Friday 25 April 2014

capacitor - How do I make this LED flasher more sensitive?


I'm making a circuit which will change brightness level of an LED in tune with music. So far, this is producing some results, but I'm not very satisfied with it:


circuit If it matters, the forward voltage of the LED is around 2.5 V.


The light output of the LED is good enough for me, but the circuit isn't sensitive enough for my taste. The AC source is the speaker port of my radio and the 10 mF capacitor is used to provide AC coupling. I started with a 100 nF ceramic capacitor (the idea came after reading the audio coupling capacitors question), but it gave almost no response. I tried with various other capacitors I have available and when I got into the microfarad range, it got somewhat better. Now I'm at 10 mF and it seems like 20 mF would be just right, but I'm supposed to make several of this devices and the 10 mF capacitors are just too big and expensive (especially since I'd need 2 per device) for this to work.


Right now I'm considering moving to BC546C which should give me higher \$ \beta\$ (420 minimum (up to 800) compared to 300 which I have in my transistor right now), but I'm afraid that it will make too big impact at the current of the LED and change its brightness level which is now just right.



So how do I make this thing more sensitive other than by throwing bigger capacitors at it?



Answer



You could try a lower value for R3, for instance 470 or 220 ohm. (edit) I mentioned R2, but I meant R3!


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