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555 Oscillator and Running Lights - doc00020

This is a demo of the standard LED running lights that many know of, the only thing different is that you can try out the project on this page by a javascript simulation i made.



The 555 clocks 4017 counter and it counts and Ten LEDs indicate the counts. This can be used as a Sequential timer or for generating staircase waveform. 

Press the Red button below to turn on the circuit press it again to turn off, i have put a new battery and did the wiring for you. The Red LED will flash according to the state of the 555 output at pin 3. The decade counter-divider CD4017 has 10 outputs, for every low to high transition, rising edge, the counter advances one LED. After going one full circle the the first LED lights again and it goes on.....

You can vary the value of  R2 using the controls below to make LEDs run fast or slow. The frequency of oscillation of astable 555 is given as    f = 1.44 / ((R4 + 2 * (R2 + R3)) * C3).



The 10 outputs have 10 green LEDs.  The current thru the LED is limited by R1, the current can be calculated like this (9V - 1.6V) / 1K = 7.4mA  this is within 20mA which is the danger limit of the CMOS output. You want it to be bright use transistors for every output.

The cap C1 is a filter and C2 is to prevent noise at pin 5 influencing the output as it is a control voltage point.



You can cascade or chain many more counters with the CO or carry out pin 12 of 4017. The pin 15 reset is kept at low for counting, on high it will reset the counter but is not used in this circuit.



(i created some confusion with this sentence and i got muddled up myself when answering some email from youngsters, as these were things i did when i was a kid. Cascade means in mathematical sense not in the "Bike Lights" sense. So when you cascade - the first set of ten is "Units", the next stage is "Tens" the next is "Hundreds" ... It becomes a Non-7-Segment Led number display. The "Bike Lights" of greater than 10 LEDs can be done with shift registers...)

555 Oscillator and Decade Counter xml use iframe part for your Webpage or Blog.

Screenshot

555 Running Lights Tutor

the above circuit in pdf format   del00017.pdf
the cadsoft eagle source of the circuit   del00017.zip

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30th Aug 2020




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