# The LED Flasher revisited.



## T-Man (May 16, 2008)

I have some down time on the arc board,no parts. I wanted to test my 555 chips to see if they work. So I made up a flasher to test them. I had trouble all week until I looked at the breadboard. You know that funny thing with the holes. Well since you may not be familiar with it I had to take it apart since some clips fell out so here are some pictures.


I had a bulge in the back and evidently some connectors dropped out. Without them I had no contact or blink.









The white stuff is foam tape If you notice one slot is empty









This is from the slot a five pin connector. 









This is my third thread on the subject. I will do a step by step on how to build it.But first I will show the diagram and a video of the flasher,them I will make one. It is the simplest project I do.All parts are handy at Radio Shack. It is fun to get it working. I have seen some books out which are inexpensive perhaps they may contain more ideas.


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## T-Man (May 16, 2008)

What is sad, is that I drew this from memory.

The 555 timer is the center, two LEDS, four resistors,one capacitor and 9 volts do it all.
I got to practice with windows paint. Three and four should be four and five , my mistake.












At the end of this video I changed the 10uf capacitor to 22uf . I have a bag of assorted ones so I thought I would try it. It slowed down by almost half. I don't know the exact rate.


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## tjcruiser (Jan 10, 2010)

Are you saying that the breadboard was MADE without one of its connector pins? Dohh! That must have drove you nuts trying to debug the circuit! Who would have ever thought that a missing board pin would be the problem??? Nice find, T-Man ... sorry you had to go through that one!

TJ


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## T-Man (May 16, 2008)

They are not glued in or anything , the tape holds them but the pins just fell away enough from the top. I wondewred why I had a bulge on the bottom. The board is alright now.


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## T-Man (May 16, 2008)

*Making the Flasher*

This time I started two flashers on one board. I placed the sockets down with the capacitors and power terminals.

Since this capacitor was smaller and closer I used the long leads to swing past pin 1 and on to the neg terminal board. The other lead passed pin 2 and connected to pin 6. On the right I used copper wire to make those connections.










On the flip side the copper is on the left.


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## T-Man (May 16, 2008)

*pin 4 to 8*

Next I connected pin 4 to pin 8 with a wire then stretched it on to the positive terminal.












Pin 4 is the lower circle. Pin 8 in the middle.The positive terminal is on top.


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## T-Man (May 16, 2008)

*Adding the two resistors.*

Moving right along, I added the 100k and 10 k resistors. The 100k is on the left stretching down from pin 6. The 10k stretches down from pin 8. A wire from pin 7 stretches down and ties them together.


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## T-Man (May 16, 2008)

*Making the 555 test board*

To complete this board I added two 390 ohm resistors from pin 3 to the LEDs and then connected the LEDs to the positive and negative side.They alternate so one LED faces pin 3 with a negative side( the other goes to positive pin 8). The other LED face pin 3 with a positive side ( the other side goes to negative pin 1). The long lead is always positive on an LED.

I used the 390 ohm resistors to use them up. 330 would work and are more common to find. The yellow LED s are just the average package lot from Radio Shack.





















I had to troubleshoot my board. The solder became a mess so I added another wire from 2 to 6. I found out my 4 to 8 pin wire had a bad solder.I got it to work. The other side is still on going.


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## T-Man (May 16, 2008)

*Beacon Board*

Instead of the 41 flashes per minutes with the 10uf capacitor, I used the 22uf capacitor. The 10uf has a 50 volt rating and the 22uf has a 100 volt. This is just the upper rating and both work fine with this project. The lowest rating you can use is 16 volts bu these are harder to find locally.

Now the 22 uf slows the flash even more to water tower beacon pace. On this second board I am adding two more terminal blocks,with these I will add to more LEDs set up to alternate. The beauty of this is that I can wire two different towers with this board.

Wiring is simple on the blocks 1 is neg pin 1, 2,3 are the pin 3 connection, 4 is positive, pin 8. If i add an LED using 9 volts I will add a 330 ohm resistor. If I power this board with 12 volts, then I go with 470 ohms.











This board was less troublesome, I looked at it today and solder from number 6 pin, touched number 5. After some quick dremel work it tested fine. My soldering skills are not that endearing, so it just shows you that it can be done if you have a dremel cutting wheel backing you up. Good pinpoint soldering does make everything easier, I have view my work under a magnifier just to make sure. I also grounded out two sided to the iron tip, this helped along with using a fine wire.


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## T-Man (May 16, 2008)

*Parts*

To do this I wanted to use local parts , nothing fancy. It is meant to be a starter project.

Radio Shack numbers

555 timer 276-1723 
8 pin socket package of 2 276-1995
project board
22 gage black solid wire (used as jumpers)
terminal blocks package of 4 276-1388
9 volt battery snap connector package of 5 270-0325
9 volt battery
10k,100k,330 ohm resistors at 1/2 watt rating, come in a package of 5 271-1126,1131,1113
10uf capacitor 35 volt rating 272-1025 
LED an assorted package of 5mm and 3 mm, red, yellow, green 276-1622
or bought individually
spdt mini slide switch ( on/off) 275-0409

Tools
solder ( most expensive)
solder iron
wire strippers
dremel cutting wheel ( unless you are good)
magnifier (if you eyes are as good as mine)

Link: I would like to give credit to the Kelly Park School Electronics Club
I found this site years ago and learned from it.


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## T-Man (May 16, 2008)

*The movie*







This board differs from the test board. It has a 22uf capacitor and extra terminals to hook up LEDs from a layout. The power source can be 12 or 9 volts. I have bought an assorted package of capacitors. That is how I got the 22uf. I should testy them out for changes, but for now I am happy with the results. 

So far the T-man course has started with wiring a LED,making it flash,have you train automatically reverse, and upcoming arc welding light show, to be followed by the imitation camp fire.


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