I know there is already a thread for homebrew lighting but it appears to be focused on headlights. I am trying to find a reasonable design for a rear blinker for my bike. I have found several links with pretty diagrams but with my limited knowledge of electronics, I'm not sure i trust some of them to be accurate. It is easy to post a diagram on the internet and say it will work, but i was unable to find pictures of the lights below accually constructed and in use.
For example:
http://www.redcircuits.com/Page24.htm
I like the compactness and the pattern these lights blink at but the resistors for the led's (10Ω) appear to me that they would turn most light emitting diodes into smoke emmiting diodes.
another example is
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homep...tm#555leds.gif
the 40LED flasher looks really neat but I do not understand how the second batch of lights flashes. When pin 3 (output) of the 555 goes high, it will trigger the upper transistor (2N3053) to complete the circuit and light the top segment of LED's. when the output current goes low, it seems that the second transistor (2N2905) would be unaffected and the lower set of lights will never come on? admittedly i do not know much about transistors and how they opperate.
the 10 LED sequencer at
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homep...htm#4017-2.gif
looks like a pretty good design that could be expanded to light multiple LED's for each output of the 4017IC. I have not built it yet, but I believe it has lots of possibilities for running various patterns in a simple compact circuit design.
If anyone else has links or pictures of wiring diagrams for use in building LED tail lights I'd love to see them.