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Buying a gift for someone special or a loved one can sometimes be difficult or expensive. The flashing heart is the answer. It is easy to build and even the inexperienced hobbyist should be able to build it. The estimated cost for the circuit is $25 if all the parts are purchased new. With The Flashing Heart , you can get your message across in bright lights. Circuit Description The Circuit Diagram is shown in Figure 1 . It consists of a 4047 low-power monostable/astable multivibrator, IC1, used in the astable mode to provide the timing pulses to control the flash rate of the LEDs. To accomplish the astable mode, pins 4, 5, 6, and 14 are connected to +12VDC and pins 7, 8, 9, and 12 are connected to ground. Pins 1 and 3 are connected to C2 and pins 2 and 3 are connected to potentiometer R9. A fixed value resistor can be used in place of the potentiometer R9, if the flash rate does not need to be adjusted. These three pins make up the R-C timing circuit. The output pulses from the 4047 a...

Strictly speaking, this simple circuit shouldn't work! How could anyone expect an ordinary light dependent resistor photo cell to 'see' through a fingertip in natural daylight and detect the change in blood flow as the heart pulsates? The secret is a high gain circuit, based on a dual op amp IC which can be either the low power LM358 or the JFET TL072. The LDR is connected in series across the 9V battery supply via a 100kO resistor (R1) and the minute signal caused by the blood pulsing under the skin is fed to the non-inverting (+) input, pin 3, of IC1a via a 0.µF capacitor. Pin 3 is biased by a high impedance voltage divider consisting of two 3.3MO resistors. The feedback resistors to pin 2 set the gain to 11 times. The output of IC1a is fed via a 0.47µF capacitor and 220kO resistor to IC1b. This is configured as an inverting op amp with a gain of 45 so that the total circuit gain is about 500. The output of IC1b is used to drive an analog meter which may be a multimeter s...