Basic wiring idea

kahless78 · Post by **kahless78** » Mon May 21, 2012 12:17 am

Ok guys I have been playing with this idea and I wanted to know if this would work.

Power source 9 volt

One long positive wire
Onelong negative wire

10 leds with the proper resistors in place

Each led will be connected to the wires. So they will be placed in the middle of both wires. Positive terminal to positve wire, Negative terminal to negative wire. I am pretty sure this would work. Any feedback will be welcome!!!!

kahless78 · Post by **kahless78** » Mon May 21, 2012 2:29 am

Here's what I am doing. Two of those LEDs are orange. 6 are white and two are red and green blinking LEDs. I haven't done the complete set up but I have wired up a few white with my blinkers and they worked. The only negative thing I can see is I might have considerable battery drain. Forgot to mention that the blinkers are wired up as a series, not parallel like the rest.

Ziz · Post by **Ziz** » Mon May 21, 2012 3:06 am

Basically you're creating a bus circuit, which is fine.

Power supply needs are the same as any other project - add up your LED amperages and get a power supply that can handle that load with 10-20% to spare. Voltage should be enough to run whatever LEDs are your most power hungry, probably the whites. The other LEDs will need resistors to bring whatever that top voltage value is down to what the LEDs want.

You might want to run the blinkers on a separate circuit because if you have them all on the same bus, their on/off activity will constantly vary the load on the circuit and either everything will blink or the rest will go dim and bright relative to what the blinking ones are doing.

kahless78 · Post by **kahless78** » Mon May 21, 2012 4:05 am

I have done a primitive prototype with a total of 2 white leds plus the blinkers. I saw no noticable change in the brightness of the white led's or the blinking patern of the red and green led's. I will construct the full mock up hopefully tomorrow to make sure it works. The kit this is going into is a revell 1/600 enterprise. My plan is to build the lighting system in parts. splitting the model into four sections, Primary and Secondary hulls, Left and right warp engines. Once a part is complete I will install the lighting system.
Then wire each sub section to the main positive and negative wire. I did find something very interesting when it comes to blinking led's. If you wire say a blinking red and a blinking green in parallel. The blinking pattern is not together. If done in a series then they will blink together. Also if you wire one red blinking led in a series with a standard white one the white one will blink with the actual blinking led.

Ziz · Post by **Ziz** » Mon May 21, 2012 4:10 am

Yep - wiring blinking and normal LEDs in series, the blinker becomes the "switch" to turn the circuit on and off so everything connected to it blinks. In parallel, everything has effectively its own path to the power source (as opposed to having to pass through something else) so then multiple blinking LEDs all work on their own.

kahless78 · Post by **kahless78** » Mon May 21, 2012 4:24 am

I am pretty confident this will work. It is a small model so lighting it should not require more than 3 leds in the primary and secondary hulls. As long as I have the correct resistor value on each led I should be ok. Would you agree?

Ziz · Post by **Ziz** » Mon May 21, 2012 4:40 am

Yeah, that and making sure your power supply can handle the total load. If you've got the math right on those two, that's 90% of the job.

kahless78 · Post by **kahless78** » Tue May 22, 2012 6:12 pm

Did the prototype today. No issues at all. thanks for the help Ziz!!