Help with some lighting?

[zombotomy]

I'm not sure if this is in the right spot. Basically I want to light up my project. I'm curious about the wiring of the led lights. I've done it before but my question is what do I need to add to the circuit so that when they are turned on they shimmer. I'll have a about 8 LEDs with 4 being one color and 4 being the other. These are the small 3 or 4mm LEDs. Basically I want them in the base and to give the effect of moving fire.

 

[BR12819]

Not sure that this will help much but if you're trying to get a somewhat random flashing pattern for 2 colors of LED you might look into a micro-controller. Here's a site I found that might have some useful information:
Different LED Pattern Effect using 8051 Micro-controller | Engineers Gallery

 

[13doctorwho]

I would use an Arduino. Put all the LEDs on the PWM outputs. That way you can program it to vary the brightness of each LED individually. You can program in a pattern of varying brightness for all the LEDs or you can write code to randomly adjust their individual brightness. You'll probably have to play with it a little to get the effect you want, but that is just editing a few lines of code.

 

[propmaster2000]

How much room do you have available in the base for all the electronics (ARDUINO Micro.), including a battery (power supply voltage reg. if needed), LED's, resistors and power on/off switch?
Can you share more details on what you are creating?
The trick will be to overlap and combine the different color changes to give a convincing look of flame.
.
What LED colors are you using for the "flame" effect?
You may also consider RGB LED's as well, if you are limited in space.
The ARDUINO micro controllers can run on a voltage as low as 3.7V (5V being optimum) and some Microcontrollers (ATTINY85 for instance) have an on-board 5V regulator.
If you use a 9V, you can regulate it down to 5V (7805).
.
Keep us posted on your progress.

 

[kevin926]

I am a Licensed Electrical contractor that also specializes in lighting. There are many routes you can use; however, I kept it very simple using RGB tape light (color changing). Mine is hard wired with remote transformers because I built this room from scratch and bare open walls.

 

[Starganderfish]

The easiest way is probably to just use "Candle Ficker LED" lights?
They come in 3mm bulbs, cost a few cents each, and are available in a range of colours. They randomly brighten and dim to get that candle flicker effect. With 8 different 3mm bulbs, they'll be fully randomised and will flicker and shift constantly. They require no special wiring or coding, no arduino or other controllers, just wire them up to a switch and a battery. You may want to use something to diffuse the light a bit - can be as easy as aquarium filter floss/acrylic pillow stuffing.

It's what I used for my MCU Tesseract piece. 4 x blue candle flicker LED's, a switch, an 18650 li-ion battery and a micro-usb battery charger. probably less than $20 worth of materials including the photo cube.
It's not perfect but it's cheap and easy