/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>477784
In that case my advice to you is to build an astable 555 oscillator to blink an LED or make some square waves in a speaker. Its a great begginer project because you can add on to it once it's done.

You can use potentiometers to set variable speeds.

You can connect it to a MOSFET to make a really load noise or drive other large loads like high power leds or speed control motors.

You can use it as the clock signal for binary counters and shift registers and produce all kinds of creative patterns with LEDs.

>>470073
I highly recommend you build yourself some simple electronic circuits like a 555 LED blinker before going to an arduino. People who use an arduino for their very first projects end up relying on it for everything because they never learn basic electronics. It's like a child who uses a calculator instead of learning arithmetic then sucks at math for the rest of their life.

>>470074
Python is a pretty good introductory programming language, but its not used for microcontrollers. Arduino uses its own language called processing. Most other microcontrollers are programmed with C/asm.

Quad copters generally use brushless DC motors. You can salvage these from CD/DVD drives. They aren't like toy motors that just run when you apply power. You need driver circuit and some timing logic.

555 astable circuit is a good beginner project. You can use it to drive a speaker or flash an LED depending on the frequency set by the resistors and capacitor. There are plenty of fun ways to experiment and expand the project. For example using it as the clock input to a binary counter chip, using a potentiometer for variable frequency, a big MOSFET to drive some high power load like a lightbulb, etc.

Building a 555 circuit is a good beginner project. Start by flashing an LED and teach yourself the basics of current/voltage to calculate the right resistor. What's great is once you have this done you can have fun expanding it, like using the pulses to drive a binary counter, using potentiometers for variable frequency, or connect it to a big transistor to drive a motor or bulb.

Building a 555 astable multivibrator is a good beginner project. Once it's done you can expand on it a lot of ways: Connect it to some MOSFETS to drive motors or lightbulbs, hook it to a binary counter chip, etc.

You'll want to learn microcontrollers (programmable computer chips) eventually, but wait until you understand how to use the basic components first. I see a lot of hobbyists buying arduinos to accomplish the same job a couple D-flip flops would do, or failing to understand something simple like how a TTL IO pin can't directly drive a 12v 1A light, or that switches need pull down resistors.

So you're asking how to make these LEDs flash?: 555 astable multivibrator.

Those look like white LEDs, and I'm reasonably sure from the pics that they are in series groups of three. White LEDs are usually 3V 20ma, so I'd power them with a 9v battery and a 100 ohm resistor.