Soldering Problem

[Smiley]

Umm....parallel circuit.

[Infoamtek]

Young man, I suggest you take some basic night classes in electricity and electronics. Otherwise, you are going to be dangerous around components and circuits.

( In parallel, 18 volts is going to burn out a lot of LEDs)

[Smiley]

Bah. Forget it. I'll just buy a pre-assembled set.

[Scottzilla]

Ideally you would have a separate resistor for each LED. 9v will drive them all just fine, just make sure to choose the appropriate value resistors (if you post the voltage rating of your LEDs I can help you with that).

Also note that since you are drawing 160ma total you will probably get just shy of 2 hours out of a 9v battery. You may want to use a wall-wart instead.

Anyway, here's a quick schematic I drew of how you can hook up your 8 LEDs:

[Smiley]

Ideally you would have a separate resistor for each LED. 9v will drive them all just fine, just make sure to choose the appropriate value resistors (if you post the voltage rating of your LEDs I can help you with that).

The LED's I plan on using are these: http://monsterguts.com/lighting-stro.../prod_115.html

Anyway, here's a quick schematic I drew of how you can hook up your 8 LEDs

Ah, yes! Pictorial instructions! Now this I understand.

Also note that since you are drawing 160ma total you will probably get just shy of 2 hours out of a 9v battery.

Two hours of run time, eh? :/

[Scottzilla]

Okay, so here's what we know about your LEDs:
Forward Current - 20mA
Forward Voltage - 2.2

If you use a 9v power supply or battery and the LEDs are dropping 2.2v of that, then it means we need the resistor to drop 6.8v (9-2.2). We now know the voltage across the resistor and the current going through it (20ma or .02 amps, same as the LEDs), so we can use Ohm's law.

6.8v / .02A = 340 ohms

The next-highest standard value resistor is 390 ohms, so that's what you'd want to use (get 1/4 watt; 1/8 watt isn't big enough).

[Scottzilla]

BTW: technically you could power your 8 LEDs with fewer resistors, but this way you can have as few or as many LED/resistor pairs as you want without having to recalculate anything.

[mindtumor]

You could buy a power supply from minispotlight, that way you aren't draining batteries. It seems to me they were like $15.00 or so. That just covers your source though, you still need them resistors.

[Smiley]

Ha! Who needs night classes when I have you guys, eh?

Now that I've created something that works, I can start on the real thing.

[imax]

congrats, and good work!

[Infoamtek]

By George, I think he's got it.

[Scottzilla]

It's alive!

[Smiley]

O' Christmas tree, O' Christmas tree....



Almost done with my prop.

[Scottzilla]

Nice work. I can't wait to see your prop.

[icandrawem2]

Thats awesome man it looks just like a real workbench with real tools! sweet prop!