Electronics > Beginners
Making an analog bar graph voltmeter 1-10V using 10 LEDs
StuartA:
The Velleman company make a kit for an audio VU meter using LED's and dicrete componenets, see http://www.velleman.co.uk/contents/en-uk/p41.html The manual for it shows the circuit diagram (which is probably copyright, so not shown here). That might form the basis for what you want. I have built that kit and it works well.
S
mikerj:
--- Quote from: blueskull on July 09, 2019, 04:31:06 am ---Nowadays the cheapest way would be to use a cheap MCU (with an IO-based dual slope ADC, no hardware ADC/DAC/COMP/PWM needed) to implement LM3914.
--- End quote ---
As much as I feel a little sad (or maybe just nostalgic) that small micros have replaced so many functions these days I have to agree, even micros with built in 8-10bit ADC are very cheap. This also gives the options of features such as peak hold, custom scaling etc.
ledtester:
In the January 1980 issue of Popular Electronics Forrest Mims describes how he used a simple chain of LEDs to get a bar graph display of a voltage.
See pp 77-80 (starting on page 73 in the PDF) in:
https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Poptronics/80s/1980/Poptronics-1980-01.pdf
Update: The article mentions a "Gregory Kovacs, a student at Eric Hamber Secondary School in Vancouver, British Columbia" who built a oscilloscope based on the ideas in the article and it even had a storage capability. A quick google search reveals the person is most likely this Professor Emeritus at Stanford:
https://engineering.stanford.edu/people/gregory-kovacs
shanezampire:
Is that the same thing as something like - https://www.vellemanusa.com/products/view/?country=us&lang=enu&id=350546
The leds light as more power is given
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