DRIVING MANY LEDS CIRCUIT

The 555 is capable of sinking and sourcing up to 200mA, but it gets very hot when doing this on a 12v supply. The following circuit shows the maximum number of white LEDs that can be realistically driven from a 555 and we have limited the total current to about 130mA as each LED is designed to pass about 17mA to 22mA maximum. A white LED drops a characteristic 3.2v to 3.6v and this means only 3 LEDs can be placed in series.

BI-POLAR LED DRIVER CIRCUIT

 

Some 2-leaded LEDs produce red and green. These are called Bi-polar LEDs. This circuit alternately flashes a red/green bi-polar LED:

LM3909 LED Flasher

The LM3909 is an integrated circuit (IC) which will flash a light-emitting diode (LED). Using only two extra components and a battery, the circuit is cheap and has a very low current drain from a 1.5 V cell. The circuit can be used as a novelty flasher, an indicator for a dummy alarm bell box, or it could be attached to a torch so that it could be found easily in the dark! The simple circuit is shown in Figure

LED FLASHER WITH ONE TRANSISTOR!

This is a novel flasher circuit using a single driver transistor that takes its flash-rate from

a flashing LED. The flasher in the photo is 3mm.  An ordinary LED will not work. The flash rate cannot be altered by the brightness of the high-bright white LED can be adjusted by altering the 1k resistor across the 100u electrolytic to 4k7 or 10k. The 1k resistor discharges the 100u so that when the transistor turns on, the charging current into the 100u illuminates the white LED. If a 10k discharge resistor is used, the 100u is not fully discharged and the LED does not flash as bright. All the parts in the photo are in the same places as in the circuit diagram to make it easy to see how the parts are connected.