Yeah, that's a 555 timer.
I had never used one before. When I started talking with the local guys about rigging up some sort of really basic PWM controller, I thought I might need some sort of micro-controller and everyone was like "Nah, just use one of these."
I followed
THIS TUTORIAL. except that I replaced the mosphet with a resistor and LED.
I'm still new to all this and most of it is still a foreign language.
It was pretty exciting to hook everything together and make it work though!
This coming Thursday night, I plan on making it control a small motor and a larger array of LEDs. Then I can make a real circuit board and enclosure for it.
This is by no means anything close to an Open ReVolt controller, but I am actually learning things by doing this!