Christmas lights

Flashing LED chrismas lights, each white LED is connected to the circuit described here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vd8zLf5hjI
It's a really simple relaxation oscillator, using only a resistor, a capacitor and a transistor in addition to the LED. The transistor is connected backwards - the emmitter goes to the capacitor and the collector to the anode of the LED. The transistor base is not used.
The capacitor is charged through the resistor (39K resistor, 100µ cap), when the transistor reaches reverse breakdown voltage (7-8 volts I think) it will conduct and dump the stored voltage through the LED.
I wanted to create a "glittering" effect, and with these simple independent oscillators I feel I found both the best and the simplest solution. It also uses very little power - less than 4 mA at 16 volts for the nine lights.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• flashing
• led
• christmas
• lights
• esaki
• tunnel
• effect
• transistor
• relaxation
• oscillator
• simple