I'm not sure if this is a good spot for it in the forums, but I have a question.
Does anyone know of a way, or a type of light that pulses, but in a wave form. It's hard to describe what I'm talking about without a specific word, which I lack.
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Imagine that that is the tube or whatever this type of light would be in the form of.
Now, imagine that the light starts at one end, and flows to the other, like this.
o--------------------------
-o-------------------------
And so on...
--------------------------o
And the position behind the start of the light slowly dims as the light travels, creating a tail effect to the light. Like a wisp or something.
Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Or am I just crazy?
For some reason, when I think of what I'm talking about, I imagine Star Trek... And the lights in some areas of the ship or on visors (possibly another scifi show from back in the day).
Edit:
Like this, only it goes to one end, then restarts at the point it began at.
It's not that hard to establish such an effect. What you use is the PWM output of a microcontroller of your choice, but an Arduino is a very good choice as there is a ton of documentation about it online.
Basically, pulse width modulation allows you to set the pulsation of the LED's to so fast that to the human eye it looks as if the LED is on all the time, then add waitstates so that it pulsates slower but still so that it looks on all the time just less intense, to adding long waitstates so that it's off until it has to light up again.
Depending on the length of the LED array, you could connect the LED's direct to the ports (mostly limited to 8, sometimes 16 ports), or, when you need more LED's, you have to control them with a control matrix, thus logically multiplying the number of ports, whereby the size of the matrix will depend on the number of LED's you need to drive.
This sounds like it will work for my build idea. Now to find some UV LED's that work on fluorescent paint....
Yes, things are coming together nicely...
One other question:
Using LED's, and assuming it's set to a relatively slow pulse, say, it takes 2-3 seconds for it to go from 1 end of a strip of LED's to the other when that strip is 1 foot long, will it be a smooth transition across the span of LED's or will it be block by block, LED to LED?
Will the transition from one to the other be noticable, I suppose is my question.
That will depend on your timing settings. You'll find the right settings for the right LED's and spacing between LED's etc on the web if you use a common microcontroller. When using the right settings, everything will be as smooth as butter.
Two tips: 1. don't use too crazily short timings, the reminiscence of LED's is quite large, if you use shorter timings it will be harder to tweak; 2. get LED-strips with individually driveable LED's or with a predefined control matrix (that is also documented so you don't have to reverse engineer it to find out what does what), or, even better, go online and order a bunch of LED's yourself. Super bright LED's re not that expensive anymore, even UV LED's, and they are easy to work with, you can even calculated the load resistor with a free Android app like Electrodroid, which would even let you simulate the circuitry before testing in real life, so you would know that it's right even before plugging in. If you don't use Android, you could get a free Google App for Chrome like CircuitLab or so, which will let you do the same.
If you're in Europe, maybe check out Banzai Electronics, the Berlin-based online shop, they have a lot of things at a good price, especially if you need a couple. Don't shop at Conrad, they're just expensive. I usually shop either at Banzai or at a local small electronics shop, because they can help me if I have questions about things, which can save quite a bit of time looking it all up on the web...
One other question that recently came up, are you suggesting that I purchase 1 strip of LED's or several separate LED's to allow this effect I want to occur?
One other poster on another forum mentioned that if I were to buy a basic LED strip, the best even an Arduino could do is turn that entire strip on and off, not each LED individually... Meaning I'd have to have many separate LED's which would mean lots of wires.
