[ddingus]

To whomever:

I really, really, REALLY, did I say, "Really" miss the twinkle of old school incandescent blinking Christmas lights.

Each light has a metal spring that heats as the light glows. Eventually, the spring warms enough to move and break the circuit, thus turning the lamp off.

As the spring cools, eventually the circuit is made again, turning the lamp back on, and the cycle continues.

And there is more!

At first, the whole tree is illuminated. Then, one by one, the lights begin to blink.

Soon many are blinking.

Then all of them do it.

Because those springs are coarse and made as quickly as possible, there is considerable range in the cycle times of all the lamps.

Finally, the sustained, faster cycle time happens 5 to 10 minutes in. The lamp reaches a steady state, on, off, on, off, that is very regular.

Please, someone model this, drop it in a little MCU and sell us lights that twinkle, not just blink in some pattern.

If I were to guess, there is about 10 bits of variation needed to really capture what the old bulbs do. 8 bits may be enough, if one ignore outliers, those bulbs with either very short or very long cycle times. Those are rare, but do add to the magic of it all.

Thanks, I am waiting.

[arantius]

This reminds me a lot of Big Clive's "supercomputer". See any video https://www.google.com/search?q=big+clive+supercomputer reveals.

It's just a panel of self-blinking LEDs. But they're cheap and low quality, so they start off all-on, sort of in sync, then after a while they're blinking "randomly".

So I think you want an LED string built out of lights like these?

[ddingus]

Those look great! But they aren't the same, though I should say those are better than what seems to be out there today.

I left something out of my description above. It is complete regarding the blinking behavior. But, there is a pattern of tree limb shadows on the ceiling! And light colored walls which really makes for the best experience.

Notice how the panels Big Clive showed us have a steady rolling pattern? The incandescent lights are not that way.

Because each one works off an imprecise thermal spring, the blinking can range from a mostly on, going off for a short while, with short while being a couple seconds, to almost the opposite! That would be mostly off, illuminated for a short while.

Because the variation is so broad, the blinking pattern tends to jump around. One might see 5 lights change in close proximity, then half the tree, with parts coming back on in chunks, to another couple regions blinking off then on rapidly before the whole thing seems lit for a brief time.

The big Clive units have all LED's blinking close to the same cycle.

His varies mostly in the phase. What I describe varies mostly in the period. Some bulbs blink fast while others are much slower.