Retrobrad Presents! An Electronic LED Tea Light Candle Hack.

[Fuzzball]

So the metal canister is your resistor?

[00retrobrad00]

@Fuzzball Very good question! There is no added resistor with this circuit, it actually uses the internal resistance of the battery. The metal housing is just a short circuit

[00retrobrad00]

@brokenbylaw2 Changing the resistor values will only change the current going through the LED's so this will change the brightness of the LED's

[00retrobrad00]

@brokenbylaw2 A microcontroller would be the easiest method although you can still make it change / cycle through the different colours just by using a 555 timer chip and a 74193 counter chip. This would just make it change from black, red, green, orange, blue, magenta, cyan and white and then repeat.

[00retrobrad00]

@brokenbylaw2 Changing the resistors will only vary the current going through the LED and therefor will change the brightness of each colour.

[00retrobrad00]

@brokenbylaw2 A microcontroller would certainly be the easiest method, especially if you wanted to actually fade in and out of colours. if you wanted to just make it change colours (without fading) then you can easily do it with a 555 timer and a 74193 counter. all up the circuit could be made for a couple of bucks.

[00retrobrad00]

@brokenbylaw2 a 9 volt battery will be perfect. make sure you use at least a 150 ohm resistor for each of the three legs. You will find as you connect up each leg, you will get a different colour. You can also mix colours bu turning on multiple at a time.

[00retrobrad00]

@brokenbylaw2 Hi, happy to help. It sounds like the leds that you have would have four legs. One leg is your common anode or cathode. The other three are your red green blue cathodes / anodes. To experiment, connect the longest leg to ground and then connect a resistor to each of the other three legs. Then connect +5 volts to them one at a time they should light up the three different colours. If it doesnt work then reverse all the connections. Let me know how you go.

[sdvid]

Ah man... Now your video's are going to make mine look like childs play! Very nice.

By the way,

Super cool idea for the LED's. But then again... You never cease to impress! Great job.

[sdvid]

Oh, by the way... What editing software are you using?  I assume it was done on your Mac?

[00retrobrad00]

@sdvid I have just been using imovie which just came standard on the mac. It works quite well = )

[00retrobrad00]

@sdvid No way! Your videos are cool = ) Actually I just saw that you uploaded one which I am going to check out now!

[Twistx77]

Awesome Idea!

[00retrobrad00]

@Twistx77 Thanks man, I've got a whole heap of idea's that I want to make videos of. Give me enough time and I'll upload them all = )

[Twistx77]

@00retrobrad00 Cool, I hope to see them soon! Thanks for sharing!

[McBlasian]

Epic video Brad!!

[00retrobrad00]

@McBlasian Thanks man!