With a potentiometer:


Potentiometer turned so that the LED is dimmed:

Pics From First Lab

With a switch:


Better angle:

Lab One: Electronics

It took a second effort and renewed electronics self-esteem, but I got an LED to light. I probably spent four hours+ working on this lab before giving up and realizing I needed to remove myself from the project for a few days and then comingback to it ith a fresh mind. This strategy worked. Within two minutes of returning, I realized my mistake in the circutry and fixed the issue... and ta da: a bright white LED working as it should. The mistake was in having the LED itself faced in the wrong direction on the breadboard. I read up on LEDs and realized this could possibly be the problem, but I tried so many different LEDs when I was using trial-by-eror to fix my circut, I can't believe every LED I put in I put in the same direction. Now I know why one end of the LED is longer than the other. Initially I was worried that I had botched the sodering of my DC power supply, but the readings I got off the multimeter suggested all was working with the supply as it should with a healthy 12volts coming into the breaboard. I played with the resistor and regulator ad learned a lot about them in this process, including the realization that my resistor was the wrong kind.

The next step will now be adding a switch and then a variable voltage with a Potentiometer. I'll report soon how it goes and hopefully have a picture or two.