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new member needing a lot of help

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He said he wanted the pattern to mimic the pattern on the left.
To me, the left-pattern is just incrementing the LEDs and then turning them all off.
That's why I asked him to describe clearly and concisely what he is trying to do. But as yet nothing has been forthcoming.
I can clearly see the left pattern is very easy to reproduce and the right pattern is quite complex. That’s why I am holding off until I know more.
This is like pulling teeth.
 
Which is why I suggested a mircro controller colin. To do something like this with discrete logic and analog IC's would be silly compared to using a microcontroller for it. The code to make both of those patterns and any other's he can think up would take a few minutes to program in any of the basic languages available for AVR or PIC. Total cost of the controller would be less than all the logic IC's you'd need to do this discretely.
 
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Personally I would recommend AVR's, but that's me. I would recommend starting a new thread separate from this giving us as much background about your knowledge of electronics as you can. I've linked a very basic programmer bellow that would meet your needs, there are many AVR's you can program with it as you can see from the list, I'd be happy to help you chose one to start out with and recommend some software to get you going. I'm a little rusty on my coding but I can help with most general AVR releated questions. Sparkfun is a good site they sell many good products at reasonable prices, and you can buy AVR micro's there as well was the programmer to save on shipping. They also sell many PIC's if you decide to go that route instead. AVRFreaks.net is a good forum for AVR's however there is oft times too much information there for begginers to handle, PIC or AVR there are MANY programmers and more than one programming language to deal with. Tends to overwhelm people.



SparkFun Electronics - AVR STK Serial Port Dongle Programmer
 
colin. Why don't you read my previous posts, I've already explained it. You an ask the question as many times as you want it's already been answered.

He wants to light up a string of LED's going from left to right until they're all lit. And then turn them off one at a time from left to right until they're all off.

The panels he linked are listed as running directly off 12 volt so should simply have to make drivers and run them from a micro controller.
 
He wants to light up a string of LED's going from left to right until they're all lit. And then turn them off one at a time from left to right until they're all off.

not as such but close
say on a 3 block circut

off off off
on off off
on on off
on on on
off off off
 
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That was for the first column of graphics. The second is as I described.
 
robx1r,

I'm just a novice, so there are probably better solutions, but thus far no one has seen fit to help, so this is how I would think about your flashing light problem. This is just a sketch of what you should do, you will have to fill in the rest, most of what you need to complete this sketch can be found on the web. This circuit utilizes four chips and a hand full of additional components. You will need to compete the 555 circuit with a capacitor and a pair of resistors. You would probably be best served to try it out at home with a 5V power supply and small LEDs before designing the driver for your LED panels. I assume they were designed for an automobile and work on 12V, but you need to verify this. If that is the case, you will need to use a transistor or mosfet as a switch to convert from logic level voltages to car level voltages. You will probably also need some sort of power supply to take car voltages to 5V. I'm tired and busy, so I probably will not add much more to this discussion.

Hope this helps some, with luck some guru will jump in and fix this circuit or proscribe a better one.

DavidBear
 

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David, how is that simpler than a single micro controller with transistor drivers I've already suggested? If the poster can follow the circuit you posted with the logic gates then he can follow basic micro controller use, it'll use a single component (driver excluded) and you could program any pattern you wanted into it. Depending the chips used and the shipping costs a micro controller is likely cheaper as well.
 
Sceadwian,

I like microcontrollers as much as the next guy and they certainly have advantages of flexability over logic circuits. However, they require a level of infrastructure (programmers, etc.) and knowledge base (programming) that logic chips don't require. My sense was that robx1r wants a circuit to have a cool turn signal and then will move on with the rest of his life. I certainly agree that if he is looking towards starting a new hobby then learning about microcontrollers is a 21st century thing to do. My guess would be that robx1r would be better off buying a retail light flasher, which would doubtlessly be cheaper and easier than anything presented at this forum.

DavidBear
 
So the logic chips just assemble themselves in the proper orientation, the boards etc etch themselves and the logic comes out of thin air? Learning micro controllers isn't a 21st century thing, they've been around a lot longer than that. The last car I bought which was older than me had at least a half dozen micro controllers in it.
 
Well, shucks, without getting into the programmable controller argument, I threw this circuit together yesterday and just finished it up. It assumes a 350 mA current for each LED, but can go to 1 amp or so. Give it a try. If it doesn't work, you're out no more than a few bucks. What more can you expect from a free design? :)
 

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could someone design up a circuit using a micro controller and a legend of whats what??
i know its asking alot but it would help me out a lot,
also just because i finish this doesnt mean it'll be the last thing i do like this i'm thinkin of this as getting in the deep end
 
If you want to turn on 3 or more blocks of LEDs you just need a staircase of transistors as shown in the following circuit. This circuit does 9 blocks:
**broken link removed**
 
I have an extreme lack of circuit drawing skills. If you have a problem with my description let me know and I'll try to draw something, gotta find out what drawing software colin uses.

Using a micro controller is similar to the way colin's circuit is layed out. Except the base of each transistor would be fed into a micro controller I/O line instead of through those diodes and the other analog circuitry on the far left of the image. The main advantage of using an MCU over analog circuit like colins is that with colins circuit you are forever stuck with the pattern the circuit generates. With a micro controller you could change the patterns on whim and customize them any which way you want at any time, including complex non repeating patterns which would require extremely complex analog circuits. Ccurtis and David's suggestions are to use timers fed into digital logic to accomplish the same thing a micro controller would do, again with the inflexibility of once the design is done it can't be changed without re-soldering the board. Considering the cost of modern micro controllers price is not really an issue, and a micro controller will also have a lower part count.

If you want to learn or are more comfortable with analog circuits and their construction go with collins ideas Mind you from the circuit he listed about I think you still need a ramp generator, unless I'm missing something.

If you are comfortable with discrete digital circuits like the blocks you've seen from curtis or david go with their method of using discerete digital chips and timers to generate the results you want.

If you don't want to get too in depth into the analog/digital aspects and don't mind learning a programming language go with my MCU data.

As you can see there is more than one way to skin a cat =)
 
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