How to replace a green LED with a red one in a simple transistor switch?

Question

I am designing four traffic lights that I can control with a single digital switch. When the signal is 1, two traffic lights should be green, and the other two red, and they should reverse when the digital signal is 0. I'm using a simple transistor switch to achieve this:

This one works in the simulation, but I tried it on the breadboard, and it won't work properly unless I swap the green LED with the red one and vice versa. Otherwise, the red LED stays on regardless of the applied base voltage, while the green one stays off.

Moreover, the whole implementation doesn't work in the simulation. Only the first and the third gates switch properly. The second and the fourth ones have the above-mentioned issue:

Now, I'm aware that the red and green LEDs have different forward voltages (1.7V for red and 2.2V for green), but I don't know how to fix this problem.

Answer 1

Using both NPN and PNP transistors is probably your best bet.

^{simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab}

Or this way is more elegant.

^{simulate this circuit}

ADDITION

If you must drive this with a single pole switch, you should probably make the signal more active.

^{simulate this circuit}

Answer 2

Since the LEDs you are switching are different colours they have different forward voltages. We can do a nice trick with this.

Figure 1. Switching between two LEDs with an N.O. contact and the load-line explanation. Source: 1 GPIO, multiple LEDs.

The intersection of the load-line graph shows us what voltage and current we can expect on each LED type with that value resistor.

• In Figure 1a the green LED is on by default and the load-line shows that we can expect about 16 mA through it and 2.1 V across it.
• If we switch on the red the forward voltage will drop to 1.75 or 1.8 V. At that voltage the green will pass only a couple of mA and should turn off or go dim.

If you want the red on by default then we add in D1 to induce a little more voltage drop. D1 + L3 = 0.7 + 1.75 = 2.45 V. When the switch is closed the green LED will cause the LED voltage to drop to 2.1 V and the red will go out.

If S2 is replaced with a logic output the voltage might not be sufficiently high enough so additional diodes may be required in the default leg.

Figure 2. The advanced electronic solution uses a transistor! Source: 1 GPIO dual LED common cathode.

The GPIO in Figure 2 powers L1 directly when high. When low L1 turns off and Q1 turns on, powering L2. Note that the GPIO must be capable of driving L1 directly.

_{The links are to articles written by me.}