Published February 8, 2025

Control LED Brightness and Blink Patterns with Arduino UNO

Unlock creativity with our Arduino project! Control LED brightness and blink patterns using a potentiometer and a push button.

BeginnerProtip124

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Arduino UNO

LED (generic)

Single Turn Potentiometer- 10k ohms

DFRobot Gravity:Digital Push Button (Yellow)

Resistor 220 ohm

Resistor 1k ohm

Virtual Breadboard VBBMicro 'Arduino UNO Avatar'

Digilent Analog Discovery Pro ADP5250: All-In-One 1GS/s 100MHz Mixed Signal Oscilloscope, Function Generator, Power Supply, and DMM

Software apps and online services

PCBX Online Simulation

Story

Introduction

This project demonstrates the use of an Arduino UNO, a potentiometer, a push button, and an oscilloscope to control the brightness and blinking pattern of an LED.

Description

The Arduino code initializes the pin modes and continuously reads the potentiometer's value to adjust the LED's brightness. It also checks the push button's state to toggle between two blinking modes. The analogWrite() function is used to set the LED's brightness.

The potentiometer's middle terminal voltage can be observed on an oscilloscope, showing a linear change as the knob is turned.

The push button's signal can be monitored to see the transition between LOW and HIGH states when pressed and released.

Start the simulation now, project code here.

Conclusion

This project successfully showcases how to use PCBX online simulation to control the brightness and blinking patterns of an LED using basic electronic components. By adapting the code further, you can add unique blinking patterns or connect additional LEDs.

Exploring these concepts through simulation is a fantastic way to solidify your understanding of electronics and Arduino programming.

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Code

Untitled file

const int potPin = A0; // The potentiometer is connected to analog input A0
const int buttonPin = 2; // The push button is connected to digital input pin 2
const int ledPin = 3; // The LED is connected to digital output pin 3

void setup() {
    pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT); // Set the LED pin to output mode
    pinMode(buttonPin, INPUT); // Set the push button pin to input mode
}

void loop() {
    int potValue = analogRead(potPin); // Read the value of the potentiometer (0-1023)
    int ledBrightness = map(potValue, 0, 1023, 0, 255); // Map the value of the potentiometer to 0-255

    if (digitalRead(buttonPin) == HIGH) {
        analogWrite(ledPin, ledBrightness); 
        delay(500);
        analogWrite(ledPin, 0);
        delay(500);
    }
    else
        analogWrite(ledPin, ledBrightness); 
}