LED Wiring Question

[A Hunters Moon]

Okay, say that you're lighting your plasma cannon. You want a beam directly down the barrel but you also want a tiny bit of light showing in the plasma canister. Can I just solder the two lights back to back, wire it up, and they both work? Or would this cause a potential short? Here's a diagram:

I have an ultralast 12v mini battery, a 10mm ultra high led, and a rectangular led that doesn't seem to have a rating.

 

[A Hunters Moon]

Did I just ask something ignorant or does no one know? lol

 

[AirborneHunter]

It will work as long at the pos.-neg. are matched no problem

 

[A Hunters Moon]

Thanks man.

 

[A Hunters Moon]

I'm not sure what happened but not long after I attached the battery pack and switch to the leds it started acting up. Now, it won't even come on. I bought a new battery and it worked for a split second, stopped, and then seemed to get hot to the touch.

I tested both the old and new batteries and they'll light up another led. Is the switch bad, is there too much juice, do i need a transistor? Any ideas what's going on?


The battery is a 12V 23A Ultralast. Maybe the switch is too small. It's rated .3A at 125vac.

 

[Elkman]

You need to put some sort of resistor in series between your battery and your LED so you aren't providing too much current to the LED. Otherwise, the LED could be burned out. Here's an article that explains why you need a resistor in an LED circuit, and here's a good LED calculator.

 

[A Hunters Moon]

Yeah, I think I blew the led. Looks like I need a 1 kilo-ohm resistor. Very helpful. Thanks.

 

[xdmray]

sorry i am not the best at electronics, but i do know you need to match the voltage to the voltage required by the LEDs, if each requires 3V then you need to supply 6v. plus it matters whether they are series or parallel, unfortunately i do not know the difference off the top of my head.

it sounds like you are killing the LEDs. look up circuit diagrams and find a voltage calculator online.