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Case #73: Les Wears His Silicon On His Sleeve (UPDATED)

By Design News Staff -- Design News, January 29, 2007

Looking for cool way of wowing that special someone on Valentines Day/birthday/whatever? Build her a flashing heart made from LEDs driven by a programmable microcontroller. Les' gadget is simple to build and made from easily-obtainable parts. The unique thing about this design is the LEDs are in an X-Y matrix so each LED is addressable. This allows an unlimited combination of displayed patterns for the heart — not like some other designs out there! Source code and schematics are all available here and if you're not into hand wiring, even the PCB can be had for a small fee. Diamonds may be a girl's best friend but gadgets are forever.

For Les Grant's complete instructions to build your own Flashing Heart, click here.

Flashing Heart Parts List
Amt Part Description Allied Part #

1

9V Power Supply STA-9530A

928-9685

2

Ceramic Cap 27pF

881-5122

3

Ceramic Cap 100nF

507-0218

1

Crystal 12 Mhz

895-0687

1

Diode 1N4148

431-0614

5

PNP Transistor BC557

431-0475

1

Rectifier 1N4002

266-0002

30

Red LED T-1 3/4

679-9981

1

Regulator LM340T-5

288-0525

5

Resistor 2.2K .25W

832-0724

6

Resistor 120 ohms .25W

895-3139
     
Additional parts required: Atmel AT89C2051 MCU; Circuit board or perf board;
Eprom (optional) 24C16
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