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

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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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