The Design of Propeller LED Based on AT89S52

Xu zelong1, Zhang Hongbing2, Hong Hao2, and Jiang Lianbo1,*

1
College of Mechatronics and Control Engineering, Shenzhen University, China, 518060
2
Laboratory and facility management division, Shenzhen University, China, 518060
jiangzlb88@126.com

Abstract. Based on the vision persistence principle, a novel clock with rotating
LED display is developed. 8-bit microcontroller AT89S52 is used as the core
controller. The rotating board is made up of the core controller, 20 LEDs and
other components. Magnet is used to complete the synchronization. Each time
the board passed the same place, a Hall Effect sensor perceived the magnet and
generated an interruption. During operation, the microcontroller keeps track of
time and changes the pattern of 20 LEDs with exact timing to simulate a 20x180
array of LEDs while the propeller is spin by the motor. The illusion of a flat
image is produced by the moving LED array. The power source comes from the
spinning armature of a DC motor since the clock is on a spinning piece of board.

Keywords: component AT89S52, persistence of vision, DC motor, propeller

LED.

1 Introduction
Light emitting diodes (LEDs) have been used for years, primarily in the electronics
industry for circuit board lights. Increased performances (brightness), lower production
costs and the availability of a variety of colors have led to the successful use of LEDs in
replacing incandescent lamps found in architectural, commercial and industrial
applications. LEDs present many advantages over incandescent light sources including
lower energy consumption, longer lifetime, improved robustness, smaller size, faster
switching, and greater durability and reliability [2].
In the information age, as a result of the rapid release of all types of information
requirement, an increasing number of combination-type LED dot matrix display is used
to publish multimedia information.[3] With the development of LED display technology,
embedded technology in the large-screen LED display system has been widely used, but
it need to many hardware, the system power consumption increases, the probability of
failure has also been increased, and the design is not easy to achieve the future changes
and upgrades. [4,5] There is no need to use so many LEDs. As the Figure 1 shows, we
only need 20 LEDs, which are in a line equally spaced points. With the board rotating, the
move LED array produce a floating image. So the desired image such as clock, words or
Chinese can be programmed and displayed. It is easy to use, simplifying the system
design; reduce the size of the system and the cost of production design.

*
Corresponding author.

M. Zhu (Ed.): ICCIC 2011, Part VI, CCIS 236, pp. 551557, 2011.
Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011
552 X. Zelong et al.

Due to the versatility of this design, it can be widely used in many occasions that
need to display information.

Fig. 1. The overview of LED propeller

2 System Overview
The programming of PIC is using C Language. This project consist two main circuits:
the rotating circuit board and DC motor controller board.
The rotating board has several primary parts. It includes 1 microcontroller
AT89S52, 20 LEDs, 2 capacitors of 1000 F each, 1 hall sensor, resistances of 220
and 5k, insulated copper wires and connecting wires. There is a small piece of magnet
to act as a trigger point of remote sensing.
The DC motor controller circuit is actually a slip ring as 1 electrode and a contact wire
attached to motor shaft as the other electrode. It has 7805 IC for 5V regulation to motor and
board respectively. 5VDC will be used to supply the power for motor controller circuit.
Then the motor controller circuit will provides power to LED circuit and DC motor.
The system block diagram is shown in Figure 2.

Fig. 2. System block diagram