Daniel Kendell

Behold Blinkylights Two!

As of yet I still haven’t got much in the way of input for the arduino so it’s limited to just flashing sequences for the time being. Although I do have some potentiometers I can hook up, adjustable fade time would be nice.One thing that has bitten me though is how much I suck at maths.

I may want to consider getting a couple of those 16-Channel PWM chips I linked to previously. Then I’d be able to really get some shine on! But next step should be actually assembling some of those power-led driver circuits.

Haven’t posted in a while, just thought I’d pop my head out and wish the interweb a happy new orbit! (I like the word orbit, it doesn’t get said enough)

Not been up to much myself. Did nothing over xmas/new orbit, pretty low key.

I’ve got an Arduino and an range of different components on the way from various places. I got me 16x 1W White Luxeon LEDs for a tenner (horray ebay!) which was nice. Unfortunately they’re just sat in their packet at the moment, nothing to drive them with. If I could find that redundant USB lead that’s knocking around, I would’ve already blinded myself with them by now, but not yet.

For now I’ll start out with LEDs and Pulse Width Moduation to dim them. I’m very fond of LEDs, so any kind of LED-based lighting is just happy-go-luckly-magic-land-of-horray for me.

A couple of clickies relevant to my unfiltered ramble:

http://www.cpemma.co.uk/555pwm.html - Simple enough circuit for PWM using a 555 timer.

http://www.instructables.com/id/ECM4Q6NH9IEWOF32MJ/ - High power LED driver circuit for MCUs and the like.

I also came across this chip (Tremendous Geekery: http://focus.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/tlc5940.pdf) in a couple of Instructables and there appears to be an Arduino library for using it. So I may have to get me one (and spare) of those to play with.

When I’ve got something working I’ll post a vid. Everyone loves videos of blinkylights right?

Anyway, that’ll do for now - laters.