Advice needed for a new project.

Hi guys, I’m starting a project and I need advice. I need to implement a set of slowly blinking LED’s to a small theatre set that will open up like a popup book. Everithing will be made out of cardboard. I need flat leds (about 30 of them), some flat, foldable electric cable/conductor, a blinking circuit and a power supply. I’m new to all this, so I’m a little confused… should I go Arduino, or can I get a simplier chip that just does blinking? A few tips would help me make the right decisions. Thank you!

D.S

If all you need is blinking LEDs, blink circuits based on 555’s or similar are all over the web and you can easily wire one of those blinkers to an LED strip. Doesn’t require an Arduino (although some of the clones are so cheap it costs less than wiring a 555 circuit from scratch). Pretty much any small gauge stranded wire will bend just fine unless you plan on doing it hundreds of times. How do you plan to move the cardboard? By hand?

schafferdavid:
Hi guys, I’m starting a project and I need advice. I need to implement a set of slowly blinking LED’s to a small theatre set that will open up like a popup book. Everithing will be made out of cardboard. I need flat leds (about 30 of them), some flat, foldable electric cable/conductor, a blinking circuit and a power supply. I’m new to all this, so I’m a little confused… should I go Arduino, or can I get a simplier chip that just does blinking? A few tips would help me make the right decisions. Thank you!

D.S

Yes... as said. Whether you need a microprocessor depends on how elaborate you want the blinking to be - in terms of synchronism, randomness, "chase", and so on. There's also the LEDs with serial data in a daisy-chain, connected to a microprocessor. So each LED can be individually controlled for color RGB, mixed color, intensity, etc.

Thank you guys. I was thinking about a basic on/off blinking. I’d parallel-wire all the leds and I think a 555 timer setup should do just fine. But I was also wondering how much more complicated it would be to have all those leds fade in and out. What do you think ?

D.S

schafferdavid:
Thank you guys. I was thinking about a basic on/off blinking. I’d parallel-wire all the leds and I think a 555 timer setup should do just fine. But I was also wondering how much more complicated it would be to have all those leds fade in and out. What do you think ?

D.S

Much!

Now you’re going to need a microcontroller.

lyndon:

schafferdavid:
Thank you guys. I was thinking about a basic on/off blinking. I’d parallel-wire all the leds and I think a 555 timer setup should do just fine. But I was also wondering how much more complicated it would be to have all those leds fade in and out. What do you think ?

D.S

Much!

Now you’re going to need a microcontroller.

It is possible to do fade up/down without a microprocessor. But you'll trade more soldering of wires on a protoboard for knowing how to program a small microprocessor to generate whatever pulse width modulation you want. That done, you'll get hooked on the ability to program lots of variations.