What cicuitry do I need to make two clusters of led's flash alternatingly.

[aspire]

Just as the title reads, I'm working on a project and I need to make two clusters of led's alternitively flash. If at all possible, not just switch being on and off, but flash, similar to a strobe effect.

If anyone knows what is needed to do this, I'd definitely appreciate the info.

 

[Kharn]

Instructables (google it) has loads of stuff like that you could use, What's if for?

 

[aspire]

lets just say its for a car modification. show lighting some might call it

 

[horndude]

multi-vibrator circuit

lots of ways to do this, either using digital or regular transistors

a simple pair of transistors will flip flop back and forth when paired together, you can use a resistor and capacitor to change the timing

Multivibrator - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

you can google for electronics kits, thats a pretty common starter kit actually, cheap too

 

[aspire]

thanks for the help, I definately appreciate, would you happen to know the components I would need, spec wise if I wanted to have two clusters of 20 leds probably 5mm and run 6 volts to them, similar to the kind of leds found in those annoyingly bright keychain flashlights.

 

[horndude]

led's use 1.2 or 1.5 volts I believe, about 20 milliamps of current each

use a separate transistor to drive each cluster, each needing 400 milliamps or about 6 watts

transistors themselves, nothing special, any small signal npn or pnp transistors will work for the oscillator part, 3904's would be fine, to drive the led's something a bit beefier will be needed, 1/4 watt or 1/2 watt resistors, small capacitors, nothing special here

but don't know what values needed unless LED specs are known and the desired flash or cycle rate

any more explanation than this and you will be over your head, seriously, unless youve got electronics experience and you dont, even something as simple as this

google for electronics kits and get an LED flasher kit then use its output, much easier this way

wanna do it the hard way and solder on a perf board then head to radio shack and spend like $5 for the parts plus tools if you dont have a soldering iron and stuff

Im not gonna design or build this for you, the wikipedia link already has the schematic, those values will give you a 1/2 second cycle rate