petrus bitbyter wrote:
Chris,
What kind of lights do you want to switch? It makes a lot of
difference whether you want to switch a LED (~40mW) or a 100W
incandescent bulb.
For the first application I just want to switch 1 or maybe 2 LED's
hooked in parallel. They could be of different colors and therefore
different voltages so I am guessing even for just one led on each line I
probably need some kind of a driver so I can match the voltage and
current for each load. Future applications will need to switch around
10W lights, probably in the form of groups of LEDs, on and off.
LEDs can be controlled easily using electronics and that's where the
flip-flop appears. You need a so called T-flipflop but they are not
very common. Use an D-type flipflop instead and connect the inverted
Q-output (/Q) to the D-input. Every pulse on the clock input will make
the flipflop change state. So a pushbutton on that input will
theoretically do the job. But a flipflop is a high speed switching
device and will see a lot of pulses every time you push and you can
not predict the last one. So you need to debounce your pushbutton
carefully which requires some extra electronics.
After some more reading on flip flops I figured this out on my own. If
you read my post in 2-14-2005, you can read more about my application.
What I would really like to find is an IC with as many as 16 D flip
flops that are already wired up like you described. I don't suppose
finding that is likely?
Of course you can use a microcontoller as wel. Microchip sells 6 pins
ones these days and the only extra components you need is the
pushbutton, the LED and maybe two resistors. The problem of course is
skills and equipment to program them.
I'm thinking about getting one of the RABBIT modules, that way I don't
think I need a separate programmer do I?
--
Chris W
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