Clive's skills are quite amazing, but he's been soldering almost as long as I have been alive, and I am almost 5 years younger than Clive. LOL. ... I would have gone with the "Helping Hands" at that point.
Clive, that is precisely why people like me watch your channel. It's the fact that you're quite at ease and in a happy place when you do projects like this. When the video producer is comfortable in what they are doing, it makes for excellent content. The fact that you have a glorious accent and are really funny is icing on the cake. You're digit dexterity is second to none. Even my wife is amazed to see how your fingers move. I find myself practicing holding three or four things at once in alignment. I suck.
Just watched this video and I now realise that I had a very jolly but unseasonal rendition of Sleigh Ride going on in my mind for the entire 35 minutes of it. With energetic strings, in F(!). You and your videos are truly inspirational, and thank you for another good one. Rich.
If you solder everything above the shoulders on the pins and on the top side of the chip you can leave the small pins to reprogram it later if you decide to upgrade the software. As you suggested, the logic could be improved to detect a bridged SW1 input and maybe cycle through the various effects every so often. You could also fashion a makeshift momentary/latching combo switch with the long lead from R1 and a discarded LED lead. The shape would be similar to the pin on the back of a promotional pin/button with a straight bit that hooks behind a hooked bit. Now you can press it down momentarily on the back of the hook to cycle once, or if you want it to loop (once the logic is upgraded) you can hook it behind and it will stay shorted. I'm enjoying all your videos, you are inspiring me to get back into electronics. Thank you.
I actually made one of these today, and it's really great. Thanks Clive! I loved making it. I made it because I want to learn to program PIC microcontrollers (thanks to this video), so this project seemed a good start. Flashing the PIC12 was not as easy, because I bought a PicKit3 from China, which probably is not the real deal, and it's output voltage is just not 5 volts. After fixing that, I started soldering. My enameled copper wire was not as good as Clive's, because sometimes I had to clean the soldering iron 3 or 4 times and apply new solder before the tin started attaching to the copper. I mounted a battery pack containing three 1,5v cells and used a 68 ohm resistor instead of 100. Yes, it really looks nice. Now it's time to alter the program. :)
Very nice Clive. I dig your soldering style as well... Not very often I see someone doing deadbug using the same technique I do. I'm friggin glued to your channel man. Awesome stuff.
"If I can do it, you can do it", says Clive. Uh, right. 😳😆. I have to admit this was the trickiest bit of soldering I've seen you do on your channel, but it was fun and educational.
great statement as Im always saying and doing similar things when Clive is bending wires or messing with mains voltage ...but we all need to bare in mind big Clive grew up on irn- bru and that stuff is made from girders. ..all us brits will get this ... .. ☺vote big Clive for master of the universe guys
It takes a bit of practice and time to perfect but eventually you can even learn to coordinate 2 wires to something like a pin on a chip, using 1 hand, holding the iron in the other, and getting a dab of solder from a spool above, all simultaneous, just about second nature. Just don't expect to achieve it overnight. Deadbug is an art hehe
Instead of just skipping the soldering or other "boring" parts, what about leaving them in the videos but played faster, like some timelapse footage of your soldering. Would be really awesome. And ofc neat project
+Audio Joe He could just annotate with time stamps also, but I believe by "It'll be boring for you", it's also more like "It'll eat through my storage to have footage of me doing the same stuff over again, and make it more time-consuming for UA-cam to process."
I agree, I would love to see this as well. But I guess the reason why he doesn't do a lot of post-production is that I am pretty sure he said in one video that he uploads it directly from the phone (or iPad in this older video) and so he doesn't have a fancy video editor (although actually for the iPad there are one or two very good ones...).
Perhaps an addition to the pic program could be a long button press that makes it cycle through all modes with a 15 -20 sec delay? Love the power up, remember last program function. The self test is brilliant. Going to make a tree full of these. Cheers.
hornylink Eh, the copyright lawsuit on that would be amazeballs for publicity though. I'd still prefer _Don't linger with your finger: A cautionary rhyme for aspiring engineers_ or some other guff like that.
Nice. Multiplexting with the LED polarity is one of those things that makes you go "why didnt I think of that". If it works as well with transistors I can use that in my speccy keyboard translator (+2A to +2 matrix converter)
Is there a reason you don't use a more efficient wiring pattern like below? Or would it not really make the project any easier? AD AD (reverse polarity) AC AC (reverse) AB AB (reverse) DB DB (reverse) CB CB (reverse) CD CD (reverse) This way all the A connections are in sequence, all the B connections are in sequence, and most of the C connections are in sequence.
Random_rapper20 I know, that's why I put (reversed) on my list. It's not hard, you just put all the LEDs for one polarity in then all the remaining go in the opposite way. Even if you wanted to keep all the polarities the same way though, you could still make a more efficient wiring pattern (but not quite as efficient as mine).
+codebeard I did consider optimised layouts, but in the end it's the same number of wires and the same number of solder joints. I also prefer to keep all the LED in the same direction to make the project easier.
How you manage to solder that resistor to the chip without burning the crap out of your fingers is Nothing short of incredible, You make it look so easy and it’s anything but..... Great little project but I know I would melt my fingers and then just have a meltdown in general.
Thanks Clive you have inspired me to build these and learn new skillls and understanding. Picked over Julian Ilett's work on PIC controllers to help the learning. Keep it up.
Hi Clive, I love your videos. Has got me back into electronics. I'm learning to program pic micorcontrollers at the moment. For this set up, did you use the third (high impedance) state of the outputs so as not to get more than one LED on at a time? I've been programming it with Flowcode as I do not know C etc and it makes some of the other LEDs light up because of the way they're wired. The only way I've found that works in Flowcode is to use make the outputs neither high or low each time you switch to another step in the display (think it's call tri state) and that means temporarily classing the pin as an input until you next need it to be high or low. That sound similar to how you did it?
Nice one Clive, love the fact you only use 1 resistor, I'll have to make some but use the 5 outputs and 2 resistors (reset input switch) . The way you have the LED's wired you could use one every hour or so to measure the light level and only turn on at night. I love the 12F675 so can use the ADC or use the RC use tight loop
Thanks Clive for great video's and informative fun! You have inspired me to get back into electronics after recently watching almost ALL of your videos in a week after a operation on my sholder. These meteor lights are great and easy to build and l'm sure everyone who has made them appreciate your excellent design in the hex file (you did all the hard work..) I also loved that scripting led sign and just had to make one like it for work. Ill buy you a beer if ever I get over your way. Cheers, Greg (Australia)
Very pleasing display clive :-D One of those tiny clicky switches from an old car radio or vcr could be glued to the chip, easy switch :-D For me, i would have a turned pin socket for the pic, less chance of killing the chip with heat. kynar wire is handy stuff too :-D
+zx8401ztv The bare chip allows it to be stuffed into a tube that is a good fit for the LEDs, but the prototype used a socket. Mainly so the chip could be transferred between it and the programmer.
+bigclivedotcom If you wanted it tiny, surely a smd version of the chip on a tiny pcb would be thinner, but im sure you have thought about that option :-). Dont forget that we are not you, we might make mistakes or find it hard to solder to the chip, or use too much heat, we might want to tinker with the software. Remember that some of us are not as exact on soldering as you are. I am, but others may not be. :-)
+bluephreakr Not realy its 2mm wide and with 1 draw accross the suface of the wire its done, the enamel used retracts when heated but if it has been breached it cooks off real quick. Just lookup nail files on ebay its 1 dollar per 100 bag they come in all shapes and sizes because of the nail art people have done needing more complex designs.
Very cool! In fact, brilliant. You've got the force when you solder, I have toasted several/many ic's by directly soldering onto the legs. I dub thee Obi-Wan Kenobi of the electrons.
You should never admit that you peeked at your pic-it. I think I will try leaving the 'switch' lead just a bit longer so that when it's snipped and 'formed', they can be pushed together by squeezing whatever covers them. Like the 'button cell LED key' thingys. Might have to put dab of glue at the solder corners to keep the pins on the chip from flexing. I think this will be my first PIC project.
And for those that want to learn the terminology, driving the LEDs in this method is called charlieplexing (because it was proposed in 1995 by Charlie Allen at Maxim Integrated). Even though is was patented in 1979 as a "three-state signaling system".
It is indeed strange how the mind reacts to certain things. As I watch this, it take me back to Vietnam 1971 watching the fight for the Hi-van Pass north of Danang. We were stationed at Camp Haskins, between Danang and the pass, and at night we could and often did watch as the VC and NVA fired down from the mountain at the US troops, you see the Communist forces used a green tracer every 10th or 5th round, while the free forces used red tracers at the same spacing. So it was, we could watch the heavy machine guns firing away, and tracers keep burning after they impact, and as they glance off the ground or rock, they seemed to tumble off into space before burning out. So it came to mind that a fellow could build these out of sets of red and green LEDs to simulate the battle for the Hi-van pass. Would make an amazing display for my picture window on the 4th of July, Veterans Day and Memorial Day. I shall have to attempt to build some of these for just that purpose. Who knows if I get to go South again this year, which is becoming doubtful but I still have hopes, I could put them in the windshield of my motor home and have the battle displayed for my Arizona friends, and fellow vets who remember the war.
I remember falling afoul of the Read-Modify-Write problem of the small PICs back when I started with them years ago (I started with the poorly specced PIC16F84A - the only one Maplin had in stock in my local store (a few miles away from where your nice Grapefruit Gin's made, Hereford, where they have about 10 components in stock at any one time). It's so much easier on the newer PICs with a LATx register. However, it's simple enough to keep your own internally buffered GPIO register copy which you modify then write out en-masse.
Wow , great project. Thanks BC , the effects are great. i just built it with a dip 8 holder and a micro momentary Sw on the back. I had a small problem!!!! I found that it started in the middle ran to the bottom, back to the top and down to middle again. (Perhaps because im down under in the southern hemisphere?) If you look at the way it works all the tri state options are in the first 6 leds (AB to CD) then it repeats again but inversed, (BA to CD) the polarity is changed for the last 6. My board now starts at BA and finishes at CD and works perfectly now starting at top and finishing at the bottom. Good fun figuring it out. Thanks again big Clive, love your work, at play.
bigclivedotcom Hi, hmmm no, i tested continuatity A-A from wire going to pic down each 4 strings etc then ran down the strip while still in the board with a button cell, all good. Some one earlier mentioned this, sounded similar. I downloaded a fresh hex code and reburned it incase it had been corrupted. Same result. Im on my third string now, loving it. If i figure it out ill pass it on. I actually cut the first one in half and switched places and worked. Dont tell anyone! I check the Pic was right as i had different types, ( Julian I 's Projects.) Used a pickit 3 programmer on v 3.10 software. Using whites and blue flat tops and next Uv and white. All good.
Regarding the iPad, if it has a flat back there is a tiny 2x telephoto lens that attaches to a little magnetic ring, which in turn sticks to the back of the iPad. I know I would be fine with half a second of wobbly image as you attach the lens. A quick search will find it. I've seen a 4x telelphoto lens too, I'm sure there will be reviews on here somewhere.
Cool project Clive, thank you and props on the coding. It's a shame you lost designs and other IP to 'piracy' over the years. Also I laughed as the Maplin PSU comment, amazing design feature.
+Jon Simmons (Neffers) Next time it happens I'm going to pull the leads out and video it in its crashed state. It's notable that Maplin removed the feedback from a customer who was raising the issue.
Really? The feedback should be listened to not deleted, shame on them. Maplin have gone downhill since I was a kid, I loved buying (!) their catalogue and reading it to death. Now I just see them selling import stuff we get from ebay and bangood for a ridiculous price. One such DMX addressable LED light that you can grab for around £18, they are asking £50. Be sure to upload the results of the next crash to your channel and call them out on it. Bosnianbill (really good lockpicking channel) has been doing the same to Masterlock for ages now - they have tried cease and desist a few times, he still takes the piss out of them for their shoddyness. Thanks again for the videos Clive. Nice to see a shout out to you from AvE too, another great guy / channel. Keep up the quality work, it's really appreciated, not to mention informative.
Now you should try making RGB meteor lights! What will help is if you use those digital LEDs, the ones with a control chip inside. They have power pins, a DIN (data in), and a DOUT (data out) pin. They basically work like shift registers. That would greatly simplify the wiring, but of course they cost a little more (not a huge amount more though).
+Benjamin “Ozias” Esposti The WS2812B chips would be ideal, but they really need a fast data stream which for a small processor is quite a task to keep up with.
+bigclivedotcom Well the ATMEGA168/328's can do it. It's a bigger chip, but you don't need as many chips ... and just for the hell of it, you could use one of the QFP packaged ones for the small size (if you can solder to them. I could, it's not all that hard. You just need patience :P)
What bench power supply is it? I've only ever had one, which is a typical 30V 3A programmable single channel but it'd be nice to get 3 or more channel one with a nice 5A or 10A output per channel. I know Dave EEVBlog has some really nice top of the range power supplies which are sent to him. But like he's said in the past, no matter how much new bits of gear has been sent to him. It doesn't put food on the table.
I would love to see one in a RGB circuit. I can apply that to my Christmas sweaters and holiday sweaters. Just saying I made a Santa Claus hat with the basic LEDs using oscillating. I love to learn
Hi BigClive, Finished my first DIY meteor light today. Amazingly it works - thanks for the video and code. I think it is cycling between displays - i don't know if that was intended or I have got some conductive crap on the wire switch. i bought the enamelled wire off eBay and no way will the soldering iron burn off the coating . I ended up using some coloured craft wire with a coating that smells like fish when you burn it off and is not a complete insulator more a high resistance. This leads to some interesting effects but properly spaced works fine. i will have to locate some different enamelled wire if I want to make a run of these for Christmas. But again thanks for the work you put into this. Regards Alan
+Lester Electronics Why not? I thought I could learn something from the way the source is written. If I were desperate I could always disassemble the hex file.
+Lester Electronics I always dislike publishing source because I consider my programming "messy". Mainly because it's generally improvised on the spot with just some rough doodles. I may go through it in a video later.
You could use the LED pins, and bend them to join adjacent pins of the same output where available? It would reduce the number of connections for the insulated wire. Example - the top 3 A pins all together, use the LED pins to join the 3 into one, and then connect the wire.
This is an amazing project. It's going to be the next thing I tackle after the ioniser (which I've completed and need to figure out how to contain it, cause I used 50 caps for it, it's long)
I did. It's actually scary to run at 220 because everything in the vicinity begins developing a sort of static charge and things stay grounding into each other.
+Gadgetboy All ionisers charge you up with an electrostatic charge of you go near the tips. But it's interesting to know that a 50 stage multiplier works on 110V. What capacitors did you use? 10nF or higher? You've also made a handy electrostatic generator for when you need one.
I used the 100nF mains isolation caps you recommended on your website. I put the first part of the build on my channel if you wanna go over and make fun of how clumsy I am (i make a really noobish mistake halfway through the video).
The sixth pin is used on the PIC32MX chips. And probably on others. I absolutely love the PIC32 chips. The only thing I find disappointing is that the PICKIT 3 doesn't have JTAG, though it does do debugging, it's pretty slow at it. However, having debugging on the base unit is a BIG step above Atmel's line.
Jan Hlavatý I'm talking about the base units. AVRISP MKII. BTW the AVR Dragon is a piece of junk. I've had two of them, and they both mysteriously just stopped working. Atmel's "support" is absolutely terrible. I used to be an Atmel fanboy, but their junk programmers cured me of that. When I realized I was going to have to buy a JTAGICE III (of which there seem to be two different models, one cheap and one expensive, with no explanation what the difference is) just to get something reliable, I dropped Atmel like rotten potatoes. However, I'm far from a Microchip fanboy. I actually like Microchip & TI equally. The TI Tiva C chips are freaking fabulous, along with the PIC32MX.
+Aurelius R AVR Dragons had a problem when you touched them in certain place while powered on. Well thats what you get with naked PCB board... My Dragon still works fine (touches esd safe wood) :) So does my Pickit2. It's hardly fair comparison with Pickit 3 costing $47.95 and AVRISP mkII $9 ... Dragon costs more comparable $53.75 My only issue with Microchip has always been the crippleware compilers. I hope they will not do the same to Atmel now they bought it...
Jan Hlavatý What do you mean, crippleware compilers? the XC32 free compiler is amazing. I've never seen a single problem with it, fast and the libraries are more than most would ever need.
You could make a mold, build the project, test it and when everything works, you could pour clear quickset epoxy or resin into the mold and encase it. That would be so cool!
I guess i could theoretically extend it to 24 or 36 by repeating the pattern once right? Of course including that the light pattern would also repeat. And i just try to figure out if i could use this with RGB LEDs by shifting the wires 1 pin for each LED and get some funky color changing results. I love funky stuff.
One idea that I had was a way to save that extra I/O pin. With tri-state multiplexing, the third state is as a high-impedence input. Could you use that as the state-setting input - use surrounding LEDs to pull the pin high, but short it low via a button - or vice versa, depending on where the threshold voltages are.
Ah, good old charlieplexing. I did a 7x8 LED display with that in high school. While I did not utilize the full amount of pins on the µC I used and my code was terrible. It ran decently fast even with terribly done interrupts for a i2c bus. I got a video of it on my channel if anyone is interested. The PCB I made is also pretty terrible, but overall. I am impressed what you can do with these µCs. I had no experience with C programming when I started doing it, and with just some tutorials off of google and a bit of thinking you can go a long way.
If you made 2 or more of these with same chips, same program and same mode, what is the expected drift before they all go out of visual sync with eachother? Im quite keen to make a few to make a decorative 'retro computer' panel and the drift would be ideal as it would create a big random effect. Im trying to idea a single place for my 3 pc's with random lights/buttons in between each set in a wood workstation much like you see in 50's 60's scifi tv programs. I love the idea of those units/panels that just flash away all day with no function :)
The software introduces drift deliberately so they don't all just go in sync. If you select one of the random data modes then all the date being scrolled on the displays will be different from switch-on as the software deliberately stores a snapshot of the randomiser in non volatile memory whenever you press the select button, and then uses it to re-seed the randomiser at power up.
One slightly sneaky point I missed when I watched the video is that there's multiple routes for the current through the LEDs: For A-C, it can go A-B B-C as well as A-C. The only reason the A-B and B-C LEDs don't light is because the A-C LED effectively shorts them out. I realised this when I built a partial breadboard with the LEDs and drove it from an arduino. I was slightly mystified why multiple LEDs lit up even though I was only driving pairs of LEDs.
can you please share the actual program ? so that i can modify and remove few effects. and that self test mode. i want to make it for my bike brake lights.
can I ask if you could look at a pic12 program to do a 12 volt rail with strobe LEDs for light beacons on trucks. I have been planning on making a new strobe with 8 or 14 times 10 Watt LEDs mounted in a amber plastic housing. the problem I have is you can see the pattern from inside the cab unless your near a reflective surface... This makes it hard to monitor when you are on the a1 behind a broken down car...
Have you thought about chaining multiple of these? I know the software would get a lot more complicated for many effects (especially those where only the first/last LED in the string should do something special) and might not even fit in the memory anymore, but longer strings would be nice maybe.
Great project , even for us novices. Would love to apply this to some decking type lights with a motion sensor down my path to guide visitors in, and scare the bejesus out of the cat.
Is the scanrate fast enough to allow any levels of greyscale at a fractional rate? I did similar that with a 595 shift register once and it was quite reasonable to get 8 'bits' each at 255 levels of brightness by just masking the output against a looping counter each loop increment counter, loop at 256 if the bit's value is greater than the counter, then output it, or mask it off accordingly. Since the scanrate was in the kilohertz, I could expect 8 bits to pwm at a reasonable 400hz.
I would suggest "J" hooking the LED leads onto the wire to make a more secure connection especially if your going to be stuffing them into a tube, less risk of breaking a solder joint.
+Mike James I've configured it as an input and tied it to the neighbouring pin which is a pulled-up input to park the MCLR pin without having to run a resistor to it.
I think if I were going to build one of these I'd use HC595s.. makes the software much simpler and you can infinitely extend the string with more HC595s!
About the IPad zoom issue, have you looked into the zoom lenses on ebay? That could be a find.. Another alternative for pretty decent macro image, is to somehow stick or hold the lens from a disposable camera to the camera on the IPad, I've tried it before and you do get some alright images, but you are still required to move the IPad closer with that.
recently i found a lot of sellers on ebay and aliexpress selling 4x3 led strobe kits. they don't look bad for the price they cost. the only problem that i found is that they have only 3 strobe settings. do you think it is possible to change the strobe settings and replace them with custom ones?
Watching you solder to the PIC in your hand made me realize how incredible human hands are.
Clive's skills are quite amazing, but he's been soldering almost as long as I have been alive, and I am almost 5 years younger than Clive. LOL. ... I would have gone with the "Helping Hands" at that point.
Clive, that is precisely why people like me watch your channel. It's the fact that you're quite at ease and in a happy place when you do projects like this. When the video producer is comfortable in what they are doing, it makes for excellent content. The fact that you have a glorious accent and are really funny is icing on the cake.
You're digit dexterity is second to none. Even my wife is amazed to see how your fingers move. I find myself practicing holding three or four things at once in alignment. I suck.
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Just watched this video and I now realise that I had a very jolly but unseasonal rendition of Sleigh Ride going on in my mind for the entire 35 minutes of it. With energetic strings, in F(!). You and your videos are truly inspirational, and thank you for another good one. Rich.
If you solder everything above the shoulders on the pins and on the top side of the chip you can leave the small pins to reprogram it later if you decide to upgrade the software.
As you suggested, the logic could be improved to detect a bridged SW1 input and maybe cycle through the various effects every so often.
You could also fashion a makeshift momentary/latching combo switch with the long lead from R1 and a discarded LED lead. The shape would be similar to the pin on the back of a promotional pin/button with a straight bit that hooks behind a hooked bit. Now you can press it down momentarily on the back of the hook to cycle once, or if you want it to loop (once the logic is upgraded) you can hook it behind and it will stay shorted.
I'm enjoying all your videos, you are inspiring me to get back into electronics. Thank you.
I actually made one of these today, and it's really great. Thanks Clive! I loved making it. I made it because I want to learn to program PIC microcontrollers (thanks to this video), so this project seemed a good start. Flashing the PIC12 was not as easy, because I bought a PicKit3 from China, which probably is not the real deal, and it's output voltage is just not 5 volts. After fixing that, I started soldering. My enameled copper wire was not as good as Clive's, because sometimes I had to clean the soldering iron 3 or 4 times and apply new solder before the tin started attaching to the copper.
I mounted a battery pack containing three 1,5v cells and used a 68 ohm resistor instead of 100. Yes, it really looks nice. Now it's time to alter the program. :)
Very nice Clive. I dig your soldering style as well... Not very often I see someone doing deadbug using the same technique I do. I'm friggin glued to your channel man. Awesome stuff.
Anyone else think that Clive could be the Bob Ross of electronic DIY?
+Alex Barlow "this isn't a mistake, it's a happy little exploding resistor"
+TheChipmunk2008 thank you... just thank you lol
+Alex Barlow Yes, I had that same thought. This is your world and you can have as many LEDs as you want.
YES
+Alex Barlow Could be = IS.
"If I can do it, you can do it", says Clive. Uh, right. 😳😆. I have to admit this was the trickiest bit of soldering I've seen you do on your channel, but it was fun and educational.
I like these videos about the miniature PIC processors.. Shame that there aren't more.
Lol i found myself blowing the screen when you are soldering to blow the smoke away 😄
+Subigirl Forester
LMFAO XD
great statement as Im always saying and doing similar things when Clive is bending wires or messing with mains voltage ...but we all need to bare in mind big Clive grew up on irn- bru and that stuff is made from girders. ..all us brits will get this ... .. ☺vote big Clive for master of the universe guys
+retro80s You say you're from Britain yet you spelled Irn-Bru wrong...
+Aurelius R .see you Jimmy
+retro80s all scots grow up on the bru. I am from Clive's rival city
"If I can do it, you can do it" he says, whilst holding the thing between his pinky and middle finger...
+Yndostrui and has more years experience in this than some of us have been alive...
It takes a bit of practice and time to perfect but eventually you can even learn to coordinate 2 wires to something like a pin on a chip, using 1 hand, holding the iron in the other, and getting a dab of solder from a spool above, all simultaneous, just about second nature.
Just don't expect to achieve it overnight. Deadbug is an art hehe
i love these DIY builds you do. i learn a-lot and there inspiring. cheers Clive. keep up the good work.
Any chance you would release the uncompiled source code? Or perhaps it release it for Patreon supporters?
Instead of just skipping the soldering or other "boring" parts, what about leaving them in the videos but played faster, like some timelapse footage of your soldering. Would be really awesome.
And ofc neat project
+Audio Joe He could just annotate with time stamps also, but I believe by "It'll be boring for you", it's also more like "It'll eat through my storage to have footage of me doing the same stuff over again, and make it more time-consuming for UA-cam to process."
+bluephreakr Silly me, didnt even think of storage or post production and processing.
Audio Joe n
I agree, I would love to see this as well. But I guess the reason why he doesn't do a lot of post-production is that I am pretty sure he said in one video that he uploads it directly from the phone (or iPad in this older video) and so he doesn't have a fancy video editor (although actually for the iPad there are one or two very good ones...).
Perhaps an addition to the pic program could be a long button press that makes it cycle through all modes with a 15 -20 sec delay? Love the power up, remember last program function. The self test is brilliant. Going to make a tree full of these. Cheers.
The meteor lights would make a cool necklace. =)
I don't know why, but I could watch you solder for hours.
I find myself very fascinated and enjoy these videos. no matter the product
Don't linger with your finger while you tin the pin.
You'll get a burn if you don't learn...
+Doc Hussey Big Clive's nursery rhymes for aspiring electronic engineers.
That's what she said...sorry, had to be done.
+bluephreakr Dr. Clive's green leds and pic?
hornylink
Eh, the copyright lawsuit on that would be amazeballs for publicity though.
I'd still prefer _Don't linger with your finger: A cautionary rhyme for aspiring engineers_ or some other guff like that.
Nice. Multiplexting with the LED polarity is one of those things that makes you go "why didnt I think of that". If it works as well with transistors I can use that in my speccy keyboard translator (+2A to +2 matrix converter)
can you please upload the code instead of the hex file? i want to use it for my bike.. hence i need to remove few effects from the program.
Is there a reason you don't use a more efficient wiring pattern like below? Or would it not really make the project any easier?
AD
AD (reverse polarity)
AC
AC (reverse)
AB
AB (reverse)
DB
DB (reverse)
CB
CB (reverse)
CD
CD (reverse)
This way all the A connections are in sequence, all the B connections are in sequence, and most of the C connections are in sequence.
because all positives are on left all negatives on right. makes it easier to line up led . notice red and black line on ruler?
Random_rapper20 I know, that's why I put (reversed) on my list. It's not hard, you just put all the LEDs for one polarity in then all the remaining go in the opposite way. Even if you wanted to keep all the polarities the same way though, you could still make a more efficient wiring pattern (but not quite as efficient as mine).
+codebeard I did consider optimised layouts, but in the end it's the same number of wires and the same number of solder joints. I also prefer to keep all the LED in the same direction to make the project easier.
I'll call it the BEST CHARLIEPLEXING tutorial video :')
How about a video showing the workshop?
How you manage to solder that resistor to the chip without burning the crap out of your fingers is Nothing short of incredible,
You make it look so easy and it’s anything but.....
Great little project but I know I would melt my fingers and then just have a meltdown in general.
Thanks Clive you have inspired me to build these and learn new skillls and understanding. Picked over Julian Ilett's work on PIC controllers to help the learning. Keep it up.
Don't linger with the finger; I'm a poet and I know it. Nice video Clive. Regards Bob
My PIC12F629 chips arrived today - just in time for Christmas :-)
with the flexibility and control of your fingers you could have become a pretty good slight-of-hand magician.
You've convinced me to try electronics again, this is a really good vid! good work!
Hi Clive, I love your videos. Has got me back into electronics. I'm learning to program pic micorcontrollers at the moment. For this set up, did you use the third (high impedance) state of the outputs so as not to get more than one LED on at a time? I've been programming it with Flowcode as I do not know C etc and it makes some of the other LEDs light up because of the way they're wired. The only way I've found that works in Flowcode is to use make the outputs neither high or low each time you switch to another step in the display (think it's call tri state) and that means temporarily classing the pin as an input until you next need it to be high or low. That sound similar to how you did it?
I am using tri-state multiplexing. Otherwise known as Charlieplexing.
@@bigclivedotcom Thanks Clive, I'm on the right track then. Enjoying learning this stuff. Thanks for all you do, I really enjoy your channel.
One of the first times i tried shaking solder of my soldering iron, the solder landed on my hand. The scar is around 1.5 Cm2
Nice one Clive, love the fact you only use 1 resistor, I'll have to make some but use the 5 outputs and 2 resistors (reset input switch) . The way you have the LED's wired you could use one every hour or so to measure the light level and only turn on at night. I love the 12F675 so can use the ADC or use the RC use tight loop
Great little project Clive, Many thanks
Don’t linger with your finger,
When you tin a pin.
-Big Clive
That's good advice, since it hurts like hell if you do. :D
"... or there'll be porky smells and smoke..."
If you ever consider selling these in this modified form, I would buy a TON of them! What you did is way beyond my capabilities
Thanks Clive for great video's and informative fun! You have inspired me to get back into electronics after recently watching almost ALL of your videos in a week after a operation on my sholder. These meteor lights are great and easy to build and l'm sure everyone who has made them appreciate your excellent design in the hex file (you did all the hard work..) I also loved that scripting led sign and just had to make one like it for work. Ill buy you a beer if ever I get over your way. Cheers, Greg (Australia)
Very pleasing display clive :-D
One of those tiny clicky switches from an old car radio or vcr could be glued to the chip, easy switch :-D
For me, i would have a turned pin socket for the pic, less chance of killing the chip with heat.
kynar wire is handy stuff too :-D
+zx8401ztv The bare chip allows it to be stuffed into a tube that is a good fit for the LEDs, but the prototype used a socket. Mainly so the chip could be transferred between it and the programmer.
+bigclivedotcom
If you wanted it tiny, surely a smd version of the chip on a tiny pcb would be thinner, but im sure you have thought about that option :-).
Dont forget that we are not you, we might make mistakes or find it hard to solder to the chip, or use too much heat, we might want to tinker with the software.
Remember that some of us are not as exact on soldering as you are.
I am, but others may not be. :-)
With the enamel wire I use a nail file to take it off then tin and go from there, if it interested.
+gigabytex64 Sounds more "Fudgery" than just burning it off.
+bluephreakr Not realy its 2mm wide and with 1 draw accross the suface of the wire its done, the enamel used retracts when heated but if it has been breached it cooks off real quick. Just lookup nail files on ebay its 1 dollar per 100 bag they come in all shapes and sizes because of the nail art people have done needing more complex designs.
Very cool! In fact, brilliant. You've got the force when you solder, I have toasted several/many ic's by directly soldering onto the legs. I dub thee Obi-Wan Kenobi of the electrons.
You should never admit that you peeked at your pic-it. I think I will try leaving the 'switch' lead just a bit longer so that when it's snipped and 'formed', they can be pushed together by squeezing whatever covers them. Like the 'button cell LED key' thingys. Might have to put dab of glue at the solder corners to keep the pins on the chip from flexing. I think this will be my first PIC project.
And for those that want to learn the terminology, driving the LEDs in this method is called charlieplexing (because it was proposed in 1995 by Charlie Allen at Maxim Integrated). Even though is was patented in 1979 as a "three-state signaling system".
Would be nice to show us how to properly make an remote 2ch box light switch or gate opener.
This is a very interesting project, and I see the suggested video for the ropelight construction, so I'll be watching that next.
It is indeed strange how the mind reacts to certain things. As I watch this, it take me back to Vietnam 1971 watching the fight for the Hi-van Pass north of Danang. We were stationed at Camp Haskins, between Danang and the pass, and at night we could and often did watch as the VC and NVA fired down from the mountain at the US troops, you see the Communist forces used a green tracer every 10th or 5th round, while the free forces used red tracers at the same spacing. So it was, we could watch the heavy machine guns firing away, and tracers keep burning after they impact, and as they glance off the ground or rock, they seemed to tumble off into space before burning out. So it came to mind that a fellow could build these out of sets of red and green LEDs to simulate the battle for the Hi-van pass. Would make an amazing display for my picture window on the 4th of July, Veterans Day and Memorial Day. I shall have to attempt to build some of these for just that purpose. Who knows if I get to go South again this year, which is becoming doubtful but I still have hopes, I could put them in the windshield of my motor home and have the battle displayed for my Arizona friends, and fellow vets who remember the war.
You and Mike of Mike's electric stuff are in a very similar business have you ever met or worked together?
Nice light Clive!
Your voice is so soothing and the info is cool to pick up on... You should make an ASMR video sometime.
I also thought about adding led's except i wondered how many sets of 12 that one pic could run in parallel
I remember falling afoul of the Read-Modify-Write problem of the small PICs back when I started with them years ago (I started with the poorly specced PIC16F84A - the only one Maplin had in stock in my local store (a few miles away from where your nice Grapefruit Gin's made, Hereford, where they have about 10 components in stock at any one time). It's so much easier on the newer PICs with a LATx register. However, it's simple enough to keep your own internally buffered GPIO register copy which you modify then write out en-masse.
Wow , great project. Thanks BC , the effects are great. i just built it with a dip 8 holder and a micro momentary Sw on the back. I had a small problem!!!! I found that it started in the middle ran to the bottom, back to the top and down to middle again. (Perhaps because im down under in the southern hemisphere?) If you look at the way it works all the tri state options are in the first 6 leds (AB to CD) then it repeats again but inversed, (BA to CD) the polarity is changed for the last 6. My board now starts at BA and finishes at CD and works perfectly now starting at top and finishing at the bottom. Good fun figuring it out. Thanks again big Clive, love your work, at play.
Could your LED polarity be wrong? Some Chinese LEDs (especially red) have their polarity reversed.
bigclivedotcom Hi, hmmm no, i tested continuatity A-A from wire going to pic down each 4 strings etc then ran down the strip while still in the board with a button cell, all good. Some one earlier mentioned this, sounded similar. I downloaded a fresh hex code and reburned it incase it had been corrupted. Same result. Im on my third string now, loving it. If i figure it out ill pass it on. I actually cut the first one in half and switched places and worked. Dont tell anyone! I check the Pic was right as i had different types, ( Julian I 's Projects.) Used a pickit 3 programmer on v 3.10 software. Using whites and blue flat tops and next Uv and white. All good.
Very nice effects! I am always happy when I can get my bigclive fix.
Regarding the iPad, if it has a flat back there is a tiny 2x telephoto lens that attaches to a little magnetic ring, which in turn sticks to the back of the iPad. I know I would be fine with half a second of wobbly image as you attach the lens. A quick search will find it. I've seen a 4x telelphoto lens too, I'm sure there will be reviews on here somewhere.
Cool project Clive, thank you and props on the coding. It's a shame you lost designs and other IP to 'piracy' over the years. Also I laughed as the Maplin PSU comment, amazing design feature.
+Jon Simmons (Neffers) Next time it happens I'm going to pull the leads out and video it in its crashed state. It's notable that Maplin removed the feedback from a customer who was raising the issue.
Really? The feedback should be listened to not deleted, shame on them. Maplin have gone downhill since I was a kid, I loved buying (!) their catalogue and reading it to death. Now I just see them selling import stuff we get from ebay and bangood for a ridiculous price. One such DMX addressable LED light that you can grab for around £18, they are asking £50.
Be sure to upload the results of the next crash to your channel and call them out on it. Bosnianbill (really good lockpicking channel) has been doing the same to Masterlock for ages now - they have tried cease and desist a few times, he still takes the piss out of them for their shoddyness.
Thanks again for the videos Clive. Nice to see a shout out to you from AvE too, another great guy / channel. Keep up the quality work, it's really appreciated, not to mention informative.
Big Clive should invent something and use crowd funding to fund the manufacturing since your designs are safer than designs in most china products
yippeee got right pic and made a set that worked first time cheers clive
Now you should try making RGB meteor lights!
What will help is if you use those digital LEDs, the ones with a control chip inside. They have power pins, a DIN (data in), and a DOUT (data out) pin. They basically work like shift registers. That would greatly simplify the wiring, but of course they cost a little more (not a huge amount more though).
+Benjamin “Ozias” Esposti The WS2812B chips would be ideal, but they really need a fast data stream which for a small processor is quite a task to keep up with.
+bigclivedotcom
Well the ATMEGA168/328's can do it. It's a bigger chip, but you don't need as many chips ... and just for the hell of it, you could use one of the QFP packaged ones for the small size (if you can solder to them. I could, it's not all that hard. You just need patience :P)
What bench power supply is it?
I've only ever had one, which is a typical 30V 3A programmable single channel but it'd be nice to get 3 or more channel one with a nice 5A or 10A output per channel. I know Dave EEVBlog has some really nice top of the range power supplies which are sent to him.
But like he's said in the past, no matter how much new bits of gear has been sent to him. It doesn't put food on the table.
That's great Clive. Thank you very much
Great stuff Clive.
Great video Clive, very clear instructions :)
I would love to see one in a RGB circuit. I can apply that to my Christmas sweaters and holiday sweaters. Just saying I made a Santa Claus hat with the basic LEDs using oscillating. I love to learn
Hi BigClive,
Finished my first DIY meteor light today. Amazingly it works - thanks for the video and code. I think it is cycling between displays - i don't know if that was intended or I have got some conductive crap on the wire switch. i bought the enamelled wire off eBay and no way will the soldering iron burn off the coating . I ended up using some coloured craft wire with a coating that smells like fish when you burn it off and is not a complete insulator more a high resistance. This leads to some interesting effects but properly spaced works fine. i will have to locate some different enamelled wire if I want to make a run of these for Christmas. But again thanks for the work you put into this. Regards Alan
The input is very sensitive so if you are handling the chip it may be triggering on your touch.
I find that I have to turn my soldering iron hotter than I normally have it in order to properly remove the enamel coating by tinning.
I like the way you use 4 lines to drive 12 LEDs. Would it be possible to publish the assembler source file and not just the hex file?
Clive is not going to give you his source code.
+Lester Electronics Why not? I thought I could learn something from the way the source is written. If I were desperate I could always disassemble the hex file.
+J S I understand what your saying. I always publish my source code on projects I do. Better ask Clive why he is only publishing hex and not source.
+Lester Electronics I always dislike publishing source because I consider my programming "messy". Mainly because it's generally improvised on the spot with just some rough doodles. I may go through it in a video later.
+bigclivedotcom That would be great!
Great video. I wasn't 'a member' of your channel back then yet and somehow skipped it during browsing older vids :(
27:30 is it just me or does something happen in the audio? Sounds like "pvvvfffff" after he says right.
You should add a binary counter effect
+Luke Den Hartog That would be so easy to do.
Do it. I would totally decorate my garage with it
Loved it Clive.
You could use the LED pins, and bend them to join adjacent pins of the same output where available? It would reduce the number of connections for the insulated wire. Example - the top 3 A pins all together, use the LED pins to join the 3 into one, and then connect the wire.
This is an amazing project. It's going to be the next thing I tackle after the ioniser (which I've completed and need to figure out how to contain it, cause I used 50 caps for it, it's long)
+Gadgetboy Did you make a 110V ioniser with a mutliplier? Does it work OK?
I did. It's actually scary to run at 220 because everything in the vicinity begins developing a sort of static charge and things stay grounding into each other.
+Gadgetboy All ionisers charge you up with an electrostatic charge of you go near the tips. But it's interesting to know that a 50 stage multiplier works on 110V. What capacitors did you use? 10nF or higher?
You've also made a handy electrostatic generator for when you need one.
I used the 100nF mains isolation caps you recommended on your website. I put the first part of the build on my channel if you wanna go over and make fun of how clumsy I am (i make a really noobish mistake halfway through the video).
+Gadgetboy Good result so far. That's a very long ioniser.
The sixth pin is used on the PIC32MX chips. And probably on others. I absolutely love the PIC32 chips. The only thing I find disappointing is that the PICKIT 3 doesn't have JTAG, though it does do debugging, it's pretty slow at it. However, having debugging on the base unit is a BIG step above Atmel's line.
What? AVR Dragon is the same price as Pickit 3 and it has debugging and high voltage parallel programming...
Jan Hlavatý I'm talking about the base units. AVRISP MKII. BTW the AVR Dragon is a piece of junk. I've had two of them, and they both mysteriously just stopped working. Atmel's "support" is absolutely terrible. I used to be an Atmel fanboy, but their junk programmers cured me of that. When I realized I was going to have to buy a JTAGICE III (of which there seem to be two different models, one cheap and one expensive, with no explanation what the difference is) just to get something reliable, I dropped Atmel like rotten potatoes. However, I'm far from a Microchip fanboy. I actually like Microchip & TI equally. The TI Tiva C chips are freaking fabulous, along with the PIC32MX.
+Aurelius R AVR Dragons had a problem when you touched them in certain place while powered on. Well thats what you get with naked PCB board...
My Dragon still works fine (touches esd safe wood) :) So does my Pickit2.
It's hardly fair comparison with Pickit 3 costing $47.95 and AVRISP mkII $9 ... Dragon costs more comparable $53.75
My only issue with Microchip has always been the crippleware compilers. I hope they will not do the same to Atmel now they bought it...
Jan Hlavatý What do you mean, crippleware compilers? the XC32 free compiler is amazing. I've never seen a single problem with it, fast and the libraries are more than most would ever need.
*****
The 8-bit PIC compilers are crippled by disabled optimizations and code size limits
Im going to give this a go! Properly interesting series 👍🏻
Love your videos! Top work :)
You could make a mold, build the project, test it and when everything works, you could pour clear quickset epoxy or resin into the mold and encase it. That would be so cool!
+Kirk Cross With white LEDs it's better to be able to access them for swapping out duffers.
Thank you so much for the quick reply! I'm still binge-watching, and I'm on the DIY glass LED filament lamp video. Good stuff!
I guess i could theoretically extend it to 24 or 36 by repeating the
pattern once right?
Of course including that the light pattern would also repeat.
And i just try to figure out if i could use this with RGB LEDs by
shifting the wires 1 pin for each LED and get some funky color changing
results.
I love funky stuff.
Do you still use PIC's, now 7 years later? Australian Electronics Magazine Silicone Chip is still using them for a lot of projects.
One idea that I had was a way to save that extra I/O pin. With tri-state multiplexing, the third state is as a high-impedence input. Could you use that as the state-setting input - use surrounding LEDs to pull the pin high, but short it low via a button - or vice versa, depending on where the threshold voltages are.
Ah, good old charlieplexing. I did a 7x8 LED display with that in high school. While I did not utilize the full amount of pins on the µC I used and my code was terrible. It ran decently fast even with terribly done interrupts for a i2c bus. I got a video of it on my channel if anyone is interested.
The PCB I made is also pretty terrible, but overall. I am impressed what you can do with these µCs. I had no experience with C programming when I started doing it, and with just some tutorials off of google and a bit of thinking you can go a long way.
If you made 2 or more of these with same chips, same program and same mode, what is the expected drift before they all go out of visual sync with eachother? Im quite keen to make a few to make a decorative 'retro computer' panel and the drift would be ideal as it would create a big random effect. Im trying to idea a single place for my 3 pc's with random lights/buttons in between each set in a wood workstation much like you see in 50's 60's scifi tv programs. I love the idea of those units/panels that just flash away all day with no function :)
The software introduces drift deliberately so they don't all just go in sync. If you select one of the random data modes then all the date being scrolled on the displays will be different from switch-on as the software deliberately stores a snapshot of the randomiser in non volatile memory whenever you press the select button, and then uses it to re-seed the randomiser at power up.
One slightly sneaky point I missed when I watched the video is that there's multiple routes for the current through the LEDs: For A-C, it can go A-B B-C as well as A-C. The only reason the A-B and B-C LEDs don't light is because the A-C LED effectively shorts them out.
I realised this when I built a partial breadboard with the LEDs and drove it from an arduino. I was slightly mystified why multiple LEDs lit up even though I was only driving pairs of LEDs.
could you pulse your out puts to op amps if you wanted to have several of these run at the same time? like for letters in a sign.
can you please share the actual program ? so that i can modify and remove few effects. and that self test mode. i want to make it for my bike brake lights.
Also - idea - have the first pattern after power on send the Ascii binary for Big Clive down the tube. Just because.
+Allison Pell Big Clive in Morse code.
Clive my 6 year old and I enjoyed, thanks!
can I ask if you could look at a pic12 program to do a 12 volt rail with strobe LEDs for light beacons on trucks. I have been planning on making a new strobe with 8 or 14 times 10 Watt LEDs mounted in a amber plastic housing. the problem I have is you can see the pattern from inside the cab unless your near a reflective surface... This makes it hard to monitor when you are on the a1 behind a broken down car...
Have you thought about chaining multiple of these? I know the software would get a lot more complicated for many effects (especially those where only the first/last LED in the string should do something special) and might not even fit in the memory anymore, but longer strings would be nice maybe.
Hi Clive, I really like these videos, any chance you would make a programming the pic controller video and show the code/assembly video?
klever
Is there a way to actually making the led fade or would this require more programming?
Great project , even for us novices. Would love to apply this to some decking type lights with a motion sensor down my path to guide visitors in, and scare the bejesus out of the cat.
Is the scanrate fast enough to allow any levels of greyscale at a fractional rate?
I did similar that with a 595 shift register once and it was quite reasonable to get 8 'bits' each at 255 levels of brightness by just masking the output against a looping counter
each loop increment counter, loop at 256
if the bit's value is greater than the counter, then output it, or mask it off accordingly.
Since the scanrate was in the kilohertz, I could expect 8 bits to pwm at a reasonable 400hz.
+frollard It could be used to give a number of intensity levels.
I made one with 5 wires/20 LEDs a while ago. It's on a standard perfboard, and the back is just a (somewhat logical looking) mess of wires.
Looking at this video at 130 am and cant stop watchin
I would suggest "J" hooking the LED leads onto the wire to make a more secure connection especially if your going to be stuffing them into a tube, less risk of breaking a solder joint.
Bit confused how you have wired the MCLR pin, Have you turned it off in config and assigned it as your switch input?
Big Thumbs Up.
+Mike James I've configured it as an input and tied it to the neighbouring pin which is a pulled-up input to park the MCLR pin without having to run a resistor to it.
I think if I were going to build one of these I'd use HC595s.. makes the software much simpler and you can infinitely extend the string with more HC595s!
do a lookup of the apa102 leds... they are rgb ... +5v gnd clock in/out and data in/out perfect as an uprade with some tweaking ?
About the IPad zoom issue, have you looked into the zoom lenses on ebay? That could be a find.. Another alternative for pretty decent macro image, is to somehow stick or hold the lens from a disposable camera to the camera on the IPad, I've tried it before and you do get some alright images, but you are still required to move the IPad closer with that.
recently i found a lot of sellers on ebay and aliexpress selling 4x3 led strobe kits.
they don't look bad for the price they cost.
the only problem that i found is that they have only 3 strobe settings.
do you think it is possible to change the strobe settings and replace them with custom ones?
For those wanting to use an Arduino instead of a PIC, Google Arduino attiny85 charlieplexing - Instructables
I suddenly realised that every time you were soldering and the smoke was coming up towards the camera, I found I was holding my breath.