Design your most expensive LED Blinky!

[Zeyneb]

Let’s assume you’re working for some big American defense company and experience this Dilbert situation:



Instead of the mousepads order you convinced your boss to demonstrate your overengineering skills in the most expensive LED blinky circuit!

You are getting the lead in this project as an EE.

Please ensure you sent as much money down the drain as possible with your design. Please also add as much unnecessary complexity as possible. I’d suggest you would hire methodology consultants as well for the most trivial elements.

However keep it to the field of electronic engineering. How does your design look like and which components would you be using?

Let’s have some laughs!

[ConKbot]

I'd start looking into making an intrinsically safe, explosive environment rated strobe. You think defense stuff is expensive, oil/gas/mining specialized equipment can be even more so due to the smaller market.

That being said, luminous devices CBT140 would be a good starting point for a LED.

[alexanderbrevig]

I'd waste it all on R&D because of my requirements to be World Class in green energy. We need to source the best LED and a very precise resistor and low ESR capacitor.

In fact, I think we would hire someone to make an ASIC for the LED blink RC timing, then have them make the LED with the tiny ASIC already on them. Given they can meet the specs for the worlds best resistor and capacitor (of course they will! their contract says so after all).

Now it's time for me to align with the marketing department, and I'm sure they will have meaningful input for the progress of our product.... 

[SL4P]

Don't forget the international junkets travel - to explore supplier capabilities and new products.
(I've done this before!)

[alexanderbrevig]

Don't forget the international junkets travel - to explore supplier capabilities and new products.
(I've done this before!)

You're hired on my imaginary team as Chief #3 Product Officer, how does it feel Mr. C3PO?

[ez24]

I like this post 

[fivefish]

Timing signal for the LED blinky will come from a geo-synchronous satellite sending on/off commands.

[bills]

Timing signal for the LED blinky will come from a geo-synchronous satellite sending on/off commands.

Great start than have that control a turbine gen-set.  than add a 50hp. cyclo drive gear box with a VFD to control flash speed and an encoder ( should add 120k to the job)  to trigger the excessively expensive led driver that you guys come up with.

[alexanderbrevig]

Timing signal for the LED blinky will come from a geo-synchronous satellite sending on/off commands.

Cool! Then a change in interval can be used to deduce at which angle the satellite is as well (when moving further away - or close to it on earth). Bonus feature

[alexanderbrevig]

I promise I'll stop derailing this thread but there is one more take I suddenly realized, and it is EE (though destructive).

One way to go about this would be to take part in a very expensive project, then make a cheap ass LED driver that ends up destroying the thing. Such as making a space shuttle crash or something like that. It would not be the most expensive in terms of buying it, but it would probably be the most expensive in retrospect. 
I need sleep! It's 7AM and I've not slept yet. 2 hours POWERSLEEP go

[vk6zgo]

Well,first we start with the Fusion Reactor.......

[Mr.B]

To burn a huge amount of money you have to start out with a fundamentally flawed and impossible premise...

We will power blinky with a batteriser!

[hamster_nz]

I would demand the best reliability and widest operating environment.

So must use MIL-SPEC or Space rated parts, and remember to get it FCC certified.

[babysitter]

• Use a monitor diode(s) to control brightness in a closed-loop manner. Current control is simply not sufficient!
• A Trimble Thundertbolt E grade GPSDOCXO is barely sufficient to control blinking frequency as it stability decays when GPS reception degrades. For high-grade customers, consider Microsemi CsIII Model 4310B Cesium frequency standard.
• make it with pixels, so you can dim certain parts of the beam.
• Use some kind of radar to measure length of pixel light path, use pixel dimming to guarantee uniform brightnesss everywhere you shine too.
• HDMI/FBAS/DVI/DisplayPort input too, for use as a b/w (you know, not actually using black light) projector
• make the configurator software overpriced.

[ez24]

Here is my $20,000,000 solution:

Actually this would make a fun eevblog video  Dave hint hint

Well,first we start with the Fusion Reactor.......

We need a freq standard:

This got me thinking about a Josephson Junction that is needed to maintain the freq of the LED
(used by the US bureau of standards)

http://web.mit.edu/6.763/www/FT03/Lectures/Lecture11.pdf

http://www.nist.gov/pml/div686/devices/automated-voltage-standard-ready.cfm

It takes a PHd to operate it, I think the US has two and China one.

Lets use round numbers - $10,000,000 for the freq of of the LED (includes the PHd).  We now need a power supply and an university to assemble the power supply.  Maybe we can get MIT to put it together.

Actually there is someone on this forum doing low temp freq standards !

So lets add another $10,000,000 for the power supply for a total of $20,000,000
Now someone has to furnish the power supply.

So I think for $20,000,000 you can get a LED to blink.

(I forgot the link to the $1,000,000 oscilloscope needed to test this unit)

[SL4P]

Timing signal for the LED blinky will come from a geo-synchronous satellite sending on/off commands.

Duplicated (redundant) of course!

[alexanderbrevig]

For some reason I cannot leave this riddle, and I think I've got it solved (in terms of most expensive).

This is an LED controlled by an AI. This AI has a near perfect model of the worlds finances. It is wired such that one can buy the LED on, and off. Because the AI is omniscient in the field of economics someone will always see value in changing the LEDs state.

The LED will not stop until the AI controls half or more than half of the worlds total economy, at which point no one can no longer pay to change the state of the LED.

It's been a long time since I've had so much fun! Thank you Zeyneb

Let’s have some laughs!

Indeed.

[Psi]

Code this FPGA to flash a pin  $39452

http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/XC7V2000T-G2FLG1925E/XC7V2000T-G2FLG1925E-ND/3981901

Use this IGBT to switch the led $6117

http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/PP600T120/PP600T120-ND/3775352

Use this bypass cap, and lots off em $9605 x20 = $192100

http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/WF165336WQ75233BJ1/WF165336WQ75233BJ1-ND/5086082

Use this resistor $778

http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/1623821-2/1623821-2-ND/2365856

Use this led $1995

http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/NV4V41SF-A/NV4V41SF-A-ND/3913162

Use this crystal $2585

http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/AOCJY7-100.000MHZ/535-11920-ND/3641394

Total $243,027

And if you made a 4K display using them

243027 * 4096 * 2160 = $2,150,147,358,720

[NiHaoMike]

How about roughly 8.3 million 1W RGB LEDs to make the world's biggest 4K display? (Or make that 5K if you want.) Install it in Las Vegas and bring back the drive in theater.

[Psi]

How about that many of what I just posted 

[SL4P]

Powered using Batteriser to gain the most from the finite resources of the planet...

[ez24]

Come on guys - you need to add the price tag to your solution.

Mine was $20,000,000

Give me $20,000,000 and I will put together a very very accurate LED blinker.

[Psi]

Come on guys - you need to add the price tag to your solution.

Mine was $20,000,000

Give me $20,000,000 and I will put together a very very accurate LED blinker.

I did mine on the bus, it was hard enough to manage using digikey and webbrowse at the same time. Let alone the calculator 
Edited it now.

The total is $243,027

And if you made a 4K display using it
243027 * 4096 * 2160 = $2,150,147,358,720

[alexanderbrevig]

Mine was $20,000,000

Mine is about $120.000.000.000.000+  (half of world capita per 2013, outdated number but hey..) though I know I'm cheating. There would be some EE with designing the hardware to run said AI though ^^

Give me $20,000,000 and I will put together a very very accurate LED blinker.

[ez24]

And if you made a 4K display using it
243027 * 4096 * 2160 = $2,150,147,358,720

Don't forget the JJ so that adds up to

$2,150,167,358,720

God I hope the politicians do not hear of this, they will try and convince us that we need this