Cylon

About a week ago I've decided to build the cylon-lights project from parts laying around the house (apparently I'm really good at getting more parts than I need for a project)...

Anywho ... I'm going by the Cylon-O-Lantern design, because it seemed pretty straight forward, and I'm sure I had all the stuff sitting around.

Found a 555, the of 4017's and a bag of led's & resitors and started hacking away... But after searching my stock-pile and my dad's only found 4 appropriate diodes. I have no suitable capacitors either so I found a bunch in a beat-up non-functional DVD player, But they're friggin impossible to un-solder :-(

So I had to break down & head out to radioShack... Grabbed a new tin of flux, a bunch of diodes, and a solder-sucker (I usually use braid) ... Still no luck on those caps though, Where does the 'Industry' get this super-solder !! it's driving me nuts ... Hopefully someday I'll get the caps off that damn board and finish this up for my super-evil plans...

By the way, the basics of this circuit (as in not connecting it to 6 leds) can be built into a pretty mean step-sequencer for DIY synths by connecting it thusly:

The pots all connect to one LED to control its brightness, which in turn controls the resistor's value makeing it play a simple melody.