Re: Light Emiting Diodes

Posted by Beaker on Mar 08, 2015; 1:54pm
URL: http://guitar-fx-layouts.238.s1.nabble.com/Light-Emiting-Diodes-tp17549p18402.html

Frank's maths is sound, so anything over 1K resistor will be fine.

It's less a case of "what do I need", and more a case of "what do I want" with LED resistors.

The best way to work out the perfect brightness for you, is to make up a little temporary jig.

Simply connect a battery to a battery snap, and the snap leads to a 10K pot, or trimpot. (legs 2 and 3). Touch the LED leads to the terminals, and turn the pot to change the brightness.

When you find the ideal brightness level, take the LED off and measure the resistance across the pot. Whatever it reads e.g. 4.55K use the nearest standard value - in this case 4.7K.

Honestly I have used everything between 470R to 10k for my 3mm superbright blue LED's, so there is no right or wrong value on this. (Unless you go too low and blow the LED).