YALBlinkie

Yet Another LED Blinkie project

I wanted to play with a simple RGB LED, to see how colors would mix, change and stuff. So I build my own LED and "controller". It fades in and out a set of 9 LEDs (3 RGB LEDs) into random values. See the video here:

It's just a nice little decorational thingie I made to amuse myself. I plan on installing it either into some plant pot - to make the plant look really interesting. Or, since my "LEDs" are waterproof, I might even put it into... gaaah, I'll think about it later. Send me tips 😉 Feel free to make the device, I ask just one thing: make a photo, and send it to me using my email. I'll post it here and include your name and a link to your webpage.

 

The LED

Unfortunately, my local supplier didn't have any real RGB LEDs on him at the time, so I made some myself - from three LEDs each - Red, Green and Blue. It's more of the Poor mans RGB LED. I know, it looks crappy - but it works great!

It's actually only a piece of universal PCB with 3 LEDs. Nothing more. Oh, and it's covered in that glue that's meltable by heat - it's really great, because after the glue cools down it's white - and it mixes the colors from the LEDs in an equal way. It's not perfect, but I did it without too many problems. See the pics.

l2 l1

Anyway, although the LEDs now looks like a white piece of shit, it is waterproof. 🙂 It would be possible to use any normal RGB LED - as far as your local supplier has them 😉 The PCBs are connected to the controller using a one meter long 4wire cable.

The Controller

The controller is actually just an ATTiny2313, running of it's internal RC oscillator at 8MHz, soldered onto an universal board with a few resistors and wires. There are no control items - no buttons, no nothing. It just does what it does - makes the effect of LEDs randomly fading in and out using 9 channels of PWM. Unfortunately, the processor has only a few hardware PWM channels, so I had to do the PWM generation by software.

Schematic:

schematic

The software is in C, compiled using the AVR-GCC compiler and programmed into the chip using Atmels Dragon. In the ZIP package, which you can download on the bottom of this page, there's also a precompiled .hex file, of which I know that it works. There's also a complete project folder for AVRStudio4.

The fuse parameters for the processor are: 8MHz internal RC oscillator (factory settings). And you need to disable the CKDIV8 fuse - it would divide the 8MHz into 1MHz system clock. Everything else should be left as it is. The program does not use any special functions of the processor that would require fuse modifications. To download the stuff, click on the link below:

The LEDs are connected to the controller using a 1 meter long multiwire cable. Here's a photo of the controller board.

Other known users

A certain Mr. Tobs used parts of the code to make his wonderful gift for his girlfriend work! Great job by the way - far better mechanical implementation than me 🙂 Enjoy the photos - courtesy of Mr. Tobs:

Digital image

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