Blinking LED Mood lighting

Step 6 Finishing up!

Alright now that you got all of the soldering out of the way, it is about time to turn it on! So make sure all of the connections are good, and then go ahead and plug it in! At first all of them will blink a couple times in unison and then they will start to go off pace with one another and all will blink at random.

Some other Ideas that this could be used for... it looks really cool as is, but also if you put a fogged piece of plastic, or glass over it is a nice look. I even put it under a glass fogged table and it created a nice look, if you were to make a custom bar it would be nice lighting to put underneath, there are a lot of options and possibilities!!!

I hope you like this Instructable, and if you have ideas and or make your own versions I would love to hear, and see what you have come up with, thanks for looking, and good luck!

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P.S...
Not quite sure but I left it on for a couple hours and it started to make some rust looking dust on it, some kind of corrosion from the electricity or something, but it wipes off without a problem. So one thing to do is to seal the Sheet Metal before starting the project, or if any of you have any suggestions please let me know, and it can help me and anyone that is possibly making this project also, thanks!!

Comments

[FatherKino]

I see this is an old project. . Have you noticed if the LEDs dim after prolonged use? I made a LED night light and notice after a week of use, the lights had noticably dimmed. Do you get around that problem by using blinking LEDs?

[seligtobiason]

My LED's have not dimmed at all, still nice and bright. I don't think that using blinking LED's have kept them from dimming though. The main thing that causes dimming in LED's is to much power going to them, so maybe try using I higher resistance. Another thing is the quality of the LED's themself, now a days these things are so mass produced that the quality can be lost. Main thing is double check what resistors you should be using! Hope that helps.

[misteravocado5]

 How do you hook up the phone charger?

[seligtobiason]

On the phone charger there is a positive and negative wire, so you just solder the positive wire to the positive copper tape, and do the same with the Negative.  If you are not sure which is the positive and negative, you can do a test with LED's, make sure you use the correct resistor for the test though so you don't burn out the test LED.

[PAKIS-RULEZ]

hi bro i have a question can we use the same thing but make it react to music ? if so please tell me the circuit diagram for it if possible instead of symbols please put the pictures of the actual component i am trying to make something that react to music but on a large scale like your project please help thanks in advance.

[justinacan]

Yes just hook it strate up to the amp out puts and change the settings on the filters intill u get the frequence u want

[seligtobiason]

hey there, so I am sure there is a way to make something like this to react to sound, but that would be an entire different project. There are many instructables on how to make your LED's react to music, so I would suggest searching for one of those. Here is one for example:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Add-sound-reactive-LEDs-for-any-speakers/

[PAKIS-RULEZ]

lol i found this one

http://www.instructables.com/id/Blinking_LEDs_to_Music/

and made it i have yt vid link there i ncomments

thanks a bunch now i will try it on a bigger scale :D

[patchrules2000]

the rusting is probably because there is allot of moisture in the air and the electricity is charging the metal plate enabling it to rust faster than usual (allot faster) however I don't know why you would want to get rid of it because it makes it look allot better than just plain metal. oh well just my 2 cents :)

[javier7high]

and the random blinking is made by the charger? no need of 555 chip? please answer coz i have like 3 of those same chargers laying around LOL! if this is simple as it looks it is the best instructable ever. (im a litl lazy as u can see) xD

[seligtobiason]

Well actually the random blinking is not made from either, it is the LED's themselves. The LED's are blinking LED's, and since they are not regulated when they are made they have slight inconsistencies, which make them each blink at a slightly different speed. So when you first turn it on they will all blink together, but after 20 seconds they will have ALL blinked at a different enough pace that it looks totally random! It is a very simple idea, that looks very complicated! which is what I was going for, so yeah I hope that helped, if you make one please upload it so I can take a look!

[javier7high]

oh thanks. im new in electronics. ill try to make this. thx for the help buddy