A circuit for randomly breathing LEDs

[Magnatron]

yes.. for fading effect .. it's essential fro smooth transition. atmega 8 has 2 PWM pins that can be used for this.

---------- Post added at 23:26 ---------- Previous post was at 23:18 ----------

why wander away from atmega 8? everything you need to impress your girl is posted here bye me? so why wont you spend 3 $ for it ? in my experience, when i gave the magic 8 ball to my g.f, it blew her up!

 

[luckyvictor]

because I would also like to take this opportunity to learn using microcontroller. I have no doubt on your code, but I would also like to understand why this microcontroller can do this task, what functions/parts it has to make it suit this work, this is why i would like to see some replacements and to find out the similarities so to answer my question.

 

[Magnatron]

for a newbie in micro controllers, arduino, pic axe etc are more like an entry level programming aid.. this microcontroller is selected because in arduino (thingy used to program the microcontroller) basic boards use atmel's atmega 8. so i said so. these are of the family called AVR. you can also use other microcontrollers such as PIC 16f877 etc in PIC series, but for a newbie like you must go through entry level programmers like arduino for better understanding.