Chasing LEDs


Building a set of chasing LED's is a simple process. Only thing you got to do is have the idea in your head. Before this, a must know is the LED's themselves.

A LED comprises of two semi conducting material joined together. The most commonly used semi conductor materials are made of aluminum, gallium and arsenide. The battery power terminals are soldered at the two ends. Care should be taken when fixing the terminals for power. The power is to be connected to the marked terminals, the "P" end for the positive end and the "N" type for the negative end. By this, when power supply is passed through this circuit, the LED lights up. If the power supply is supplied through the reverse direction, there will be no illumination. This is a property of the light emitting diode.

For your chasing LED's set some set of tools are required. And along with this of course LED's and some wire connectors. If you plan to run the set off chasing LED's out of a box then, you got to drill holes in the box to set the array of LED's in the box. For this you got to build a basic set of the controller board. The controller board is a very standard and simple "All electronics brand LED chaser kit. This board is basically designed for accommodating a 9 volt battery pack. Further it is able to support only up to 10 LED's. If you take out the primary resistor then you can run it on a 12 volt battery and this can support up to 44 LED's. The controller is wired up to the circuit. Now the wiring takes up quite a lot of wire. The controller works by powering 10 different circuits in sequence. So now the eleventh LED's is in the same circuit as the first LED.
This is a continuous and cyclic process.

Now when the circuit is put on the controller works in such a way that when the first LED is on the previous LED (in the same circuit only) goes off. This is a sequential process. And the next LED that is working at the moment is the 11th LED. So at any time if there are four set of LED's then the one's that are illuminating are the first, the twelfth, the twenty third and the thirty third. When this goes off, the one's that are illuminated are the second, the thirteenth, the twenty fourth and the thirty fourth.

There are a few companies that are going in to production of these LED's modes. They set up the wiring of sequencing LED's and as well as chasing LED's. There are also wiring sets that are able to do both of these actions. The circuit is incorporated with a change over switch which makes this possible.

DAV electronics is a pioneer in the field of building LED circuits. They are able to do the sequencing bit as well as the chasing bit. They have standard kits for their models. All that is involved is the work to install the LED's and you can get chasing LED's.