We’re barely past Halloween and people are already working on their next LED based holiday decorations. For Hanukkah, Gizmodo pointed out the PCB menorah pictured above. It uses a set of DIP switches to control which LEDs are lit. A couple years ago, Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories put together a tutorial for building a more minimal LED menorah. Each of the nine LEDs are soldered directly to the legs of an ATtiny2313 microcontroller. Every time you power up the device an additional LED is lit. [Ori] liked the project and decided to take a slightly different approach. He used an LM3914 DIP18 LED bar driver. A potentiometer controls how many of the LEDs are illuminated.
LED Menorahs
Hmmm… I know that some orthodox sects aren’t allowed to push buttons or flip switches on the Shabbos…
What this *really* needs is a timer to light one more LED every day.
Unfortunately, that is not a kosher chanukia (A menorah has 7 candles, the special type for chanukah has 9). A kosher chanukia is required to have the 8 candles for the days at the same height. The 9th candle, used for lighting the others, must be higher or lower.
tonight im going to write some AVR code for an attiny13 to run 9 LEDs with a per-day timer (no, im not going to include a time setting function. turn the damn thing on at midnight!)
Interesting, I also thought of the ATtiny13 as a good part for this project. In fact, I have designed and built a menorah that is controlled by a tiny13, interfaced with one push button, and powered by ~3v of unregulated power (2 AAA or a CR2032 battery).
Take a look:
http://jumptuck.com/2008/11/13/led-menorah-powered-by-avr-tiny13/
Why is everyone busy lately with LED menorahs?? I like this menorah http://www.hhjudaica.com/New-York-City-Menorah.html it reminds me of loved ones lost in 9-11