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Blinken LEDs, and lots of them

Despite all of my earnest blogging about fancy circuits and exotic components, at the heart of my electronics obsession is just the love of blinking LEDs. This is thanks mainly to Big Clive and a host of other influences online that use "der Blinkenlichten" to either illustrate their work, or to test if various circuits are working. And I follow their LEaD.

The more interesting an LED, the more I have to have it in the buckets. It is true that a blinking light is a delight when testing a microcontroller or circuit because:

1. if the light blinks, then there is contact between the programmer and the μC
2. if the light blinks when you want it to, then the timing of the chip and/or code is correct, and finally
3. they look pretty

I have two rather indulgently full buckets devoted to LEDs, one bucket which is for single lights and the other for LED strips. Looking the other day at the single lights bucket I gathered a few and planted them on a breadboard for your my pleasure.

Just add juice

I will write on this blog at some point in the future about how I put together the "candle" 5050 yellow LEDs as it is a worthwhile construction process, but for this blog I have chosen some simpler lights which can be used pretty much out of the bag.

Mostly these little guys are multi-coloured, and some have a few surprises, but I will let you judge their worthiness in the following video - enjoy!