Lighting

Several years ago these flashers were introduced in the automotive industry as part of the third brake light and contained strobe lights (and strobing continuously for the duration of pressing the break pedal) but got abandoned almost immediately sometime later because of the 'strobe' effect it has on some people. However, there is a major difference between this pulser and the ones from the automotive industry and others. This pulser gives 3 to 8 flashes, at somewhat reduced intensity, and then goes solid. They do not have the 'strobe' effect in any way or form, in my opinion. I have a real concern when driving my motorcycle, to be seen early enough from behind when 'low flying' vehicles are on approach. This circuit seems to do an excellent job!

This circuit was designed on request to drive a Light-cluster formed by several LEDs that can be mounted in the vehicle as a tail and brake light. When SW1 is on, the cluster will illuminate at medium brightness. When brakes are operated, SW2 will be closed and the cluster will shine at maximum brightness.

This circuit has been designed to provide a clearly visible light, formed by 13 high efficiency flashing LEDs arranged in a pseudo-rotating order. Due to low voltage, low drain battery operation and small size, the device is suitable for mounting on bicycles as a back light, or to put on by jogger/walkers.

Driving the highway with your high-beam headlights can really increase your visibility, but can he a blinding hazard for other drivers. This simple circuit can be wired into your headlight switch to provide automatic switching between high and low beam headlights when there is oncoming traffic. It does this by sensing the lights of that traffic. In this way, you can drive safely with your high-beams on without blinding other drivers.

This is one of several ways to make a flashing 3rd brake light assembly. I designed this to be easy to locate all the needed components and reasonably in expensive to build. If you have any electronic experience, then the schematic is all you will need to make your light assembly. For the rest of the world, I will walk you through the details so you will understand how this device works and how it goes together. It would be much simpler to just get a red marker light and a 552 flasher and use this as your 3rd brake light. But that wouldn't be fun.

What's so special about this circuit? Well, the first third-brake light I installed I had to pull a wire from the Third Brake Light all the way underneath the carpet to the brake-pedal-switch and I thought it would be easier to pluck the signal of both brakelights via the trunk. Bench-test your circuit first and apply power to the circuit, with the brakelight connected, for at least a couple of minutes. If the two SCR's are getting hot (depending on the type of bulb(s) in your 3rd brake light), mount coolribs on them. I used the NTE5483 which is a 8A, 200Vrm type.

This device is a simple timer, allowing to keep on the headlights of your vehicle for about 1min. and 30sec., e.g. when accessing some dark place, without the necessity of coming back to switch-off the lights.

It's 5:00pm and you've just finished a long day at the office. You climb into your car, turn the ignition switch on, and nothing happens. That's when you suddenly realize the problem; you left your headlights on this morning. Unfortunately, the realization has come about eight hours too late and now your battery is dead. The preceding incident has probably happened to your at least once; in my case it has happened more often than I care to remember. Or at least it used to. Now, I have installed the simple circuit shown in Fig. 1 in my car. Of course, the circuit is a headlight alarm. It has saved me from embarrassment and aggravation on several occasions.

This circuit must be connected to a 5 volt DC source. See my RR page for several 5 volt supplies. Note the flashing LED is optional, but looks s-o-o-o-o good on the top of a locomotive.

As a keen cyclist I am always looking for ways to be seen at night. I wanted something that was a novelty and would catch the motorists eye. So looking around at my fellow cyclists rear lights, I came up with the idea of 'NITE-RIDER'. NINE extra bright LED's running from left to right and right to left continuously. It could be constructed with red LEDs for use on the rear of the bike or white LED's for an extra eye catcher on the front of the bike.

An ECU must have a way to monitor battery voltage. Here is a simple op-amp based circuit which will illuminate the LED when the battery voltage drops to a certain level. The turn-on point is set with R2. You must be able to vary Vcc (usually with a good power supply) to set the circuit.

All of my turbine starts before the research on the ECU involved a very successful spark ignition. I thought (only briefly) of trying to add spark ignition to the ECU, but the mixture of delicate logic circuitry and perhaps 30,000V simply don't mix.

This is basically a flasher circuit modified to turn on and off a bulb instead of a LED. It uses a 555 timer IC working as an astable multivibrator. The flashing rate can be varied from very fast to a maximum of once in 1.5 sec by varying the preset VR1.

This unique circuit makes your dome light look cool. Usually when the car door is closed, the dome light just goes OFF. With this circuit, you can have our dome light fade slowly in brightness and finally go OFF. This slow dimming of the light gives a very good feeling at night. It looks very romantic!

This circuit was requested from an email. It will allow your car headlights to flash on and off at the same time or it will cause them to flash alternately. The circuit is based on the 555 timer. It is used in the astable mode. The 555 timer output will go high for an adjustable period of time and then turn off. It will then repeat the procedure.

This is a 2 LED flashing circuit. It is based on an analog flip flop circuit. This particular circuit was calculated to use blue or white 3V LED with a 12V power supply. If you are using red green or yellow LED, replace the 1K resistors for a 2.2K. This circuit will flash the led at a 1 sec interval in alternance. For faster or slower flashing speed, you can increase or decrease the 100K resistors.