Flashing Tempo light without wasting time in a loop

duffling

Im working on a MIDI controller project , and wish to have a Tempo tap feature .. this works well
but i also need to blink an LED at the given BPM and have it continue blinking untill a new tempo is set,

i would like to TRY to do it within my menu loop .( waiting for input loop)

but though it would be possible to use a 555 timer IC and use one of the stamp IO to set the time value on the 555?

then the blink of the LED is handled by the 555 chip instead of slowing down my user input loop?

any ideas?

thanks again!
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glaso

You ca use the 555 to drive the blinking led. There are a lot of diagrams with such circuits in the web.
If I'm not worng, tou can control the tempo of the blinking led through a resistor on one of the pins of the 555. If you want to control the tempo with the stamp, you will have to replace that resistor with a solid state pot (or a digital pot)