Hi all…I’m new here and new in electronics as well. I have a school project for my grandson that is doing my head in. I am trying to build a circuit with an LED light which fades in and out for a model light house.
I have searched on youtube and although there are plenty of examples, I can’t get them to work.
Have a breadboard, soldering iron and the like.
Could some good soul please enlighten me as to what capacitors/resistors/transistors/555 timers etc I need?
All the circuit has to do is for example take 1.5 to 2 sec to light the LED and then fade at the same rate…
Sounds like a great project underway! Personally, I would use a small 8-bit micro and a couple of lines of code. But you’ll need some extra bits to get going (programmer, coding skills, etc). So this might be out of the game.
Perhaps you’re more into the analogue side of things. This was the best guide I could find with some light research:
Please do share how you get on, it’d be great to see a photo of the prototype circuit on the breadboard!
Hi Graham and thanks for the reply. Went to Jaycar and got all the bits as per the link you sent!. I connected everything on the breadboard and this time the LED lights up but doesn’t fade in and out. Checked and rechecked the layout, but still no joy. I know some NPNs have different pin layouts so looked for the specific one which is a 2222 and tried different ways, but still no go… I’m still OK and haven’t bashed anything YET…haha… Any ideas?
I know you can buy these circuits, but it’s more fun making your own.
I am a Unix engineer and do use shell scripts frequently to automate server routines, so I could also look at programming…
Thank you and all the best
gb
Hi Graham and thanks again for the reply… Eventually managed to get it working. Turned out I had a dodgy LED. Will post some pics once I have finished the lighthouse…
Thanks again for the help
gb
