State of the Art using Programmable LED Technology

The picture on the left represents one of the most exciting developments in the advances of LED technology. Each of the LEDs shown in the picture is actually three LEDs plus a very intelligent microchip.

Each of these microchips has its own unique address. This address can be accessed by another specially programmed microchip. 

The colors of the LEDs are red, green, and cyan. These colors are mixed in various ratios to give all the colors of the visible spectrum, meaning all the colors of the rainbow with everything in between!

The digital electronics used in the above system can be simple and basic or more sophisticated such as an Arduina microcontroller system. The complexity, with related cost, depends on the particular application. A simple system would be adequate for different flash patterns. A more complex system would be required for fireflies that change the colors of their flashes.

A lot more processing power is required to properly emulate synchronized fireflies. Here the microchip would need to process a complicated computer algorithm and communicate with a sizable number of LEDs. 

There is plenty of room for less sophisticated systems than those described above.

State-of-the-art LED technology that incorporates a microchip driving a single-color LED currently offers the following:

1. LEDs that produce the "breathing effect" without assistance from a separate microchip.
2. LEDs that flash at low frequencies, typically between one and six flashes per second.
3. LEDs that produce a flickering candle effect.

Simple and inexpensive microcontroller systems are powerful enough to produce any number of alternate firefly flash patterns, including both on-off flashes and the "breathing effect."