Software firefly
It's another parts-on-hand project. A white LED connected to an output bit on a microcontroller. Ill use the Arduino Pro Mini because they're cheap and I have a few "in stock" in the garage. It's basically a Microchip (formerly Atmel) ATmega328P single chip microcomputer on a board. They're $4 in five-packs on Amazon, $2 direct from Asia but take your chances with Chinese counterfeit chips. Oh no! The only white indicator LEDs I have on hand are tiny "0805" (0.08 x 0.05 inch) surface mount dudes. All my attempts to solder wires to these tiny parts fail. They must sit on a board. We have tiny "breakout" boards for that. For scale, the big round holes are 0.1 inch center to center. The pro mini has a regulator so it can run off a 9V battery. Or it can run off 3 to 5 volts bypassing the regulator. Circuit looks like: and here's the firefly assembly. We use the Arduino integrated development system because it's easy wi