As I was working on my design for a plasma arc speaker, I wanted to give it a little more visual effects. I had seen an led VU meter someone had built for their stereo, and decided to build a large one with acrylic lenses and high power LED’s. I used the previous work I had done on a simple 386 audio amp for use with my iPod, and added an additional digital section, using a 3915 LED bar driver chip. This chip sinks up to 30mA of current for each LED. However, the high power LED’s I wanted to use could take up to 70mA of current. So I used each of the 3915 outputs to drive the base of a PNP transistor, which could handle the 70mA of current for the LED. I then built a 10 inch high tower of acrylic lenses and glued each LED into the back of each lens. This setup works really well.
I am now trying to develop a more sophisticated version of this, which includes a microphone and multiple colored or RGB LED’s as a commercial project. I am doing a provisional design patent, and I already have a meeting scheduled with a manufacturer who is interested in the project.
No comments:
Post a Comment