This project was a combination music box and a person's name in lights. This project was built in December of 2006. I say built as the schematic was drawn on paper, the circuit board designed with out experimentation. The circuit boards were designed on my computer, a transparency film was printed on an ink jet printer, and the boards were exposed with a light to positive sensitized boards. Then the boards were developed and etched in my workshop. After the holes were drilled the tin plating was applied.The name on the box is Francine, and the tune that plays is a short version of Laura's theme. The sound module was in my stock at the time and I don't remember where I purchased it from. Before I started the design I checked the time for the module to play and it was approximately 50 secondS.
The whole project works on the power of a PC1604, 9V battery. U1c and U1d are a rs flip-plop that is automatically reset with R2 & C1 so pin 10 of U1C is always high when the power is applied. U1B is reset generator the turns off the circuit by the timing of U2. U2 is a CD4060 with an oscillation frequency of 76 Hz. This frequency is divided by 16 and a frequency of 4.75Hz is the clock frequency of U3, the CD4017. When the push button is pressed U2 starts timing, Q1 is turned on a energizes the rest of the circuit. U3 is set up as a divide by 8 counter. It's outputs drive the U4 the LED driver, which in turn causes the LED's arranged in letters to illuminate is order. U3 only drives 7 letters so Q2 is a LED driver for the 6th letter. U5 and it's associated parts is a 5V regulator for the sound module. The display has 83 T1 size red LED's. The letter F arrangement is shown on the schematic. The LED's are arranged in series, the # in series depends on the arrangement of the letters. F has 3 in series groups in parallel. The letter F consumes approximately 27 mA's when it is one Each arrangement of LED's has a series resistor to limit the current of the string to approximately 10 mA. After about 53 seconds the output from pin 2 of the 4060 resets the rs flip flop, this turns of Q1 and the power to most of the circuitry. The front of the display board was painted the same color as the project enclosure, and the display board takes the place of the front panel of the enclosure.
This is one of the best projects that I ever did, as the pcb,s are some of best I ever done in my shop and it is one of the projects I was able to design and build with just the knowledge in my head.
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