# LED strobe light project



## Corona (Apr 24, 2007)

I'm currently designing and building an LED based strobe light for the amusement of my 10-year old. A chip off the old block  

I've built a number of Xenon flash tube based strobes (back in the 70's and 80's) and wanted something a bit safer (400V inside and line powered = nasty). I will never forget getting whacked by the 6kV trigger pulse during testing. And the UV output of a xenon tube is another reason to go with LEDs.

My plan so far is to use a 5500K LED (a little bluish is somewhat xenon-like). I have a few Lite-on LOPL-E031W emitters on hand (3W, 75 lumens @ 700mA). I'm driving it with a PIC-based pulse generator of my own design. The PIC reads a pot to change the pulse rate, and drives a logic-level FET to switch the LED. The whole thing is powered from 5V (yep, lots safer than Xenon!).

Since the duty cycle is VERY short (about 100uS ~ 500uS on time), I'm going to drive the LED at 2-3 amps peak current. Expect to get >150 lumens out of it.

If it works out as well as expected, I'm going to design a more useful, calibrated version with a digital encoder and LCD display - a stroboscope - for RPM measurements, guitar tuning, whatever.

Anyone else ever made such a thing and/or have any interest in a DIY project?


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## Clayton Bradley (Apr 27, 2007)

Not sure what kind of help you're looking for, but I just wanted to chime in with my project. Sounds very similar.

PIC controlled LED flasher. Mine flashes at about 30uS, or depending on the pattern chosen via a momentary push button. 5v for the chip, 12v (used by 4 series of 3 superflux blue) for the LEDs. I am use NPN transistors for controlling the current to the 4 series of LEDs. This allows individual control of each series for the purpose of differing flash patterns.

Currently I am looking into reflectors/focusers for this light.

As to your higher plans, here are a couple of websites you may not have, or if you do, Im sure you agree they are worth a repost.

http://www.winpicprog.co.uk/pic_tutorial.htm (lots of high end stuff here, in assembler)

Here is another great site for PIC projects, a lot of knowledgeable folks:
http://www.electro-tech-online.com/


Clayton


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