Flasher for dog collar

Aug 30, 2006 8 Replies

Hi-



I need to build some sort of a flasher to put on my dog's collar- she's the same color as the carpet and keeps getting stepped on :-) I'm thinking a



3909 flasher running a LED from a coin cell. I haven't kept up to date on what's available, or if there are any better chips than the LM 3909 out there. Ideally it should be able to run for a year and be small enough to be clipped onto the dogs collar without having a honking big battery hanging off it (ideally the thing has to be smaller than the dog, which is pretty tiny). Any suggestions appreciated. TIA.

Hi, there's an lm3909 equivalent circuit here using (iirc) 4 transistors and a handful of other parts.

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With SMD skills and a PCB routing program you could possibly build a very small single layer PCB which would be almost the same size as the LM3909 and include the LED and (tantalum SMD) capacitor.

:)

-Also the NTE876 is listed as a replacement.

Another idea (if you don't mind having to use a higher supply voltage) is to use one of the PIC12C series parts and a 32kHz watch crystal with the watchdog timer set to a 1 second flash.

-A

greysky wrote:

the

How will you ensure that the flasher is on top of the dog rather than the dog on top of the flasher?

How about using EL wire to make his collar light up 360 degrees?

If you live in a part of the world where bicylcles are common: hop into a shop that sells bicycle accessoiries.

E.g. 2 half-egg shaped clip-on lights, one with 3 white and one with 3 red leds, operated from 2 AAA cells. Switch selectable: individual leds flashing, sequenced flashing, steady. (And off, of course.) Cells last remarkably well.

Should set you back not more than a few US$. Take your dog for a walk, in stead of spending a night in your shed, trying to solder the parts together :-)

Kind regards, Gerard Bok

How about a PUT (Programable Unijunction transistor)?

M Walter

greysky wrote:

How about washing the dog and cleaning the carpet? ;-)

Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to prove it. Member of DAV #85. Michael A. Terrell Central Florida

My Granddaughter has a pair of shoes with blinking Red LEDs, perhaps you could find something similar and re-work it into a dog collar !

Otherwise as another Poster suggests, maybe Peroxide or Hair DYE might be in order. Change the Carpet perhaps ! Maybe New Glasses, or more lights, or a bigger dog.

Yukio YANO

If you search around at any of the major electronic distributors, you should be able to find a flashing LED. Most of them work on about 4 to 6 Volts. The problem is that running an LED on battery, it may not last more than a few days. You will be going through a lot of batteries!

Is the dog that small that you cannot see it?!!! What would you do if you had an infant child at home that is in the crawling stage??? I wouldn't want to put a flashing collar on my kid!

Have you thought about dying the dogs hair a different colour? Dogs are colour blind to many colours, and would not know the difference.

--

JANA _____

I need to build some sort of a flasher to put on my dog's collar- she's the same color as the carpet and keeps getting stepped on :-) I'm thinking a

3909 flasher running a LED from a coin cell. I haven't kept up to date on what's available, or if there are any better chips than the LM 3909 out there. Ideally it should be able to run for a year and be small enough to be clipped onto the dogs collar without having a honking big battery hanging off it (ideally the thing has to be smaller than the dog, which is pretty tiny). Any suggestions appreciated. TIA.

lol!

on the subject of power, you could use the miniature vibrate motor from some cellphones, this generates a couple mW of power as it spins which should be enough to charge a small supercapacitor.

-A

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