Geeky LED fun

[IronGiant]

Seeing as decent, multi-coloured and ultrabright LEDs are becoming more common, versatile and far cheaper I've discovered just how much fun it is to mess around with them in circuits.

For example, just bought some of these:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/50x-5mm-RGB-LED-S ... 0039250372

which have an in-built chip and resistor which means that you just connect up the LED to some power and you have an LED that automatically changes colour with very little effort involved and no other circuitry required.

Here's a wee movie of some wired up (scroll down to see it):

http://www.dansdata.com/gz065.htm

I also built one of these the other day using some very small SMD green LEDs:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Jar-of-Fireflies/

Which is kinda nice but a right fiddle to assemble.

Any other LED geeks here?

[Ghostbiscuit]

I'd love to be an LED geek but lack any of the know how. However these new-fangled LEDs look like the sort of thing to help a n00b start off gently...

[IronGiant]

I don't know much about them either but the new self contained LEDs are a nice cheap intro to them. All part of adding to the fun.

Last night I slapped a CR2032 button cell into a cheap holder, soldered one of the slow flashing self contained LEDs onto it and it's been running ever since. It's surprisingly bright too, and that's just running at 3.3 volts.

[stealthbanana]

Oooooh, now thats what I need to stick down the middle of a tube of old AOL and cd coasters I have.

A word of warning, one night, while drunk and case modding was new and exciting, I decided to put one of the then new fangled blue LEDs onto the front of my PC case. Picked up a couple of power cables from inside, attached the LED, being very careful to get polarity correct, turned on and it was suddenly very bright, lasted about 3 seconds, started to melt the case about it. Morale of the story, 12V is not 5V, do not play about when drunk.

[IronGiant]

Oops!

BTW, the place that I bought my LEDs from (as referenced in my first post) is bloody excellent - I ordered my RGB LEDs from them last Thursday and received them on Monday. Considering they're based in China and postage to the UK was only two quid that was most surprising (and no, this ain't a sales pitch).

[planetoftheclams]

I was going to post to ask "is the supplier reputable?"

This is my kinda thread..!

[IronGiant]

I've just bought one of these LED controller kits from a guy in the UK:

http://www.emanator.demon.co.uk/bigclive/rgbcont.htm

He's another supplier who I'd highly recommend - fast and very helpful when emailing him. I'll put it together in the next few days and see how it goes.

BTW, here's some LED basics in case anyone isn't sure how LEDs should be connected up to power:

http://www.kpsec.freeuk.com/components/led.htm

and here's an interesting and useful LED blog:

http://todbot.com/blog/2007/03/25/smart-led-prototypes/

[Kronos]

Ooh very nice, and always good to know of someones good experience with overseas ebay sellers cheers

When I was a kid I hard wired 12 LEDs to the 8 I/O lines on the Commodore 64 user port in the shape of the flux capacitor, and wrote a little basic program to mimick the animation of it from the film. Yes LEDs are fun indeed mmmmm *looks at stacks of spare C64s with no PSU*

[Kelloggs]

Hmm... I wonder would my (sadly, only partially-working) battery-powered Wii Sensor Bar count as geeky LED fun?

Probably only if I can get it working properly.

[IronGiant]

Yeah, course it does.

[Stone]

<- LED geek

Stone

[dom]

Coincidentally, I was just thinking earlier today about replacing the dead neon in the lightbar of my Octane with a white LED...

Dom

[kalmar]

For example, just bought some of these:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/50x-5mm-RGB-LED-S ... 0039250372

which have an in-built chip and resistor which means that you just connect up the LED to some power and you have an LED that automatically changes colour with very little effort involved and no other circuitry required.

Hah
In 3rd year at high school, I built a fairly elaborate circuit to do this involving a pair of comparators and a few 1000uF capacitors. It fitted in my pencil case and ran off a 9v battery.

[Firefox]

Here's a wee movie of some wired up (scroll down to see it):

http://www.dansdata.com/gz065.htm

Very nice! Somehow it reminded me of being on Xen in Half-Life.

[franki]

the teacher in me is thinking that this sort of knowledge would make for an excellent Young Enterprise venture, making accessories.

How do those mobile phone decorations work that react when the phone rings?