How Twilight Awakes Came to Be
ROADTRIP TO PENNSYLVANIA
It happened on a family road trip to Pennsylvania to attend a friend's wedding. We stayed at a cabin in a campsite close to where the wedding was held.
At dusk the area became alive with fireflies. They were very bright, and their flashes were an amazingly beautiful aqua color. Coming from the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, it was the first time any of us had seen fireflies.
Fortunately, it was not the last!
FIREFLIES IN INDIANNA
On our way back to Colorado, we stayed at another campground. This was in Indianna. In the twilight at dusk, the local night critters began stirring. Among them was a raccoon. Others, much smaller in size but more noticeable, were the fireflies.
These had yellow-colored flashes. Their flashes were not quite as bright as those aqua-colored fireflies seen in Pennsylvania, but were fun, nevertheless.
BACK IN COLORADO
Back in Colorado, the fireflies from the eastern part of the USA were badly missed.
Fortunately, the head of the family was an electronics engineer by profession. He immediately set about creating a flashing firefly electronics simulation using light emitting diodes (LEDs).
He was no stranger to such projects. Several years earlier he had been assigned to a model rocketry project that created flashing LED light sequences.
MASON jars were the obvious choice to house the firefly LEDs.
The results delighted family and friends, even though they were rather primitive by today's standards.
STATE OF THE ART
LED technology has come a long way since those early days. This technology relates to both the LEDs themselves, and the electronic circuitry used to drive them.
Each firefly mason jar (like the one shown in the photo on the right) contains the following:
- Three colored LEDs closely matched to actual firefly flash colors.
- A specially designed integrated circuit that emulates the "breathing effect" of certain firefly flashes.
- Background foliage to emulate a firefly's natural environment.
These firefly mason jars can be used in the following ways:
- In the garden day and night
- Indoors next to a window that catches a good amount of sunlight
- Outside during the day (charging up) and inside at night (flashing) firefly led solar lights
WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS
The future holds more enhancements to your Mason Jar fireflies experience. Some of these possibilities are:
- Different firefly flash patterns.
- A melody of different firefly flash patterns.
- Color-changing fireflies covering part or even all of the firefly flashing colors spectrum.
- Simulated moving fireflies.
- Synchronized fireflies!