Help with LED Circuit.

[HeyzeusGarcia]

Hello,

I'm looking for help to design a circuit to make blue led's flicker as though they're an electrical charge/arc. I am hoping to make them look as though lightening is sparking inside vacuum tubes.
For those of you familiar with it, I'm making a replica prop of the Tesla gun from Warehouse 13 so I'm hoping to re-create the blue electrical sparking.

If the flikering/sparking isn't possible or if it would make the circuit too big I'm okay with just blue LEDs.

I want them to be controlled by a momentary push button for on/off, so its only on if you hold the button. Also knob to dim/brighten them, and definitley battery powered, preferably of small batters, no larger than AAA if possible, Button cell would be great.

I know how to solder and I have a very basic understanding of electronics and have done some extremely basic circuitry before

If you need any other information let me know. I appreciate any help possible.

 

[Bluejets]

Simple starting point would be to get some of those "flickering candles" at any $2 shop and modify the output to take whatever loading you require.

 

[HeyzeusGarcia]

Simple starting point would be to get some of those "flickering candles" at any $2 shop and modify the output to take whatever loading you require.

Thank you, that's a really good idea, I was originally thinking of building the circuit from scratch, but that would save a ton of work, and usually I just hack apart random things to build stuff anyway. Originally I was in the mindset that I'd have to build from scratch to fit the form of the prop. But I think cannibalising some of those flickering candles could do the trick.

 

[Bluejets]

There were a few circuits around other than that which came from model railroad people.......used to make a welder simulation.
The flicker candle one...........

If you know anything with Arduino, this is a really simple one that could be easily adapted to Attiny85 module (Digispark to some) to make even smaller.

 

[Audioguru]

My neighbor has 5 flickering lanterns on a post in his front yard that look like a candle flickering in each one.

Yesterday I bought a flickering solar garden lantern at The Dollar Store.
It has 6 orange vertical LEDs in the front and 6 orange vertical LEDs in the rear of its frosted LED cover.
An IC flickers the LEDs and makes random rising chasers of the LEDs.
Another pcb inside like used in ordinary solar garden lights boosts the voltage and senses darkness from the solar panel then switches on the LED circuit at night.
The solar panel is a new one with a glass cover and it charges the battery cell in daylight.
The battery was an AAA Ni-Cad cell with the lowest capacity I have ever seen. I replace it with a modern Energizer Ni-MH cell made in Japan that has Much More Capacity and a longer life.

Cheap old solar garden lights used a plastic LDR that got sunburned in one month then the circuit got rid of the LDR and used the plastic solar panel that also got sunburned. New solar garden lights use a solar panel with a glass cover but still use an extremely poor quality battery cell.