The Electronics Project.

While I was browsing around the MAPLIN store looking to see what sort of stock they kept in, I came across these handy little bits of kit called a BREADBOARD, there is two joined together and shown below.

These enable you to construct various circuits and also the ability to change things around or fit extra bits if required and so making up various circuits using IC's, resistors, led's and link wires to link up the various parts.

The two Breadboard's joined up.

Once you've knocked up your circuit on your breadboard and tested it out, you can make it more permanent by using VERO Board shown below, then you simply cut the tracks to allow you to connect the various parts of your circuit, or you can make you own custom PCB ( Printed Circuit Boards ) using some photo sensitive Copper clad PCB, and then you etch off all the excess copper leaving your track design behind.

I've done it both ways at College and so the VERO Board option is good for begineers but harder to work out which bits of track you need to cut and you normally end up joining bits of track up again with solder or wire.

The Final version of the slightly modified Police Lights circuit, the RED and the Blue Lights flash alternately just like the real things and I modified it again later after watching some other people's using White LED's in the middle which looks pretty cool as well.

Police Lights Project using a 555 timer and 4017 Decade Counter.

The completed project which didn't work first time, but I had it sorted in a couple of minutes consulting the schematic drawing of the circuit.

Once I'd got it working with the help of my trusty multimeter and a power source and LED  I had also used on the power rails of the the breadboard to indicate power on all rails, I decided to try and add some more LED's to make up three RED and three BLUE.

Looking good here but this was based on the original design.

I lowered the resistors values on the blue LED's as they were not as bright as the RED ones.

A closer look at component level.

The two IC's 555 Timer is left and 4017 Decade Counter is right.