PIC12F629 Based LED Strobe

Overview

The project uses a PIC12F629 microcontroller in order to drive a LED by creating a simple strobe.

Details

The LED flashes as the microcontroller sends control pulses to the LED with the use of an output transistor that has a maximum collector current of 100mA. This is enough to drive most types of 5mm LEDs since the PIC can only supply 25mA from its I/O pin. If desired, the PIC could be used to control a higher powered output switch. The options for changing the pulse width are provided by 4 jumpers along with single or double strobe flash, and strobe repeat interval. The values in the PIC’s EEPROM can be edited at programming time to easily customize the default timings of the programmer ready code.

The use of 555 timers can be faster than writing the PIC code but this is one of those applications that are better than a 555 timer. The interval of the strobe can be set to 1, 2, 3 or 4 seconds. The strobe can also be set on time of 30ms or 100ms. The two strobe modes include single and double pulse while the interval is being measured.