LED Chaser - Falling Meteor Shower Light

As a maker i always get up in making something or the other when ever i am free,recently we had Diwali in India.Diwali is one of the largest and brightest festivals in India. The festival spiritually signifies the victory of light over darkness, knowledge over ignorance, good over evil, and hope over despair.Its celebration includes millions of lights shining on housetops, outside doors and windows, around temples and other buildings in the communities and countries where it is observed.The festival preparations and rituals typically extend over a five day period, but the main festival night of Diwali coincides with the darkest, new moon night of the Hindu Lunisolar month Kartika. In the Gregorian calendar, Diwali night falls between mid-October and mid-November.

So i planned to make one of favorite Decoration Light, falling Led or falling meteors Light.

This lights come for around 350 INR or 7$ in my local stores,this can be easily made by a micro-controller
,but i really wanted it to be geeky,and cheap, so made thing that was lying useless in my workshop.

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Basically i had many of my things already at my workshop.
The List is

1. 555 IC(Timer 555)
2. 4017 IC (decade Counter)
3. 10 mm Led
4. Wires
5. perfboard
6. Wire Housing
7. AA Battery
8. Dual AA battery holder

Tools that you will need

1. Soldering Iron
2. Solder
3. Dremel or and Drill with 0.8 mm bit
4. Third hand

The led holder is made from a wire hosing which i found at my uncle's shop.He has a electrical shop.
I first planned to make it on a plywood but housing was better as the wires can be hidden inside the the housing,
I took the housing divided it into 10 division and and made a mark where i need to drill holes to put the leads of LED.

I used 0.8 mm to drill the holes for the lead of the Led,in the housing to keep every led in place i had already chalked out the position of drill before hand.i kept a distance of 40 mm between two leds.

This is the most time consuming step.
you have to place all the led correctly,i mean cathode facing the same side in every position.
now connect all the and with each other through wires.you need to solder all this joint.Then you need to connect all the other led cathode to wire pull it out of the end of the housing.
i had little problem with wires as it was reused.
after the all the wires have been solder it time to proceed to next step.

The circuit has two part in it

• The timer 555.
  • The timer 555 is an integrated circuit (chip) used in a variety of timer, pulse generation, and oscillator applications. The 555 can be used to provide time delays, as an oscillator, and as a flip-flop element. Derivatives provide up to four timing circuits in one package.
  • The Timer is used in astable mode of operation .The frequency of which is determined by the formula:

  • f =1/(ln(2)*C*(R1+R2))

  • i took a 4.7 uF Capacitor with 10k pot and a fixed resistance the value of which i forgot :P

• The Decade Counter 4017

  • The 4017 decade counter has ten outputs which go HIGH in sequence when a source of pulses is connected to the CLOCK input and when suitable logic levels are applied to the RESET and ENABLE inputs.

  • It takes input clock signal and increment the counter value and gives output by decoding the output and displaying in decimal form

Since 10 different wire come out of the counter we need to fit all the output wires inside the casing we had,
to do this we need to pack all the wires together with insulating electric tapes.
Best would be if you have heat shrink tubes. never the less tapes had did the job well .
After taping it (or heat shrinking the tubes) i fit the wires inside the case carefully.

Then close the back of the case.

To attach the circuit board to the case i used some double sided tapes.
i admit that i would have been better if i had used some casing for the circuit also.but i did not had any case of that dimension at that time. so this was bare .i used two AA battery for the power supply and attached it to the case. as well.