All the photos are thumb-nailed, click on them for a larger image.
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Alphanumeric Blinkie Thing
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Rev A |
This is an alphanumeric blinkie thing. It displays a pre-defined message on the 8 character, 14 segment LED display. The display is on top, an old Intersil (the first time around) display driver chip is next down, then the AT90S8515 AVR microcontroller, then some analog poop and a crystal oscillator running at 1.8432 (?) MHz. I used the CodeVisionAVR C compiler. (standard version.) Someday I will add a thermometer chip to the thing so it will display the temperature too. I "upgraded" the Alphanumeric Blinkie thing to include a crystal controlled clock with battery backup scrounged from a dead Pentium motherboard and a thermometer chip that works on a single wire. Now the message scrolled across the eight character display is: ".......THE TEMPERATURE IS XX.X DEGREES CENTIGRADE --OR-- XX.X DEGREES FAHRENHEIT........THE TIME IS HH.MM.SS DAYOFWEEK, DAY MONTH YEAR......." This is probably the most functional blinkie thing yet! I also added a red blinking LED because, by definition, it needed one. |
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Rev B |
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32 Bit Red and Green Blinkie Thing (with Pulsating Blue LED)
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32 Bit Blinker |
Here's a shot of the 32-bit blinkie thing. It uses 2 output ports for the LED array that is multiplexed in a 2x16 arrangement of red and green LEDs. Two LM317 voltage regulators serve as high-side switches. A pulsating blue LED is driven by the PWM output of the AVR microcontroller. This blinkie thing is also controlled by an AT90S8515 AVR Microcontroller. This one is running at 6.144 MHz. The board also includes a built in 5V / 2A switching power supply. |
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8 Bit / 2400 Watt Power Blinkie Thing
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Power Blinker |
This is the Christmas light blinker. It has eight channels that can drive 300 watts of lights each for a total of 2400 watts. (This also happens to be the limit of the circuit it is plugged into.) Powered by a Rabbit Semiconductor Rabbit2000 Microcontroller. It has a built-in real-time clock and runs at 8 MHz. More details here. |
7 Bit Super-bright Miniature Surface Mount Blinkie Thing
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 Rev 1 |
This is a collaboration of mine and a co-worker's. It uses surface mount parts and super-bright LEDs. Many thanks and kudos go to Kendall for the inspiration, parts, and laying out and assembling the printed circuit boards. This blinkie thing is powered by an Atmel AT90S2313 AVR RISC microcontroller running at 4 MHz. It is designed to run on a ½ AA size battery (A544-6V) . When powered down, it draws less than ten nanoamperes! That is: 0.00000001 Amps. The code is written in CodeVisionAVR (standard version) There are currently twenty different patterns that can be selected by clicking the switch. Some are simple blinking patterns and others use pulse width modulation controlled fading. By varying the pulse width, the brightness of the LEDs can be adjusted. Using just the red, green and blue LEDs, the entire rainbow of colors can be achieved. The device will shut off automatically after one hour to conserve batteries. The AVR has 1024 words of program memory and I am using 989 words (Still room for more!) There is also 128 bytes of EEPROM memory, I am using 126 bytes. The SRAM also is 128 bytes in size and I apparently use all of it. There are two timers inside the AVR, one is used for the fading control and the other is for the auto-shutoff feature. Rev 2 has larger components ('cuz the little ones are too damn small for me), a two way paddle switch, integrated battery holder and circular LED array. I used a belt sander to flatten the tops of the LEDs, this 'de-focused' them and allows the colors to mix better. You can see where I got a little carried away and nipped the corner of the capacitor on the right. Rev 3 is even smaller than the original! It uses an off-board two-position rocker switch and surface mount components. This one will be powered by a NiCd rechargeable battery pack. |
 Rev 2 |
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 Rev 3 |
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Ultra-Mega-Bright |
Ultra Blinker
By Blinker Light
All Boxed Up |
This one uses the obsolete ATMEL AtMega163 microprocessor as the engine and three Luxeon Star LEDs for the lights. I got mine from TheLEDLight.com in Nevada. These devices are incredibly bright. You cannot look directly at them without it causing pain. This blinkie thing is designed to drive three LEDs with pulse width modulated (PWM) current. The LEDs: one green, one red and one blue draw 350mA peak. The PWM is a pseudorandom pattern. The PWM varies the brightness of the RGB LEDs in such a way that when projected onto a white surface, the rainbow in a slowly fading/changing color patterns is seen. The top photo shows the circuit board which proved to be a little insufficient in the heat dissipation category. The photo captioned "By Blinker Light" was taken just with the light generated by the blinker itself. Notice the strange color rendition, the LEDs from left to right should be blue, red then green. In the photo, they look aqua, orange and cyan. The bottom photo shows the power blinker all boxed up. The Luxeons are mounted on an aluminum heatsink. |
Sunday September 27, 2009 01:27:15 PM -0500
