Replacement drivers for old LED signs

led-sign-driver-replacement

The LED signs sitting idle on the left are brought to life by an Arduino replacement driver shown to the right. The big one is made by Signature Electronic and used as an advertising display like you would see in front of a business. [Bob Davis] picked it up on eBay being sold as non-working. After some power supply repair … Read the rest

Months of failure lead up to this EL panel dimmer that pulses to the music

el-panel-dimmer

Way back in March [Ch00f] took on a for-hire project to make a suit that lights up to the music. He decided to build something based around a pulsating EL panel. He’s put a lot of time and tried of a few different techniques, but he finally has a working EL panel dimmer.

This is a saga we’ve kept … Read the rest

Stellaris Launchpad library to drive the TM1638 UI board

For those that grabbed one of these TM1638 UI boards you can now easily use it with your Stellaris Launchpad. [Dan O] took it upon himself to publish an ARM library for the UI board.

There’s not a lot of new stuff to talk about here. We’ve already seen this being driven by an FPGA. [Dan] also links … Read the rest

Repairing a VFD driver on a car stereo

We love seeing repairs and always marvel at the ability to track down the problem. [Todd] seems to have a knack for this. He was met with a lot of adversity when trying to get the Vacuum Fluorescent Display working on his car stereo. A lot of persistence, and a little bit of taking the easier way out let … Read the rest

Laser diode controller for a CNC mill

[Smells of Bikes] wanted to add laser etching to the list of tricks his home CNC setup is capable of. He has a diode which will work for the task, but he needed a driver that could be interfaced with the CNC system. He ended up designing a driver board based around the LM3402 chip.

Now driving one of … Read the rest

How to design your own LED driver

If you find yourself in need of a driver for a high power string of LEDs this is a must read. [Limpkin] just designed this driver as a contract job. He can’t show us the schematic, but he did share some tips on how to build an LED driver around a MAX16834 chip.

As you move to higher power … Read the rest

LED tutorial demystifies several control techniques

Controlling LEDs is really quite simple. As you know, they need to be current limited which is as easy as applying Ohm’s law to your given set of values. To make things even more even there’s a slew of constant current LED driver chips out there that can be had for a song. But do you have any idea how … Read the rest