Hi y'all. My name is Mike and I'm brand new to this forum. This looks like a high quality, professional forum and I'm hoping that this will be a great source of information. Anyway, about myself, I'm a sophmore in college majoring in Electrical Engineering. I'm a good student, but I find myself lacking in knowing what is out there and what can be done with it; basically, the applications of things. This is what I'm hoping reading and posting questions here will help me with. I hope to broaden my knowledge of how to build circuits and apply them to useful applications. ANYWAY, to my question:
I am currently in possession of a piece of simple circuity that makes three seperate LEDs fade in and out in a long, but discernable pattern. However, there happens to be a drop of some black stuff that I'm not exactly sure what it is used for (maybe they didn't want me to know what the circuit was? lol) over the 'brain' of the circuit. The whole circuit is on a 1x1 inch square and the drop is only about 1/4 in diameter and is probably 5mm high. This absolutely amazes me because the pattern isn't just the LEDs fading in and out over time...they start off by fading in and out, but then change to just one LED fading in and out to two at the same time and more. I've been doing some searching on how to make LEDs fade in and out, and as I suspected I saw a lot of things using capacitors and 555 timers...but this circuity most definitely does NOT have a 555 timer or large capacitors (because the drop is so small) and for the life of me I can't figure out how it is done. The circuit runs off of 4.5 volts and the only other things I can tell about the circuit is that is has the 3 LEDs and 2 resistors - a 22 Ω and 150k Ω .
My question then is, quite simply, how? LOL. I would like to know because I want to build a circuit that is able to have 3 LEDs fade in and out at different intervals to get different mixes of the colors. I'm sure I could do it, but knowing that it can be done so simply and on so small a scale, this information would be very helpful. Thanks a lot (:D)
I am currently in possession of a piece of simple circuity that makes three seperate LEDs fade in and out in a long, but discernable pattern. However, there happens to be a drop of some black stuff that I'm not exactly sure what it is used for (maybe they didn't want me to know what the circuit was? lol) over the 'brain' of the circuit. The whole circuit is on a 1x1 inch square and the drop is only about 1/4 in diameter and is probably 5mm high. This absolutely amazes me because the pattern isn't just the LEDs fading in and out over time...they start off by fading in and out, but then change to just one LED fading in and out to two at the same time and more. I've been doing some searching on how to make LEDs fade in and out, and as I suspected I saw a lot of things using capacitors and 555 timers...but this circuity most definitely does NOT have a 555 timer or large capacitors (because the drop is so small) and for the life of me I can't figure out how it is done. The circuit runs off of 4.5 volts and the only other things I can tell about the circuit is that is has the 3 LEDs and 2 resistors - a 22 Ω and 150k Ω .
My question then is, quite simply, how? LOL. I would like to know because I want to build a circuit that is able to have 3 LEDs fade in and out at different intervals to get different mixes of the colors. I'm sure I could do it, but knowing that it can be done so simply and on so small a scale, this information would be very helpful. Thanks a lot (:D)