Trying It Out

We’re sure that after spending hours stringing LEDs, you’re eager to see the fruits of your labors. (We were!) Whether you followed our lead and created dolphins or got creative with some other shape, it’s time to turn on your lighting display.

You can either lean the display against a wall or hang it as you would a larg picture; then enjoy the show at your next dance party.

There aren’t many steps to getting this project going:

That’s it! Your dolphins will begin dancing across the wall in timed sequence.

Here are the obvious things to check out if you’re having a problem:

All the batteries are fresh and tight in the battery pack and also face the right direction.

If one dolphin in the group doesn’t function, check its wiring.

If one or two LEDs aren’t working, replace them.

If two LEDs in series with each other aren’t functioning, you might have reversed the long and short leads of the LEDs. If so, it’s easiest to just replace that pair.

Aren’t dancing dolphins just so cool? You can morph these guys into something else or expand their functionality in a few different ways:

Change the stencils to create whatever your heart desires.

Santa and his reindeer, or swans, or leaping lizards come to mind.

You can create larger figures or make up to ten figures.

However, we wouldn’t suggest using more LEDs than we used here to outline them because that would drain the batteries too quickly or possibly cause the 2N3053 transistors to overheat.

Get your dolphins chattering in sequence.

You could add sound by using a sound chip, as we show you in Chapter 14.

Use a SpeakJet sound synthesizer chip (like we show you in Chapter 7) to have each dolphin make a unique sound, giving each a distinctive personality.

Tie an output pin of the decade counter to an event pin on the SpeakJet sound synthesizer chip in parallel with the transistor for the LEDs. Program the SpeakJet to trigger an event when it goes from low to high. When a dolphin lights up, it triggers the sound for that pin.