep the timeing RC network to compliment the frequency.

But again it is too much of a trouble...

 

[audioguru]

But I think uniform brightness may be restored by the use of a monostable multivibrator...(74121) Trigger your Leds by the pulse and let them glow for a definite period of time. keep the timeing RC network to compliment the frequency.

But again it is too much of a trouble...

Hi Bharath,
Too much trouble? You're not kidding! You would need 28 monostable circuits for a 4-digit non-multiplexed display.
Multiplexed displays have their similar segments of all digits joined together so pulse-stretching won't work anyway.
Besides, the display does have uniform brightness because even though the refresh frequency changes, the duty-cycle (25%) doesn't change.

 

[Oznog]

audioguru is right... Human eye persistence is just about 1/24 of a second. any changes faster would be unresolvable...

Common mistake! PWM is visually noticible at freq FAR higher than eye response when motion is involved.

For example, I have an LED flashlight that uses PWM for its power-saving "dimming" mode. If I swing the thing around, it appears as a string of pulses. LED taillights using PWM annoy the hell out of me at night, when I move my eyes back and forth to look at other things they appear as jittering strings of pulses. I wonder if I am the only one annoyed by this or what?

Whenever there is relative motion so that the light falls on a different part of the retina, the PWM nature becomes apparent. How high a freq this effect is still perceivable depends entirely on how much motion- if an LED were fired out of a gun, even 100KHz would probably be perceived as a string of pulses.

 

[lord loh.]

I do not think the 7 segment displays need to swing like a pendulum....

However thanks for the information... Also if you spread your finers apart and shake your hand in front of your CRT terminal, you shall see a similar effect... (I am running it at 80 Hz)

If your flashlight has more than 1 leds, you can keep a phase difference between them to have a less annoying torch...

 

[XtrChessReal]

time of led being different is increased by 20 times

Overall brightness will appear different, whether it is brighter or dimmer I have not viewed the ciruit carefully enough to answer. But, going from a refresh rate of 20KHz to 1KHz increases the dimmer time by 20 no you cannot see each change after 40 Hz but an overall brightness you can.

Okay, looked at it further the Led display should dim, I am not going to work out the lumens but since the current of the collector is split then so is the Led at the 1KHz refresh rate a 5% drop in overall brightness I would think.

 

[pike]

ohh so your bharath!! was begining to wonder WTF after that was all about.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

audioguru is right... Human eye persistence is just about 1/24 of a second. any changes faster would be unresolvable...

Common mistake! PWM is visually noticible at freq FAR higher than eye response when motion is involved.

For example, I have an LED flashlight that uses PWM for its power-saving "dimming" mode. If I swing the thing around, it appears as a string of pulses. LED taillights using PWM annoy the hell out of me at night, when I move my eyes back and forth to look at other things they appear as jittering strings of pulses. I wonder if I am the only one annoyed by this or what?

Whenever there is relative motion so that the light falls on a different part of the retina, the PWM nature becomes apparent. How high a freq this effect is still perceivable depends entirely on how much motion- if an LED were fired out of a gun, even 100KHz would probably be perceived as a string of pulses.