Thread: LED wiring help

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I'm trying to wire up a lantern with some flickering red LED lights. I bought 2 5mm 5V 20mA LED's. According to this website: LED calculator for single LEDs I need a 330ohm resistor for the LED, which I bought.

This is the lamp I'm trying to duplicate: Unpleasant Street -- Halloween Yard Haunt and Info

But I'm also bought a pack of 20 assorted LED's (red, yellow, green, and clear) with assorted readings. The box says they are 2-3v, 10-20mA LED's.

I'm wanting to wire the 2 flickering LED's with maybe a regular red and yellow LED that doesn't blink. Kinda give it a flickering effect.

Would I need different resistors with the LED's that don't blink, or can I wire all these up with 1 resistor.

I plan on wiring them to a 9v battery.

Anybody know how to do this, or give me a better idea?

I found this online:

LED series parallel array wizard

Typically - You want a resistor for each LED, but you can cheat and double, tripple or quadrupple the LEDs on one resistor provided the current draw doesn't exceed the wattage of the resistor.

P=IE

add the current draw of the LEDs together to come up with your total current (I) ie. 4 LEDs at 20ma = 80ma next multiply that times the voltage of your circuit (E) in this case 9V. so that is .080 x 9 = .72 Watts of Power (P) so if you have purchased 1/4 watt resistors (Normal), the resistor will fry itself.

thanks bradbaum...I appreciate the response. that site really helped, but I think I'm gonna abandon the idea of converting my lantern to an LED light...ain't getting the effect I want.

Sounds liek you're going for something along this line?

Spooky Blue's Halloween Haunt Projects - Spookyfire - Fake Firelight Effect

You've described what I did almost exactly. I wired up 5 flashing LEDs and a solid one. But the 5V flasher might make things more interesting. Mine were all 2ish volts LEDs.

I too build an lantern a la Unpleasant Street and found I preferred the steady green light over the flickering version.

I have several links similar to that one...as well as that one, but I'm not getting the effect I want. I tried a lot of combo's...red, yellow, white, flicker... but I'm not liking how it looks. I got one built now...2 red blinking LED's, 2 regular red LED's and 1 yellow LED. I'm looking at it in the closet (it's dark there) and not liking the look. I might try putting it in the front yard tonight and seeing.

I might just wire the lantern with a candle flicker light and see how that goes.

Maybe I need more flashing LED's...

Originally Posted by CMGhost

Maybe I need more flashing LED's...

Yeah, only 2 won't give you a god flicker effect. Mine are set up like Spooky Blue's with 5 flashers and 1 solid LED. The one solid one keeps some comstant light while the 5 flashers all blink at slightly different rates (inherent to the LEDs) so they're never quite in sync. It has yielded a decent, though still not perfect of course, flicker-flame effect.

To keep the light more centralized (i.e. more flame-like) I soldered the LEDs to a small circuit board all side by side in a 2x3 grid. It seems to have worked out pretty well.

For a more realistic fire look, you might even try mix of yellow and red flashers with a red solid LED. I haven't tried it yet, but maybe next time around.

I found this site to be very helpful, with my led projects.

Making LED Creature Eyes

Not sure if this will help or not:
http://www.garageofevil.com/projects...er_circuit.php