Propeller Clock

[MrMikey83]

OK. I was shopping for LED's yesterday and came accross some RGB LED's that cost about the same as the normal one color LED's I was going to buy.
They have 4 pins and are 5mm wide. They have a millicandella rating of 2000 i believe.

I plan on having each LED able to change to any color. The two displays and the inner clock hands will be tied together so that they are all the same color red green blue and anything in between. The other 'border' LED's will be freely changeable.

I tried building the circuit for the LED's in Circuitmaker and it wouldn't work right. The transistors are meant to work in Analog mode instead of digital, but when I try and run analog mode I can't flip the switches to test the circuit.
Does anyone have a better circuit program?

I'll try and post a schematic of my LED setup....the way it is now, it uses all the rest of my microcontroller outputs (29)
~Mike

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

I tried building the circuit for the LED's in Circuitmaker and it wouldn't work right. The transistors are meant to work in Analog mode instead of digital, but when I try and run analog mode I can't flip the switches to test the circuit.

I don't quite understand what you mean by this?. If you're running the transistors in an analogue mode you don't have switches feeding them, you have an analogue signal. Perhaps you better post your circuit?.

Assuming you're trying to provide variable brightness for the LED's?, you should probably be looking at PWM rather than crude analogue methods, where you are probably going to need decent sized transistors and heatsinks.

 

[MrMikey83]

Heres the Circuitmaker file.
Hope you are able to take a look. The original schematic (with 1 color LED) was just Ground to 82Ohm resister, to NPN transistor, to LED, to 5V with the base of transistor connected to the output pin.

Please let me know whats wrong with it and if its me or the program thats not working right.

Note: each of the logic switches would be an output from the ATMEGA32.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

All I get from the file is a number of components with no connections between them?. If it a specific CircuitMaker file, because I don't have CircuitMaker.

 

[MrMikey83]

Strange. I saved it the exact same way again and the new one has the traces.
~Mike

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Heres the Circuitmaker file.
Hope you are able to take a look. The original schematic (with 1 color LED) was just Ground to 82Ohm resister, to NPN transistor, to LED, to 5V with the base of transistor connected to the output pin.

Please let me know whats wrong with it and if its me or the program thats not working right.

Note: each of the logic switches would be an output from the ATMEGA32.

The entire thing looks rather strange, for a start the top transistors can't be switched hard on because the base can't go above 5V (fed from the uP pin), giving 4.3V output to the LED's - wasting almost 60% of the power from the supply heating the transistors up.

The bottom transistor have a resistor in the emitter?, which seems a rather obscure place to put one? - connect the emitter directly to ground, and fit the resistor in the collector lead. Make sure you have resistors feeding the bases of the transistors from your uP.

The entire circuit is a digital one, there's no analogue parts at all, how were you hoping to get an analogue signal into it?.

 

[MrMikey83]

I'm not hoping for analog signal. When I tried to test it in circuitmaker the first time, it told me that it may not function properly because a part was in analog mode or something.
I'll make the adjustment you mentioned and try it again.
~Mike

 

[MrMikey83]

I test this circuit out of single LED's since I dont have the RGB's in yet.
I moved the resister to the anode of the LED. I guess it doesn't really matter if the RGB's are common anode or common cathode because I can just swithc everything around backwards from where it is now.

The good thing is...it worked. Now I just have to wait another week or two for the RGB's to get here from Europe. lol
~Mike

 

[williB]

I saw this the other day at RADIO Shack..
it is called info globe
**broken link removed**
it scrolls up & down , and sideways.. very cool. 8)
EDIT: oh it spins real fast.., but it must have some sort of brushes inside b/C the only thing that is spinning is the LED's..

 

[MrMikey83]

Cool, I had seen spictures but I figured a display on the base reflected off the curved dome somehow. Didn't realise it was a spinning display.


Well, untill my LED's get here (shipped out a couple days ago), I have been working on researching the keyboard remote input. I have taken apart and old IBM keyboard and connected the right pins to an ATMEGA8. I found an Atmel datasheet that discusses how to connect a keyboard to a 8515.
I am having trouble with it though. Several errors have popped up and have to do with the many #include commands and some of the variables seem to be undefined. I dont think I missed any of the code (retyped on different computer). Perhaps I will go back and copy paste and see if it works then.
~Mike

 

[MrMikey83]

OK! I finally got to this one.
I have 29 tri color LED's along the arm. I dont have a motor situated yet. I have an old hard drive motor but need to get it running.
Other than that, everything works well. I did not map out and etch a board for it. The mess or wiring would probably require multi layer board and I didn't want to spent close to $100 for the circuit board.
The outer LED (blue), 2nd outer LED (red), and upper text section (green) can change colors individually. The lower text section (red) changes the same color as the inner LED's (red) but the inner LED's can be turned off on their own. The two middle (blue) LED's will both be the same color.

There is an IR sensor on the back at the bottom and a remote sensor just below the Atmega32 controller.

~Mike

**broken link removed**

 

[MrMikey83]

Well, looks like my last picture didn't stay where I left it.

Anyway, here is the arm mounted to an old fan. Power is not connected but I turned it on and left it for several seconds and it didn't fly apart. I only tried it on the Low setting and dont think I want to try going to Medium or High. lol
I dont remember why I put the programming connector on the back of the board but now it needs to be moved to the front so I can hook it up, sigh...
I may still try the rotating transformer, mounting one side on the threded ring and the other side on the spinning shaft. If that fails, I'll go to the slipring and a capacitor to combat the jumping connection.

**broken link removed**
**broken link removed**

 

[bonxer]

How are you getting power to the spinning unit?

 

[MrMikey83]

Don't have it hooked up yet, but will try rotating transformer first, then if that doesn't work, I'll use sliprings to transfer the power.
~Mike