So I have some LEDs for my pack and while I don’t need them to blink, I need to hook them up to a battery and switch. I know I need resistors of a certain type to designate a charge to the LEDs but after that, how do I hook them to a switch? I bought some LEDs and switches at Radio Shack, so I’ll list them and the number under them. Any help would be awesome. Thanks.
LEDs I have:
5mm Red LED 12VCS 20mA 1.5mcd with integrated resistor
5mm Green LED 2.1VDC 25mA 6.3mcd
10mm Ultra Hgh Brightness Red LED (FW current 20mA FW supply 2.4V (max) )
4-pin High Brightness Blue LED (FW 20mA FW supply 3.5V(typical) 4.0V (max) )
Switches I have:
SPST Submini Toggle Switch (contacts rated 3A at 125VAC 1A at 250VAC) solder terminals. 1/4" mounting hole
I’m not an electronics expert, but assuming you have all the right resistors, and the right voltage battery or battery pack for your LED’s, I think this is all you need to do for this simple circuit:
Run the red (+) wire of the battery to the long leg of each LED. Run the black wire to the one pole of the switch. Run wires from the other pole of the switch to the LED’s.
There’s two things here you’re concerned with. One is that the + side of the battery goes to the LED’s. The other is that you hook up the LED’s in a parralel configuration so they all get enough juice. The switch could be on the + or - wire of the battery, but either way, after the switch you need to fan off a bunch of wires to the correct leg of each LED to make the parralel connections. (A serial connection would be connecting the + leg of each LED to the - leg of the next LED, and the + of the first and the - of the last to the battery through the switch, but you don’t want to do that.)
The only other thing you should need to worry about is which poles you connect those wires to. And the only thing that matters there is that when you switch the switch, the connection is made or broken between whichever two poles you select. There’ll probably be six poles on that. I think the left three form one circuit and the right three form another, IF the swiotch has two seperate circuits which I don’t think all do. But anyway, I think if you connect the wires to two of the left three leads on the switch you should be good to go. I don’t know which two though. I think maybe the way that part works is you connect one to the middle, and whichever you connect the other one two is the direction the switch needs to be to be ON.
So like, try connecting one wire to the middle left tab, or just one of the left tabs if your switch only has four tabs on it, or just one if it only has two. And then connect the other to the top left tab or bottom left tab, or whatever, and see if it works. You won’t break anything if the switch is wired wrong, it just won’t switch on, or will always be on.
Just pay attention to the LED leg lengths and what pole of the battery they go to, (long leg to plus/red) and make sure your LED’s can run off whatever voltage source you have. I think the resistor is what matters, with bigger ones for more voltage, so if you picked resistors you must have known the voltage of the source.