Hi all,
Just stumled across Picaxed and bought a starter kit that I have been playing about with. My background in electronics is only really what I learnt in GCSE physics however i work in IT hardware (managing staff who servicing laptop motherboards) so am familiar with common concepts but weak on the application side. I am fine on the programming side having programmed in 68K assembly many moons ago, Turbo C++ and many versions of Basics, again many moons ago but it all comes flooding back, so please bear with me if some of my questions sound stupid or obvious.
Ok now on to my requirements.
Basically I am trying to use the picaxe to control the logic of the buttons on the dashboard of a kit car. The buttons are illuminated and I want them to be dimmed in unpressed state and full brightnes in pressed state. To acheive this I want to use the PWM function of the Picaxe to supply the voltage for the dimmed state. However the LED's are 12V and the picaxe is 5v.
How would I go about making the PWM work on a 12v line? My idea is to have a single 12v feed that connects about 8 switches with LED's in parallel off this PWM-OUT from Picaxe. I've stumbled across similar applications using transistors or mosfets etc but not sure exactly which components are the correct ones or what the configuration is, and what protection if any needs to be applied to the Picaxe pin side. Any help would be appreciated.
Just stumled across Picaxed and bought a starter kit that I have been playing about with. My background in electronics is only really what I learnt in GCSE physics however i work in IT hardware (managing staff who servicing laptop motherboards) so am familiar with common concepts but weak on the application side. I am fine on the programming side having programmed in 68K assembly many moons ago, Turbo C++ and many versions of Basics, again many moons ago but it all comes flooding back, so please bear with me if some of my questions sound stupid or obvious.
Ok now on to my requirements.
Basically I am trying to use the picaxe to control the logic of the buttons on the dashboard of a kit car. The buttons are illuminated and I want them to be dimmed in unpressed state and full brightnes in pressed state. To acheive this I want to use the PWM function of the Picaxe to supply the voltage for the dimmed state. However the LED's are 12V and the picaxe is 5v.
How would I go about making the PWM work on a 12v line? My idea is to have a single 12v feed that connects about 8 switches with LED's in parallel off this PWM-OUT from Picaxe. I've stumbled across similar applications using transistors or mosfets etc but not sure exactly which components are the correct ones or what the configuration is, and what protection if any needs to be applied to the Picaxe pin side. Any help would be appreciated.
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