LED sign. Blinking a few letters

  Hey. I'm wondering if someone can point me in a good direction to start
on a project.

I work at a summer camp and this year we have a 10ft tall mock up of a
city. At night the windows are lit up by LEDs. The guy who built the
city wired the LEDs, but I'd like to add a small (1 ft) radio tower that
would have blinking LED call letters (The initials of the camp). I
really want them to blink in a sequence and then all blink at once and
then repeat.

I'm thinking I may have to use some type of micro controller to
accomplish this, which may be beyond my skills. I've wired LED's, and I
can solder, and if I use a micro controller I at least under stand
programming which is a start. Power source could be anything. Any
tutorials or recommendations of hardware would be greatly appreciated.

 wrote:


One way would be to use a 4017 counter and a bunch of diode OR gates.

for this:
http://www.motionbox.com/videos/1c9cdbb01415e392

I connected the

"W" to output 0*1*2*3*4*5*7
"A" to 1*2*3*4*5*7
"R" to 2*3*4*5*7
etc.
 and output 8 to reset.

then I ran the output thru a darlington array (ULN 2003) or similar.

(*="OR")

 Jason Davies wrote:

Wow! Thats great. Gives me a good place to start. Thanks!

 Why don't you go for PIC micro controllers. It is going to be easy and
useful for other purposes too...

 Tybandara wrote:

Since you ask the question, why don't you at least offer to
help him learn to program and use a PIC, if he does not know?

Ed