Okay, so the other day I was messing around with this “drag racing tree” thing. You know, those lights they use at the start of drag races? I thought it’d be cool to build one myself, just for fun.
Getting Started
First, I needed to figure out what I even needed. Obviously, I needed some lights. I went with regular LEDs – yellow, green, and red. I also grabbed a bunch of resistors, because, you know, electricity. And of course, I needed something to control the whole thing. I used an old microcontroller board I had lying around.
Wiring It Up
Wiring was, let me tell you, a bit of a pain. I’m not exactly an electrician. I started by connecting all the LEDs to the board. Each LED needed its own resistor, so it wouldn’t, like, explode. I used a breadboard at first, which is just a plastic board with holes for testing, because I was sure I’d mess something up (and I did, a few times!).
I used a bunch of jumper wires – those little colorful wires with pins on the ends. My setup looked like a rainbow threw up on a circuit board. I spent a good hour just double-checking all the connections, making sure the positive and negative ends were all correct. I even looked up diagrams online. Seriously, a lifesaver.
The Code
This is where things got interesting. I had to write some code to control the lights. I used the basic programming language that came with the microcontroller. It wasn’t anything fancy, mostly just telling the board which pins to turn on and off, and when.
- First, I made all the yellow lights blink on and off, one after the other, just like in a real drag race.
- Then, after the last yellow, I made all the green lights turn on.
- And finally, the red light. I added a delay before this one just in case.
It took some trial and error. I had to play around with the timing a lot. I wanted the lights to sequence realistically, not too fast, not too slow. I think I spent a whole afternoon just tweaking the delay values in the code.
Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3
Once I had the code loaded onto the board, it was time to test it out. I plugged it in, held my breath… and it worked! Well, mostly. One of the yellow LEDs was being stubborn. Turns out, I’d put the resistor in the wrong place. Easy fix, thankfully.
After a few more tweaks, it was working perfectly. The lights sequenced just like a real drag racing tree. It was pretty awesome, even if I do say so myself.
Final Thoughts
Honestly, it was a super fun project. It wasn’t super complicated, but it was a great way to learn more about electronics and coding. Plus, now I have a miniature drag racing tree. Who doesn’t want that? I might even build a little track for some toy cars next. Stay tuned!
