Realistic Flickering Flame Effect with Arduino and LED's

In this project we will use 3 LED's and an Arduino to create a realistic fire effect that could be used in a diorama, model railway or a fake fireplace in your home or put one inside a frosted glass jar or tube and no-one would know it wasn't a real candle inside.

This is a really simple project suited to beginners.

Step 1: Step 1 - Wire up the LED's

Wire up 3 LED's. Use 2 x Diffused Yellow and 1 x Diffused RED. You can increase the number of LED's if you wanted a larger or brighter display. Consider the use of transistors if your amperage will go over that which can be supplied by the Arduino.

Use resistors that suit your particular type of LED.

Comments

[admin]

Hey, this is a great instructable and is very informative. Just one thing is missing... pictures! It really helps a lot when trying to follow directions so you should consider taking some photographs. Once you do that and leave me a message when you have so that we can publish your work. Thanks! Thanks for the cool instructable and we hope to publish this soon!

[admin]

Hey, this is a great instructable and is very informative. Just one thing is missing... pictures! It really helps a lot when trying to follow directions so you should consider taking some photographs. Once you do that and leave me a message when you have so that we can publish your work. Thanks! Thanks for the cool instructable and we hope to publish this soon!

[doktorvortexx]

Thanks for the great Instructable! Saved me a bunch of time writing the code myself!

[SubEclipse]

Easy and looks great.

[tinker234]

i wonder i saw a video where some one used a smoke maching thourgh tube with holes in it with a simallar led array with yellow to create a realstic fire

[HSTH]

Great project - it works great - anyone with an Arduino ought to give it a try.

[ddagieu salcido]

what would it thake to make a torch instead of a candle flame... im thinking on use them as lightning for a corrior in my house, ill like to draw electricity direclty from the wall

[0_Nvd_0]

Very COOL Earthshine. You have invented a very nice thing.

[earthshine]

Thanks

[bigdeee]

That's a great little effect that goes a long way! I'm sure it's going to come in handy in my little video experiments. Thanks for posting it.

[earthshine]

Glad you like it. It's very effective in real life.

[ReCreate]

Instead of using all those resistors...Couldn't you just use one from ground to the led's negative terminal? and put all of the positives directly to the board?

[earthshine]

No because the LED's go ON/OFF so the current would then increase/decrease and could damage one or more of the LED's. If each one has it's own resistor then it will be individually protected.

[ReCreate]

what about for cases when only 1 LED is on at a time?

[Rob K]

Random brightness neet little effect. Try that with a RGB LED.

[Rob K]

Actually using RGB LEDs is a nice effect.

[earthshine]

The reason individual LED's are better, rather than an RGB LED, is that the seperate LED's cause the shadows to come from slightyl different points. This increases the realism as a flickering candle has a flame that dances about causing the shadows to shift slightly. If you use an RGB LED then all of the points of light come from the same location and the shadows remain stationary.

[Rob K]

I meant red green and blue LEDs not just a singe RGB one sorry. I just got my starter kit working again and this is one of the first sketches I tried.

[earthshine]

Cool :)

[koensadza]

Those Fritzing images are really nice!

[koensadza]

I just noticed the two resistors on the right are not located right. As they are now, they are between + and ground.

[earthshine]

You were right! I've fixed it. Thanks.