[Swansea Hackspace] ok wont be in.

[Ian Bullfrog]

Graham:
ha! *fix the camera*
?
yes Im sure Justin wouldnt have had a sense of humour failure to find 
someone tinkering with his hardware...
*blue tac.....glue.....cable snips...and now Ill just reboot his router 
and...oh......why didnt someone tell me about that ?*
:D

and no reason on the ARDUINO apart from me having one and thought Id 
just actually use it! to check out my pwm theory. then yeah move onto 
the pic or suchlike and wow. is the 555 still going? thats amazing. the 
very first test equipment I built for Lucas when doing my apprenticeship 
was a fuel and temp guage calibration unit for their bimetallic 
meters...and I used one of those. perfect......except that..... every so 
often... they would just explode!
I never got to the bottom of that and so my test kit never made it to 
the shop floor. but it was an experience

and id like then to use the Pic, just to do the whole programming thing

and yes! multicolour LED sounds like a fab idea... but currently ive got 
the superbright LED hes given me, Ill try and get the datasheet...and a 
pot! since thats how he was going to do it.
    My cousin keeps bees (he also builds the hives....a 
scythe...converted alternators into wind gennies, built model ships, 
lamps, honey extractors (hand driven centrifuge based on an old 
mangle!!!), basically anything that takes his fancy from just about any 
field that takes his fancy)  he really is a hacker ...but doesnt know it.
and.... to sell honey as a specific honey...ie, heather 
honey...chestnut... the pollen count has to be over 75% from that plant.
so! he wants to be able to check the honey (after having built another 
device he is designing...another sort of cenrifuge to hooof all the 
pollen to one side of the honey for examination) hence the super light!
    It would be interesting to see if different lights show different 
pollens up differently ! :)
so good brain food. cheers.

is there a RGB high intensity LED or suchlike available in the space for 
tinkering with?
or do you recommend a particular one for such like.
having said that.....high intensity nowadays....is probably bog standard 
LEDs compared to the ones we used to use.

with regards 555 timer and instructables site, I found this
http://www.instructables.com/id/PWM-Lamp-Dimmer-using-NE555-Timer/
but for low intensity.

and

Ceri:
cheers for the concise circuit description :P :D hee eh
I have never used FETs, normal trannies yeah. I looked at some circuits 
on Instructables. one had an FET..but wierd!
it sort of bypassed the LEDS... not what I was expecting. and then gave  
a link to a slide show that was quite interesting.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Dimming-an-LED-lamp-with-an-Arduino/

and this is the presentation he links to to explain it
http://www.rotormind.com/blog/2010/Sunglasses-at-Night-or-How-to-Drive-High-Current-LEDs/

and then I noticed this
http://www.instructables.com/id/Aurora-9x18-RGB-LED-art/
ooooh!

which took me onto the guys site
http://blog.theledart.com/blog/

wow! and so nicely written, nice sounding guy.
I guess Sharon has already seen his site as she seemed to be into the 
whole LED/wearable art sort of thing.
if not, shiny aint it :)

This could be fun :)