About radio control car lighting and resistors

Jan 10
10:05

2012

LiuJiajia

LiuJiajia

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Every radio control car system is different but each car deserves top lighting. The required voltage on the pins of the LED also varies from one model to another, but 2V is a fairly good value for a red LED as the one normally used.

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When focusing on radio control car lighting,About radio control car lighting and resistors Articles you will be amazed. Now, everything is very well explained to light an LED, but our segment, to be visible must contain at least 3 or 4 LEDs (or more). The chosen number of LEDs connected in series, a cathode electrically coupled to the cathode of the next, and so on. This means that the current running through them to all be the same, and the applied voltage must be greater than the voltage required on each (2V) by the number of LEDs.

The LEDs will be connected in series, and the formula for calculating the limiting resistor. In the case of using the same power supply of 12V, the required strength will be of 400 ohms. Again, when looking in a catalog we see that the nearest available value is 390 ohms, and that the practices employed.

How to connect several LEDs in series?

It is imperative to keep the value of R will be negative, which of course is a incongruity. This is telling us that the voltage of the power supply is insufficient for many radio control car LED lighting, and we use a higher voltage. In our display, each segment consists of three LEDs.

Once we have the necessary theory on how to build a segment, we take the next logical step: the construction of a digit. In fact, one digit is nothing more than repeat the pattern of a segment 7 times. But (unfortunately there is always a "but") if we intend to control our giant digit from the PC or a microcontroller, we need some additional stage, able to handle the consumption of a high number of LEDs, and if possible, without requiring pin I / S of the few available to handle each segment.

Microcontroller and transistor

Moreover, a pair of transistors will allow handling multiple LEDs. The problem of handling a higher current than is able to provide the PC and the radio control car microcontroller is easily solved by using a transistor. Although many readers of this article are certainly very clear what we will try to explain in simple terms and without involving complicated formulas and use a transistor to drive a series of LEDs. Explained in simple terms, a transistor can be viewed as a three-pin device, where the current is applied to one of them is called "base" controls a larger current between its two terminals, called "sender" and "collector ".

This is a great simplification of what is a radio control car transistor, but it is enough to understand how the system works.