Clive's skills are quite amazing, but he's been soldering almost as long as I have been alive, and I am almost 5 years younger than Clive. LOL. ... I would have gone with the "Helping Hands" at that point.
Clive, that is precisely why people like me watch your channel. It's the fact that you're quite at ease and in a happy place when you do projects like this. When the video producer is comfortable in what they are doing, it makes for excellent content. The fact that you have a glorious accent and are really funny is icing on the cake. You're digit dexterity is second to none. Even my wife is amazed to see how your fingers move. I find myself practicing holding three or four things at once in alignment. I suck.
great statement as Im always saying and doing similar things when Clive is bending wires or messing with mains voltage ...but we all need to bare in mind big Clive grew up on irn- bru and that stuff is made from girders. ..all us brits will get this ... .. ☺vote big Clive for master of the universe guys
Just watched this video and I now realise that I had a very jolly but unseasonal rendition of Sleigh Ride going on in my mind for the entire 35 minutes of it. With energetic strings, in F(!). You and your videos are truly inspirational, and thank you for another good one. Rich.
If you solder everything above the shoulders on the pins and on the top side of the chip you can leave the small pins to reprogram it later if you decide to upgrade the software. As you suggested, the logic could be improved to detect a bridged SW1 input and maybe cycle through the various effects every so often. You could also fashion a makeshift momentary/latching combo switch with the long lead from R1 and a discarded LED lead. The shape would be similar to the pin on the back of a promotional pin/button with a straight bit that hooks behind a hooked bit. Now you can press it down momentarily on the back of the hook to cycle once, or if you want it to loop (once the logic is upgraded) you can hook it behind and it will stay shorted. I'm enjoying all your videos, you are inspiring me to get back into electronics. Thank you.
Very nice Clive. I dig your soldering style as well... Not very often I see someone doing deadbug using the same technique I do. I'm friggin glued to your channel man. Awesome stuff.
I actually made one of these today, and it's really great. Thanks Clive! I loved making it. I made it because I want to learn to program PIC microcontrollers (thanks to this video), so this project seemed a good start. Flashing the PIC12 was not as easy, because I bought a PicKit3 from China, which probably is not the real deal, and it's output voltage is just not 5 volts. After fixing that, I started soldering. My enameled copper wire was not as good as Clive's, because sometimes I had to clean the soldering iron 3 or 4 times and apply new solder before the tin started attaching to the copper. I mounted a battery pack containing three 1,5v cells and used a 68 ohm resistor instead of 100. Yes, it really looks nice. Now it's time to alter the program. :)
It takes a bit of practice and time to perfect but eventually you can even learn to coordinate 2 wires to something like a pin on a chip, using 1 hand, holding the iron in the other, and getting a dab of solder from a spool above, all simultaneous, just about second nature. Just don't expect to achieve it overnight. Deadbug is an art hehe
"If I can do it, you can do it", says Clive. Uh, right. 😳😆. I have to admit this was the trickiest bit of soldering I've seen you do on your channel, but it was fun and educational.
Instead of just skipping the soldering or other "boring" parts, what about leaving them in the videos but played faster, like some timelapse footage of your soldering. Would be really awesome. And ofc neat project
+Audio Joe He could just annotate with time stamps also, but I believe by "It'll be boring for you", it's also more like "It'll eat through my storage to have footage of me doing the same stuff over again, and make it more time-consuming for RU-vid to process."
I agree, I would love to see this as well. But I guess the reason why he doesn't do a lot of post-production is that I am pretty sure he said in one video that he uploads it directly from the phone (or iPad in this older video) and so he doesn't have a fancy video editor (although actually for the iPad there are one or two very good ones...).
Perhaps an addition to the pic program could be a long button press that makes it cycle through all modes with a 15 -20 sec delay? Love the power up, remember last program function. The self test is brilliant. Going to make a tree full of these. Cheers.
Nice. Multiplexting with the LED polarity is one of those things that makes you go "why didnt I think of that". If it works as well with transistors I can use that in my speccy keyboard translator (+2A to +2 matrix converter)
Thanks Clive you have inspired me to build these and learn new skillls and understanding. Picked over Julian Ilett's work on PIC controllers to help the learning. Keep it up.
Very pleasing display clive :-D One of those tiny clicky switches from an old car radio or vcr could be glued to the chip, easy switch :-D For me, i would have a turned pin socket for the pic, less chance of killing the chip with heat. kynar wire is handy stuff too :-D
+zx8401ztv The bare chip allows it to be stuffed into a tube that is a good fit for the LEDs, but the prototype used a socket. Mainly so the chip could be transferred between it and the programmer.
+bigclivedotcom If you wanted it tiny, surely a smd version of the chip on a tiny pcb would be thinner, but im sure you have thought about that option :-). Dont forget that we are not you, we might make mistakes or find it hard to solder to the chip, or use too much heat, we might want to tinker with the software. Remember that some of us are not as exact on soldering as you are. I am, but others may not be. :-)
How you manage to solder that resistor to the chip without burning the crap out of your fingers is Nothing short of incredible, You make it look so easy and it’s anything but..... Great little project but I know I would melt my fingers and then just have a meltdown in general.
And for those that want to learn the terminology, driving the LEDs in this method is called charlieplexing (because it was proposed in 1995 by Charlie Allen at Maxim Integrated). Even though is was patented in 1979 as a "three-state signaling system".
Is there a reason you don't use a more efficient wiring pattern like below? Or would it not really make the project any easier? AD AD (reverse polarity) AC AC (reverse) AB AB (reverse) DB DB (reverse) CB CB (reverse) CD CD (reverse) This way all the A connections are in sequence, all the B connections are in sequence, and most of the C connections are in sequence.
Random_rapper20 I know, that's why I put (reversed) on my list. It's not hard, you just put all the LEDs for one polarity in then all the remaining go in the opposite way. Even if you wanted to keep all the polarities the same way though, you could still make a more efficient wiring pattern (but not quite as efficient as mine).
+codebeard I did consider optimised layouts, but in the end it's the same number of wires and the same number of solder joints. I also prefer to keep all the LED in the same direction to make the project easier.
hornylink Eh, the copyright lawsuit on that would be amazeballs for publicity though. I'd still prefer _Don't linger with your finger: A cautionary rhyme for aspiring engineers_ or some other guff like that.
You should never admit that you peeked at your pic-it. I think I will try leaving the 'switch' lead just a bit longer so that when it's snipped and 'formed', they can be pushed together by squeezing whatever covers them. Like the 'button cell LED key' thingys. Might have to put dab of glue at the solder corners to keep the pins on the chip from flexing. I think this will be my first PIC project.
Very cool! In fact, brilliant. You've got the force when you solder, I have toasted several/many ic's by directly soldering onto the legs. I dub thee Obi-Wan Kenobi of the electrons.
It is indeed strange how the mind reacts to certain things. As I watch this, it take me back to Vietnam 1971 watching the fight for the Hi-van Pass north of Danang. We were stationed at Camp Haskins, between Danang and the pass, and at night we could and often did watch as the VC and NVA fired down from the mountain at the US troops, you see the Communist forces used a green tracer every 10th or 5th round, while the free forces used red tracers at the same spacing. So it was, we could watch the heavy machine guns firing away, and tracers keep burning after they impact, and as they glance off the ground or rock, they seemed to tumble off into space before burning out. So it came to mind that a fellow could build these out of sets of red and green LEDs to simulate the battle for the Hi-van pass. Would make an amazing display for my picture window on the 4th of July, Veterans Day and Memorial Day. I shall have to attempt to build some of these for just that purpose. Who knows if I get to go South again this year, which is becoming doubtful but I still have hopes, I could put them in the windshield of my motor home and have the battle displayed for my Arizona friends, and fellow vets who remember the war.
I remember falling afoul of the Read-Modify-Write problem of the small PICs back when I started with them years ago (I started with the poorly specced PIC16F84A - the only one Maplin had in stock in my local store (a few miles away from where your nice Grapefruit Gin's made, Hereford, where they have about 10 components in stock at any one time). It's so much easier on the newer PICs with a LATx register. However, it's simple enough to keep your own internally buffered GPIO register copy which you modify then write out en-masse.
Nice one Clive, love the fact you only use 1 resistor, I'll have to make some but use the 5 outputs and 2 resistors (reset input switch) . The way you have the LED's wired you could use one every hour or so to measure the light level and only turn on at night. I love the 12F675 so can use the ADC or use the RC use tight loop
Thanks Clive for great video's and informative fun! You have inspired me to get back into electronics after recently watching almost ALL of your videos in a week after a operation on my sholder. These meteor lights are great and easy to build and l'm sure everyone who has made them appreciate your excellent design in the hex file (you did all the hard work..) I also loved that scripting led sign and just had to make one like it for work. Ill buy you a beer if ever I get over your way. Cheers, Greg (Australia)
Hi Clive, I love your videos. Has got me back into electronics. I'm learning to program pic micorcontrollers at the moment. For this set up, did you use the third (high impedance) state of the outputs so as not to get more than one LED on at a time? I've been programming it with Flowcode as I do not know C etc and it makes some of the other LEDs light up because of the way they're wired. The only way I've found that works in Flowcode is to use make the outputs neither high or low each time you switch to another step in the display (think it's call tri state) and that means temporarily classing the pin as an input until you next need it to be high or low. That sound similar to how you did it?
+bluephreakr Not realy its 2mm wide and with 1 draw accross the suface of the wire its done, the enamel used retracts when heated but if it has been breached it cooks off real quick. Just lookup nail files on ebay its 1 dollar per 100 bag they come in all shapes and sizes because of the nail art people have done needing more complex designs.
I would love to see one in a RGB circuit. I can apply that to my Christmas sweaters and holiday sweaters. Just saying I made a Santa Claus hat with the basic LEDs using oscillating. I love to learn
Ah, good old charlieplexing. I did a 7x8 LED display with that in high school. While I did not utilize the full amount of pins on the µC I used and my code was terrible. It ran decently fast even with terribly done interrupts for a i2c bus. I got a video of it on my channel if anyone is interested. The PCB I made is also pretty terrible, but overall. I am impressed what you can do with these µCs. I had no experience with C programming when I started doing it, and with just some tutorials off of google and a bit of thinking you can go a long way.
You could make a mold, build the project, test it and when everything works, you could pour clear quickset epoxy or resin into the mold and encase it. That would be so cool!
Now you should try making RGB meteor lights! What will help is if you use those digital LEDs, the ones with a control chip inside. They have power pins, a DIN (data in), and a DOUT (data out) pin. They basically work like shift registers. That would greatly simplify the wiring, but of course they cost a little more (not a huge amount more though).
+Benjamin “Ozias” Esposti The WS2812B chips would be ideal, but they really need a fast data stream which for a small processor is quite a task to keep up with.
+bigclivedotcom Well the ATMEGA168/328's can do it. It's a bigger chip, but you don't need as many chips ... and just for the hell of it, you could use one of the QFP packaged ones for the small size (if you can solder to them. I could, it's not all that hard. You just need patience :P)
Wow , great project. Thanks BC , the effects are great. i just built it with a dip 8 holder and a micro momentary Sw on the back. I had a small problem!!!! I found that it started in the middle ran to the bottom, back to the top and down to middle again. (Perhaps because im down under in the southern hemisphere?) If you look at the way it works all the tri state options are in the first 6 leds (AB to CD) then it repeats again but inversed, (BA to CD) the polarity is changed for the last 6. My board now starts at BA and finishes at CD and works perfectly now starting at top and finishing at the bottom. Good fun figuring it out. Thanks again big Clive, love your work, at play.
bigclivedotcom Hi, hmmm no, i tested continuatity A-A from wire going to pic down each 4 strings etc then ran down the strip while still in the board with a button cell, all good. Some one earlier mentioned this, sounded similar. I downloaded a fresh hex code and reburned it incase it had been corrupted. Same result. Im on my third string now, loving it. If i figure it out ill pass it on. I actually cut the first one in half and switched places and worked. Dont tell anyone! I check the Pic was right as i had different types, ( Julian I 's Projects.) Used a pickit 3 programmer on v 3.10 software. Using whites and blue flat tops and next Uv and white. All good.
You could still have multiple LEDs on at once, there are just some combinations that don't work. For example, you could have A high and B, C and D low to make those 3 on at once. You could also try a chase arrangement where 2 LEDs are lit and it cycles through them all, where for example you start with A high and B low. Then put C low. Then B high Z and D low Then C high Then A high Z and B high Then C low Then D High Z and A low Then C high Then B high Z and D high Then C low Then A high Z and B low Then C high Then D high Z and A high. And repeat. If the controller also supports PWM output or a fast enough and reliable clock speed you could even have the LEDs fade in and out.
One slightly sneaky point I missed when I watched the video is that there's multiple routes for the current through the LEDs: For A-C, it can go A-B B-C as well as A-C. The only reason the A-B and B-C LEDs don't light is because the A-C LED effectively shorts them out. I realised this when I built a partial breadboard with the LEDs and drove it from an arduino. I was slightly mystified why multiple LEDs lit up even though I was only driving pairs of LEDs.
Regarding the iPad, if it has a flat back there is a tiny 2x telephoto lens that attaches to a little magnetic ring, which in turn sticks to the back of the iPad. I know I would be fine with half a second of wobbly image as you attach the lens. A quick search will find it. I've seen a 4x telelphoto lens too, I'm sure there will be reviews on here somewhere.
This is an amazing project. It's going to be the next thing I tackle after the ioniser (which I've completed and need to figure out how to contain it, cause I used 50 caps for it, it's long)
I did. It's actually scary to run at 220 because everything in the vicinity begins developing a sort of static charge and things stay grounding into each other.
+Gadgetboy All ionisers charge you up with an electrostatic charge of you go near the tips. But it's interesting to know that a 50 stage multiplier works on 110V. What capacitors did you use? 10nF or higher? You've also made a handy electrostatic generator for when you need one.
I used the 100nF mains isolation caps you recommended on your website. I put the first part of the build on my channel if you wanna go over and make fun of how clumsy I am (i make a really noobish mistake halfway through the video).
Great project , even for us novices. Would love to apply this to some decking type lights with a motion sensor down my path to guide visitors in, and scare the bejesus out of the cat.
You could use the LED pins, and bend them to join adjacent pins of the same output where available? It would reduce the number of connections for the insulated wire. Example - the top 3 A pins all together, use the LED pins to join the 3 into one, and then connect the wire.
I spent the whole night making a string of 20 LED and it would have been so much easier with this kind of enameled wire instead of cutting, stripping, twisting, tinning and soldering 40 bits of normal insulated wire (also I could have used one resistor in series instead of one on each LED). Still had a lot of fun though.
Cool project Clive, thank you and props on the coding. It's a shame you lost designs and other IP to 'piracy' over the years. Also I laughed as the Maplin PSU comment, amazing design feature.
+Jon Simmons (Neffers) Next time it happens I'm going to pull the leads out and video it in its crashed state. It's notable that Maplin removed the feedback from a customer who was raising the issue.
Really? The feedback should be listened to not deleted, shame on them. Maplin have gone downhill since I was a kid, I loved buying (!) their catalogue and reading it to death. Now I just see them selling import stuff we get from ebay and bangood for a ridiculous price. One such DMX addressable LED light that you can grab for around £18, they are asking £50. Be sure to upload the results of the next crash to your channel and call them out on it. Bosnianbill (really good lockpicking channel) has been doing the same to Masterlock for ages now - they have tried cease and desist a few times, he still takes the piss out of them for their shoddyness. Thanks again for the videos Clive. Nice to see a shout out to you from AvE too, another great guy / channel. Keep up the quality work, it's really appreciated, not to mention informative.
The sixth pin is used on the PIC32MX chips. And probably on others. I absolutely love the PIC32 chips. The only thing I find disappointing is that the PICKIT 3 doesn't have JTAG, though it does do debugging, it's pretty slow at it. However, having debugging on the base unit is a BIG step above Atmel's line.
Jan Hlavatý I'm talking about the base units. AVRISP MKII. BTW the AVR Dragon is a piece of junk. I've had two of them, and they both mysteriously just stopped working. Atmel's "support" is absolutely terrible. I used to be an Atmel fanboy, but their junk programmers cured me of that. When I realized I was going to have to buy a JTAGICE III (of which there seem to be two different models, one cheap and one expensive, with no explanation what the difference is) just to get something reliable, I dropped Atmel like rotten potatoes. However, I'm far from a Microchip fanboy. I actually like Microchip & TI equally. The TI Tiva C chips are freaking fabulous, along with the PIC32MX.
+Aurelius R AVR Dragons had a problem when you touched them in certain place while powered on. Well thats what you get with naked PCB board... My Dragon still works fine (touches esd safe wood) :) So does my Pickit2. It's hardly fair comparison with Pickit 3 costing $47.95 and AVRISP mkII $9 ... Dragon costs more comparable $53.75 My only issue with Microchip has always been the crippleware compilers. I hope they will not do the same to Atmel now they bought it...
Jan Hlavatý What do you mean, crippleware compilers? the XC32 free compiler is amazing. I've never seen a single problem with it, fast and the libraries are more than most would ever need.
can I ask if you could look at a pic12 program to do a 12 volt rail with strobe LEDs for light beacons on trucks. I have been planning on making a new strobe with 8 or 14 times 10 Watt LEDs mounted in a amber plastic housing. the problem I have is you can see the pattern from inside the cab unless your near a reflective surface... This makes it hard to monitor when you are on the a1 behind a broken down car...
I think if I were going to build one of these I'd use HC595s.. makes the software much simpler and you can infinitely extend the string with more HC595s!
Aha! the old pencil trick. A guy at school in the '60s got a fancy new motorbike way beyond the means of most lads, and was keen on bragging how great it was. So we ran a line of soft lead pencil down his plugs creating short circuit for the HT to track, and sat back to watch him try to start it. Finally we could wait bear it no longer and I 'had a look' for him while with twisting motion wiped the plugs clean and to great hilarity told him his plugs were loose - started first time. Did same again later in the day and he even went to the dealers to complain - but the bragging stopped. ..happy days
I did a Light setup for paramedic truck with I think 402 size smd leds just by hand an a total of 60 leds on the front and 40 on the back using 2 556 chips to organize timing and it took me 3 days of looking through a 600x zoom desk lamp I will only ever do it again with a smd board and the oven.
What bench power supply is it? I've only ever had one, which is a typical 30V 3A programmable single channel but it'd be nice to get 3 or more channel one with a nice 5A or 10A output per channel. I know Dave EEVBlog has some really nice top of the range power supplies which are sent to him. But like he's said in the past, no matter how much new bits of gear has been sent to him. It doesn't put food on the table.
I guess i could theoretically extend it to 24 or 36 by repeating the pattern once right? Of course including that the light pattern would also repeat. And i just try to figure out if i could use this with RGB LEDs by shifting the wires 1 pin for each LED and get some funky color changing results. I love funky stuff.
Yeah! Was really eager to find out the pinout and see the "assembly tactic" Going to start wire some this week and maybe by x-mas I'll have a bunch ready. Just waiting for my PicKit (damn chinese suppliers and their free shipping)
recently i found a lot of sellers on ebay and aliexpress selling 4x3 led strobe kits. they don't look bad for the price they cost. the only problem that i found is that they have only 3 strobe settings. do you think it is possible to change the strobe settings and replace them with custom ones?
...or there will be porky smell and smoke. Oh, lol. I'm currently thinking about making a bigclive sound board. Yes, I think I'll be doing that when I come home next week.
From a code standpoint it seems like a better ordering would be AB AC AD BC BD BA CD CA CB DA DB DC as that lets you do them in order using simple modulo arithmetic. That is also easy to generalize to any number of pins. Probably doesn’t do the wiring any favors though. :)
Hi BigClive, Finished my first DIY meteor light today. Amazingly it works - thanks for the video and code. I think it is cycling between displays - i don't know if that was intended or I have got some conductive crap on the wire switch. i bought the enamelled wire off eBay and no way will the soldering iron burn off the coating . I ended up using some coloured craft wire with a coating that smells like fish when you burn it off and is not a complete insulator more a high resistance. This leads to some interesting effects but properly spaced works fine. i will have to locate some different enamelled wire if I want to make a run of these for Christmas. But again thanks for the work you put into this. Regards Alan
I would suggest "J" hooking the LED leads onto the wire to make a more secure connection especially if your going to be stuffing them into a tube, less risk of breaking a solder joint.
