Teardown and schematic of LED strobe beacon.
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 12 сен 2024
- Yet another fantastic Chinese industrial component. These beacons are often attached to factory machines to get attention when something goes wrong. Traditionally they would have either had xenon strobes or tungsten lamps in them, but the use of LEDs provides good sharp pulses of colourful light with low power draw.
This unit contains 15 LEDs, and it's clear from the design of the PCB that one module is designed to be used with all colours of LEDs, and also work at 12, 24 and 48V by the simple use of an internal resistor for the higher voltages.
The circuitry is super simple. It's just a traditional two transistor flip-flop circuit with the LEDs driven on one side and the two timing resistors chosen to provide brief flashes. It appears they may be going for a one in ten duty cycle and driving the LEDs quite hard at over 100mA for maximum intensity while remaining within their normal dissipation range.
There is an attempt to make the module waterproof via a large o-ring seal on the screw-on cover and fairly rigid sealing compound where the wires enter the unit. It comes with a wall/panel mounting twist-on base, but can also be mounted directly to a panel with two supplied machine screws going into threaded metal inserts in the strobe.
These units are available in red, amber, blue and white as standard, and cost a staggeringly low amount for what seems to be a very robust industrial component.
The ebay listing I bought this from was:-
www.ebay.co.uk/...
But there are a LOT of listings for these units.
The astable multivibrator was the first circuit i built over 45 years ago, so when you said '2 transistors' i immediately thought of that, mentioning 2 capacitors confirmed it.
Very useful circuit, i'll often use it instead of a 555, and it cascade-able for a chasing light effect ;)
+Sparky Projects The ring version. I see some Chinese kits with that version of it. It's a great beginners circuit. Low component count and great visual results.
+Sparky Projects That's cool, but I've come to prefer using an OpAmp relaxation oscillator for the purpose.
Ditto. :D
this type of basic 2 transistor flasher is called astable multivibrator configuration
I clicked this thinking it was "LED Strobe *BACON*" Damn it!
That said, my project at college was a multi-tone door bell that used 555's to drive a 4017b decade counter, which fed a common track, then resistors fed down to different pins on the 4017b. The output voltage could go to a 741b opamp to drive a loud speaker or it could go to a piezoelectric buzzer. I used the latter for brevity, however, I still got 40/40 for it. Was a fun thing to build.
"It's quite an orange-y color" lol with that orange lens on it you'd expect it to be orange-y colored XD
I remember building that sort of led flashers as kid...
A friend of mine has some army surplus linear flash tubes which are around six inches long still in the original packaging. He runs an electronics shop close to where I live, plus runs a radio transmitter service business on the side.
+douro20 The fairground industry uses XOP25 xenon tubes in its strobes which run at a mean power of 2kW and a peak power of about 20kW. Very impressive.
Correction, that circuit is not flip-flop, it is astable multivibrator.
+Miloš Lazović which is a flip-flop that automatically flops. That transistor arrangement is a flip-flop.
Andy Plater
No, that circuit is astable multivibrator and not be flip-flop. Flip-flop is a circuit that has two stable state, and this cicuit is not stable in either state. This arange of transistor is common for all multivibrators (astable, monostable or bistable) and flip-flop is just another name for bistable multivibrator.
Arrangement of transistors don't make what type is circuit, one transistor amplifier have same arrangement of transistor as one transistor oscillator but they are not same.
+Andy Plater Definition of flip-flop:
Flip-flop is circuit that is stable in either state. It can be flipped from one state to the other by an external trigger pulse.
This circuit don't meet any requirement to be flip-flop (it is not stable in any state and do not change state by external pulse).
you're right in that that's what arrangement the circuit is in, but the flip flop is a smaller component of that. If you took out some of the passives you would have a simple flip flop.
Andy Plater
Flip-flop is just one type of multivibrator (bistable), if you remove a capacitor from this circuit and connect external trigger instead of it you will get monostable multivibrator, if you remove both caps and connect triggers instead of them you get bistable multivibrator (flip-flop).
All of them have same base (mutivibrator) and only capacitors/trigers make which type of mutivibrator will be.
Yeh same as Sparky P, I remember using this Flip flop circuit many years ago, but not with led's it was light bulbs then.....oh those where the days Haha.
+Graham R Dyer My very first kit ever was a flip-flop driving a torch lamp. Not much to mess up there. Shame I messed it up. :( Oh well, first kits are always a bit hit or miss. (I think I smoked a transistor by lingering too long with the iron. This was almost 40 years ago though.
i tried to flash a car headlamp with a couple of AC128 germanium transistors when i was very young....the one driving the lamp went up in flames quite nicely..😲
so basically someone could modify on of these by changing two resistors out if they wanted to change the delays.
very nice
or caps
Wishing you and your family a very merry christmas and a happy new year awrabest fe a x glaswegin
I assume that you could"crack the ice" on the less to make it more suitable for mounting on a vehicle roof etc.
Another good video. Nice little product but it doesn't look a patch on the traditional xenon strobe. More like a damp suib version.
The very first circuit I built when I was 6 or so, except I used small DC bulbs instead of LEDS (I dont think LEDs were invented then)
Me too and it was also the first circuit I botched.
I'd have thought they'd save money by using white LEDs so they just had to change the lens for red, blue, green & amber strobes, but I guess that one's not cheap enough for that! :P
And if it's sold in australia, does the Flip Flop circuit become the Thong circuit? :P
"It's on!"
"It's off!"
"It's on!"
"It's off!"
"It's on!"
"It's off!"
"That's called 'blinking', boys."
wish you could show how bright it is or how many lum's but you make some good vid's :)
I thought of making this circuit. Looking at other similar circuits, I take it those transistors could be general purpose BC547s and the electolytics could be rated at 16V?
I was expecting a 555 timer. Why do you think they didn't use that?
Save money???
+jak p (skiguy09) Transistors are cheaper, simpler and more reliable with a wider voltage range.
True enough. I was thinking a 555 was about the same or less cost as two transistors and its support electronics.
HI thank you for interesting video I thing I will be making one of these what type of transistors do I need and are the led's 5 mm type.
Good video. I prefer the traditional Xenon strobe lamps any day. These LED ones are rubbish. Someone should come up with a high-powered LED version that can be visible from the sides as well.
Take a look at any Cop Car around the world, the dazzling strobes on them are blinding, and viewable from most directions...not anything like this
Looks good. Too bad they used electrolytic capacitors. There are cheap 10 uF SMD ceramic capacitors which would last forever.
It's been a while, but isn't 48 volts the default voltage for industrial control applications? Had to know a little bit about it a while back, but thankfully not anymore (the warehouse sized machine was at the time 20 yo. and hooked up to IT we maintained).
+NekitaNet 24V is a common industrial control voltage.
bigclivedotcom I see, so then the question remains: What applications would use a 48 volt and warrant a warning light.
+NekitaNet There are a wide range of control circuit voltages used in industrial equipment. 12, 24, 48, 110, 240, 415 and others. I think the manufacturer of this light has just tried to accommodate all the common low voltage systems. In my experience many industrial systems here tend to use 24V with a DIN rail mounted SMPSU, or sometimes a proprietary power card.
bigclivedotcom It's a nice light for sure and at that price it's even wonderful. Thanks for the explanation :-)
48V is common in telecommunications equipment (due to a lot of communication equipment having a battery backup).
this one also has no sound for me
Are you watching on a Nexus 10? This is how I view videos, and unfortunately it quite often comes up in a state where neither music nor video soundtracks will play. I don't know if this is a hardware fault or a bug in Android, but it's not within Clive's control. It is very annoying.
its a youtube problem. sometimes it loads the 5.1 audio even if the device doesnt support it or in my case my device had changed back to stereo (causes the same issue)
u went deep into this a lil too deep
VERY pityful strobe unit
Dont like that ,its poor at the side of the proper xenon ones.used to use loads of these and with a unit called a sound bomb when these went of in a building you had to leave they really thumped your ears,bought one just recently and now they are rubbish too guess its called advancement.
gone back to the ipad dont like it go back to other cam i cant see all your cuts on your hands in gory details
You can select a lower playback resolution to get the older iPad look.
3rd
1st
a message to parrot ,a would never buy a drone off you ,because as i brouse youtube atnight and my wife is asleep ,you ad. is soo loud and in your face and i rush to adjust volume to turn down ,never will buy, nowt against ,CLIVES VIDS.
+android /John Just so you know, RUclips content makers such as bigclivedotcom do not get to decide which advertisements play on their channels. If they enable ads, it's entirely up to Google's magic algorithms to decide which ads they serve for playing on _your_ screen. The uploader has no say in it.