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Leds get brighter as pot turns?


sidetrack

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That is a cool as s*** idea. ;)

Maybe someone here could work out a way, but it does seem that since the DOUT register's output pins are just an on/off (all or nothing) state, it would have to happen at the current limiting resistor stage, so it would probably involve additional circuitry as well as software (if it were under digital control). Maybe there's a way a stacked (stereo) pot could do that, with one whole side dedicated to the LED's resistance, and one to the regular AIN feed.

Good idea nonetheless,

George

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although requiring extensive programming, you could add an aout to control the led(s) and use a stored value for the coresponding pot/encoder to determine the brightness level.

personally, i fail to see the practical usefulness of this idea (no matter how cool it is  ;)) as our eyes are not capable of accurately measuring absolute levels of brightness, so the feedback would be limited in its value.

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If only a small set of brightness levels are required, you could do this via PWM - no additional hardware is required in this case, only a special PWM routine which can be included into the application.

I read an article about a clever PWM method for an optimized LED dimming some time ago, unfortunately I forgot the link... :-/ The idea was, not just to change the duty cycle in order to dimm the LED, but to run special sequences of pulses to avoid the typical "flickering" effect.

Best Regards, Thorsten.

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hey, good idea  :D

and now to complete the Pot-LED-Idea:

A red-green-LED !

by turning the pot in a certain direction the colour changes from red over yellow to green and vice versa!

should be quite easy to to:

+5V connected to the middle pin of the pot

pot-pin-1 connected  to the red anode of the LED and pot-pin-3 connected to the green anode of the LED. LED-cathode goes to gnd.

matthias

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hey, good idea  :D

and now to complete the Pot-LED-Idea:

A red-green-LED !

by turning the pot in a certain direction the colour changes from red over yellow to green and vice versa!

should be quite easy to to:

+5V connected to the middle pin of the pot

pot-pin-1 connected  to the red anode of the LED and pot-pin-3 connected to the green anode of the LED. LED-cathode goes to gnd.

matthias

That's a brilliant idea. I'm gonna use this for my box too, if you don't mind ;)

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That's a brilliant idea. I'm gonna use this for my box too, if you don't mind ;)

I think that this wouldn't be a DIY-forum if we wouldn't "steal" ideas from each other.

Perhaps I will use a thing im my MB-SID (next project) which you've used first.

But I don't know if it will work that easy as i've described it...

you'll perhaps need an opamp...  ???

...and in case it works: post some pics in the forum  :)

matthias

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OOOOOOOH :D

This sounds like fun!

As for the simplest solution I would just tap the input to the AIN with a transistor and resistor buffer to drive the LED.  Simple, and is likely to work in most situations. 

However, this idea of using stereo pots and multicolor LED's is some good stuff!  Without having a datasheet in front of me I would try to wire it up so that both sides of the LED get juice normally, and turing the pot from side to side shorts one end of the LED or the other.  Add in a limiting resistor here and there and I think that would work without the need for buffers. 

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