Continue to Site

Welcome to our site!

Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

  • Welcome to our site! Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

New to This

Status
Not open for further replies.

giant_kyle

New Member
Hey guys, just started tinkering about a week ago. I build a "flip flop" LED board yesterday using **broken link removed** and it all lights up, and flip flops, but the lights do not change color at an even pace. The pattern is as follows : red for a second, then a flash of blue, repeat. I've been messing w/ resistors to the LEDs, and it's made slight differences, but nothing big. should i change the resistors to the capacitors?
 
The base resistors and the capacitors are mainly responsible for the frequency, if it's not pretty even it may be because you've got a wrong value?, or one of the capacitors the wrong way round?
 
the caps are right. what do you mean i might "have a wrong value"? it's basically like the red is always on and the blue is always off. but then it flickers to blue, with the red never fully going out...

I hate being new at stuff, b/c i dont know how to exactly explain it. haha oh well. thanks, keep the ideas coming. What else can i do that would be fun with LEDs and radioshack parts?
 
giant_kyle said:
the caps are right. what do you mean i might "have a wrong value"?

Make sure that the resistors are of the correct value (470:eek:hm: should be yellow-violet-brown and 10k:eek:hm: should be brown - black - orange) or, better yet, measure them with a DMM.

It is easy to read the wrong color as some reds and oranges are very similar.

If, for example, you used 1k:eek:hm: instead of one of the 10k:eek:hm:, then one of the leds will be on for one tenth of the desired time.

giant_kyle said:
it's basically like the red is always on and the blue is always off. but then it flickers to blue, with the red never fully going out...

I hate being new at stuff, b/c i dont know how to exactly explain it. haha oh well. thanks, keep the ideas coming. What else can i do that would be fun with LEDs and radioshack parts?

The original circuit uses a red led an a green one, and you say you used a blue led. Different color leds have different voltage drops, so test the circuit first with two red leds or one red ans one green as in the original circuit.
 
What happens if you replace the blue LED with a red one? Does it even out? The blue should drain the cap a good deal faster than the red one, assuming it's not a super-bright red LED.


Torben
 
Torben said:
The blue should drain the cap a good deal faster than the red one, assuming it's not a super-bright red LED.


Torben
Come again? How do you figure?
 
Roff said:
Come again? How do you figure?

I failed to make sure my brain was in gear before engaging my keyboard. The different LED value would just affect the brightness, not the flash time, unless I'm still screwing it up.


Torben
 
all works well guys. thanks. now i want to make something that will detect when i'm getting a phonecall on my cingular phone, and blink a LED. any ideas??
 
giant_kyle said:
all works well guys. thanks. now i want to make something that will detect when i'm getting a phonecall on my cingular phone, and blink a LED. any ideas??
So what was the problem?
 
the legend i was using to "decode" my resistors was wrong, so i swapped out all 4, and BOOM perfection. any ideas about the phone call detector? that'd be neat in my jetta.

BTW, i made these to mimic police lights for my RC truck. These are going to work perfectly!!! thanks again, now onto the cell phone call detector
 
giant_kyle said:
the legend i was using to "decode" my resistors was wrong, so i swapped out all 4, and BOOM perfection. any ideas about the phone call detector? that'd be neat in my jetta.

BTW, i made these to mimic police lights for my RC truck. These are going to work perfectly!!! thanks again, now onto the cell phone call detector
Maybe you could provide more info about the ring indicator. My cell phone makes an audible sound.:D
 
haha, i found one here so i just need to run to RS and buy up some parts. I usually have my music up so i dont hear my phone. so a visual LED, perhaps mounted on my GPS would def get my attention.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest threads

New Articles From Microcontroller Tips

Back
Top