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Project Notes

#716 Decorative Flashing LED

A quick investigation of some decorative flashing LEDs that were scattered around a restaurant feed presentation(!)

Build

Here’s a quick demo..

clip

Notes

I first saw these at a restaurant, where the RGB flashing units were scattered around the the base of some “special” dishes. I was curious, so I borrowed one, and found them listed on aliexpress, for example, this listing: 12pcs white mini led balloon lamp LED balloon Light Paper Lantern Balloon Floral for Wedding Party Decoration

At first I couldn’t see if the flashing circuit as separate or integrated with the LED. After disassembly, I was able to confirm that the LED is just a standard “RGB Fast Flash” LED. These are widely available, for example, from this seller on aliexpress: 100PCS F3 F5 3MM 5MM RGB 7 color Fast flash/Slow flash LED light-emitting diode (LED) 3mm RGB 7 color fast flash LED Slow flash

Circuit Design

The units simply comprise:

  • RGB Fast Flash LED
  • a switch mechanism
  • 3 x 1.5V LR41 battery in series (4.5V total)

bb

schematic

Disassembly and Test

parts1

parts2

Verifying the RGB Fast Flash LED:

parts3

bb_build

Credits and References

About LEAP#716 LED

This page is a web-friendly rendering of my project notes shared in the LEAP GitHub repository.

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About LEAP

LEAP is my personal collection of electronics projects - usually involving an Arduino or other microprocessor in one way or another. Some are full-blown projects, while many are trivial breadboard experiments, intended to learn and explore something interesting.

Projects are often inspired by things found wild on the net, or ideas from the many great electronics podcasts and YouTube channels. Feel free to borrow liberally, and if you spot any issues do let me know or send a pull-request.

NOTE: For a while I included various scale modelling projects here too, but I've now split them off into a new repository: check out LittleModelArt if you are looking for these projects.

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