8-bit LED indicator

Name: 8-bit LED indicator
SKU: 590
Price: 4.50 USD
Availability: Discontinued
Rating: 4.75 (6 reviews)

(6 Reviews)

8-bit LED indicator for breadboarding

Designed by madworm in Germany

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2014-01-27T19:55:09.716Z-16 LEDs on black PCB.jpg

2014-01-27T19:55:09.716Z-Lighting up.jpg

Due to being rather busy with "life" as such, I can only ship once a week.

8-bit LED indicator for breadboarding

8-bit LED indicator Sometimes you just can't beat having a couple of LEDs at hand that you don't have to wire up with resistors and millions of wires. These here just work in either common-anode or …

8-bit LED indicator

Sometimes you just can't beat having a couple of LEDs at hand that you don't have to wire up with resistors and millions of wires. These here just work in either common-anode or common-cathode configuration. Plug the board into the breadboard and simply connect the common pin to GND or the positive supply voltage and drive the individual LEDs by sourcing or sinking current. It's up to you ;-)

Why 2 rows of LEDs for only 8 channels? Simple! If you use the common-anode configuration, one row lights up. If you use the common-cathode configuration, the other row lights up. This eliminates the need to do any rewiring on the indicator board itself. It just works.

Assembly:

The LED orientation doesn't really matter, as long as it is the same for all of them. If you want a certain row to light up when wired up in a certain way, solder the resistor-arrays first and use one of the SMD LEDs to probe for the correct orientation. Use plenty of flux. Paste / gel usually works better than flux-pens.

Specs:

max. 7V supply voltage (or 5mA per LED)
onboard current limiting resistor arrays
amber / yellow LEDs
black PCB

Updates:

March 22nd: Had a lot of fun (haha) assembling and testing some boards.
March 10th: Still waiting for the circuit boards...

Review Breakdown

Average Ratings

Product: (4.67)

Documentation: (4.33)

Shipping: (5.00)

Communication: (5.00)

Trevor | June 3, 2015

8 way LED indicators

The 8 way LED indicator parts arrived VERY WELL packed downunder in just 16 days. Soldering the 0805 SMD LEDs was easy with a soldering iron and fine tip along with the obligatory magnifier light for us over 55s. Soldering the 1206 sized network resistors was considerably more challenging, despite being larger than the LEDs they each have four connections per side. Not for the faint hearted!

My first smoke test revealed two bridged connections on one resistor pack and three on the other. Some judicious soldering iron poking and 2mm solder braid fixed the issue.

An extra four LEDs (I ordered four boards) were provided which was a nice touch, though I'd have preferred a spare network resistor instead (not something I have any of, though I have plenty of the more common SMD LEDs and in fact used a green LED in the second row instead of amber to make life easier).

The completed board is a very nice addition for checking microcontroller pins, especially after hand soldering 100 pin SMD PICs to breakout boards! Good quality product.

Response from madworm | June 5, 2015

Thank You for the detailed review!

Some time ago I chose to add extra LEDs, as I had destroyed a couple myself during the early stages of this little device. Interestingly none of the resistor networks died, no matter how much I abused them ;-)

Jan | Feb. 26, 2015

Pretty cool LED indicator

I really like this 8 bit LED indicator - as it says in the tin: no worries about anode/cathode, either one or the other row works. For even more fun, wire the 9th pin to a microcontroller pin and change rows on the fly!

The kit was quite fun to solder. I didn't even destroy any of the parts, but the two spare LEDs are appreciated - Thanks!

One explicit instruction which would put my mind at ease before soldering: it doesn't matter which way the LEDs point, as long as they all point in the same direction ( - I hope that I understood the schematic and my multimeter readings correctly).

Response from madworm | March 5, 2015

LED orientation... that's actually in the description!

And I promise, I didn't just insert it :-)

Garrett | Jan. 27, 2015

Very nice and useful product, quite reasonably priced

I put together a crude, bigger, less versatile (only one set of LEDs) version of this product for my own breadboarding. Found this, but was put off by the by-hand surface-mount soldering; I've done a lot of through-hole, but assumed it was beyond my abilities. I decided to get some as a first SMT project, because they'd be so useful in my tinkering and it would be a fair investment to screw a couple up learning what I was doing. I managed to somewhat screw up the first one (15 of the 16 LEDs worked okay), but managed to crank out 11 of them this evening, all working perfectly (but not as pretty as the examples, of course). Good project for an intro to surface mount soldering.

Dave | May 2, 2014

Works as advertized!

SMT soldering is not for the faint of heart, but it's doable. I ordered two just in case I borked one up, and sure enough I did :-) But it works and it works well.

It works great on a breadboard, but to plug it into one of the Arduino's ports I'd recommend soldering the common pin from the other side so you can use a wire to connect it to ground (or 5V, whichever you prefer).

Response from madworm | May 2, 2014

Should I add an option for spare parts? I assume you burned a couple of LEDs.

Michael | Jan. 7, 2014

8-bit LED indicator

I just got the 8-bit LED indicator and it works fine. I bought it because it gets tedious adding LEDs and resistors for status lights when I'm doing work on a breadboard. I have another version of a multi-LED indicator that has the ground pins separated by 0.3", which doesn't work as well in some breadboards, because the ground pins aren't aligned to the data pins. This LED indicator just uses another pin in the same row, and it gives you flexibility to use it as common anode or common cathode.

Response from madworm | Jan. 17, 2014

May it serve you well!

Uwe | June 25, 2013

Very helpful

For prototyping :). See the video on eevblog: http://www.eevblog.com/2013/06/04/eevblog-477-mailbag/ starting at 9:50

Response from madworm | Dec. 9, 2013

Glad you like it.

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madworm

Finsing, Bayern, Germany

Ships from Germany.

22 Reviews | 359 Orders

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8-bit LED indicator

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Assembly:

Specs:

Updates:

Review Breakdown

Average Ratings

8 way LED indicators

Response from madworm | June 5, 2015

Pretty cool LED indicator

Response from madworm | March 5, 2015

Very nice and useful product, quite reasonably priced

Works as advertized!

Response from madworm | May 2, 2014

8-bit LED indicator

Response from madworm | Jan. 17, 2014

Very helpful

Response from madworm | Dec. 9, 2013

madworm

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