series wiring?

[nickymaude]

i wonder if anyone could please show some sort of a diagram of how to wire in series, my last lit build, which was a revell voyager, i did in paralell, it worked fine, it`s just that i probably used way too much wire, there was about 8 wires coming out of each nacelle, so i couldnt have the engines movable. Someone has given me another voyager to light for them, and i would prefer to do this one in series, any help will be appreciated, thanks.

[Scott Hasty]

I would stay away from wiring in series. If you lose one component, you lose the entire circuit, think old-style Christmas lights.

[Ziz]

For parallel, you don't need to literally run separate leads for every bulb/LED back to the power source, you can create a "bus" system.

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6112/623 ... 0dd9_z.jpg

Connect each one to a common pair of leads within the nacelle, then just run two wires back to your power connection.

[tetsujin]

I would stay away from wiring in series. If you lose one component, you lose the entire circuit, think old-style Christmas lights.

Not entirely true.

LEDs, when they fail, tend to turn into short circuits. They pass greater amounts of current at lower voltage, and fail to emit light. This is unlike an incandescent bulb, in which the filament which completes the circuit burns out, causing an open circuit.

So a parallel circuit would actually fail if one went out, while a series circuit would continue to work. This is part of why "new-style" (LED) Christmas lights are a series circuit. (The other part, of course, is because Christmas Lights are cheap, and it's cheaper to run 30-odd LEDs in series to eat up the 110V input voltage than it is to put the 110V through a transformer to drive a larger number of parallel circuits at a lower voltage.)

LED series circuits have various advantages - if you have a high-voltage supply you can use the source power more efficiently and with less wiring. Parallel circuits with LEDs are a bit problematic in general because of the non-linear nature of the devices: they are very sensitive to small changes in voltage, and so if one LED winds up operating at a lower voltage (due to partial burnout, temperature change, whatever) the others can starve. To be really reliable, LED parallel circuits should include some means of regulating the current to each device (resistors to partially linearize the devices' behavior, or current drivers like the Madman board).

[en'til Zog]

I have here several LED displays here that have been powered up and running continuously since the middle 1970's.

I'd say that LEDs - operated a bit below their average ratings - are quite reliable.

If operated slightly below "typical" ratings you should not have a problem with series circuits.