Question

If you wanted an LED to flash more or less in a circuit, how would this be done?

Answer 1

LED brightness is controlled by regulating the input power or current. Higher the input current to LED higher will be its brightness, lower the current lesser the brightness. There are two different means to achieve this:

1) The first one and the simple one is to use a variable resistor in between battery (supply) and LED. Increase the resistance, current gets reduced, thus reduces the brightness. Decrease the resistance, current increases and so does brightness.

2) Second and very complex process to do this is, use a microcontroller with pulse width modulation. A microcontroller essentially provides 1/0 supply. But if pulse width modulation is used along with the controller then the width of input pulse can be used to regulate the duty cycle, thus limiting the supply in different ratios and giving controllable brightness for the LED.

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