Published September 23, 2020 © MIT

LED Tower

Made a LED tower with 180 LEDs and used Pro Micro in order to control them in sequence.

AdvancedFull instructions provided5 hours7,209

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Arduino Micro

LED (generic)

180

UTSOURCE Electronic Parts

Software apps and online services

Arduino IDE

Story

So I was browsing Thingiverse for LEDs Jigs and found this great JIG designed by Mohit Bhote https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3147406

I look at it and I was like I have to make an LED tower with this! so I did.

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Thanks UTSOURCE.net to offer electronic components for this project! you can check UTSOURCE.net they deal in all kinds of electronics components like for example all the Components used in this project!

Watch the video for the tutorial-

Part 1-

Part 2-

it covers the Basic Built which is the SOLDERING PROCESS

after the soldering process, we get this huge 10 Levels LED TOWER

I soldered these led according to this scheme-

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Positive terminals of all these LEDs are connected common and the Ground terminal of each layer is separated.

WHY? because the Ground pin of the LED Tower will connect with the Collector of the Transistor and the microcontroller will control the Base of the Transistor.

Each LED LAYER has 18 LEDs in total connected in parallel, a normal Arduino I/O pins is not powerful enough to drive this so using an external MOSFET is ideal.

SETUP

so I made this PCB which have 10 2SC6120 NPN Transistor connected in "Transistor as Switch" setup along with 20 10K Resistors.

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I made it in Orcad cadence and then etched it with the Generic etching solution (with Ferric Chloride Powder)

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after assembling the circuit, we just need to hook it up on a breadboard

with an Arduino board, In this case, an Arduino micro.

CODE-

Upload the sketch attached

For powering this setup, I'm using 3.7V Lithium io cell,

RESULT-

ok so here's the result!

this is how you can build and program an LED TOWER, it's like an LED CUBE but a much easier thing to make and it also requires less led.

well yes, we can program or alter the code in order to get various patterns in animations...

Code

Chaser sketch

int pinsCount=10;                        // declaring the integer variable pinsCount
int pins[] = {2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,16};          // declaring the array pins[]


void setup() {                
  for (int i=0; i<pinsCount; i=i+1){    // counting the variable i from 0 to 9
    pinMode(pins[i], OUTPUT);       
    // initialising the pin at index i of the array of pins as OUTPUT
  }
}
 
void loop() {
  for (int i=0; i<pinsCount; i=i+1){    // chasing right
    digitalWrite(pins[i], HIGH);         // switching the LED at index i on
    delay(50);                          // stopping the program for 100 milliseconds
    digitalWrite(pins[i], LOW);          // switching the LED at index i off
  }
  for (int i=pinsCount-1; i>0; i=i-1){   // chasing left (except the outer leds)
    digitalWrite(pins[i], HIGH);         // switching the LED at index i on
    delay(50);                          // stopping the program for 100 milliseconds
    digitalWrite(pins[i], LOW);          // switching the LED at index i off
  }

{
    digitalWrite(2, LOW);
    digitalWrite(3, LOW);
    digitalWrite(4, LOW);
    digitalWrite(5, LOW);
    digitalWrite(6, LOW);
    digitalWrite(7, LOW);
    digitalWrite(8, LOW);
    digitalWrite(9, LOW);
    digitalWrite(10, LOW);
    digitalWrite(16, LOW);
    delay(1000);
    digitalWrite(2, HIGH);
    digitalWrite(3, HIGH);
    digitalWrite(4, HIGH);
    digitalWrite(5, HIGH);
    digitalWrite(6, HIGH);
    digitalWrite(7, HIGH);
    digitalWrite(8, HIGH);
    digitalWrite(9, HIGH);
    digitalWrite(10,HIGH);
    digitalWrite(16,HIGH);
    delay(1000);
    
}
}

Credits

Arnov Sharma

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Just your average MAKER

LED Tower

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Software apps and online services

Story

SETUP

CODE-

RESULT-

Schematics

SCH for LED Matrix

Code

Chaser sketch

Credits

Arnov Sharma

Comments

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LED Tower

LED Tower

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Software apps and online services

Story

SETUP

CODE-

RESULT-

Schematics

SCH for LED Matrix

Code

Chaser sketch

Credits

Arnov Sharma

Comments

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