Blinking LED Mood lighting

Step 5 Soldering the LEDs

So as you know there are a lot of LEDs in this project so that means that there is a lot of soldering. It gets a little manotonous so get ready!

After doing some testing with the LEDs that I bought, I figured out that when they blink it actually cuts power from the light itself, so if you were to put a couple LEDs in an array they would blink together and not at there own pace, which would be cool if you wanted that effect, so maybe another project...

So to get the desired look I was going after I need to put each LED on its own circuit persay. So that is each LED needs its own resistor so they will all blink at their own pace.

I used the Copper foil tape as the main circuit for this, and then just soldered the positive leads of the LEDs to one side and the Negative leads to a resistor and then to the other set of copper foil tape.

I made some diagrams below to help with the understanding of this idea of useing copper foil tape, you could use wire for all of this, but I thought this is much cleaner. In these diagrams I use BLUE to represent the negative power from the power supply, and used RED as the Positive power from the power supply.

Comments

[lamboboy732]

 wow it looks really professional. Nice Job!

[mightyhogan]

did you just solder the pos and neg ends of the charger to the foil tape?

[seligtobiason]

Yup! sure did, easy as that! just make sure you have them in the right order before soldering!

[mightyhogan]

hey man first let me say thanks for all the help i really appreciate it this thing is starting to look sweet i'll upload some pics when i'm done. but one more question, do you have a rec. on what voltage of charger to use so as not to fry the leds? i noticed you used a 5v

[seligtobiason]

well it doesn't really matter on what voltage you put into the board as long as you have the correct Resistors. So you can use the LED calculator and put in your info for whatever voltage you have and then you can get what resistors you need. What power supply are you currently using? What resistors do you have right now?

[mightyhogan]

thanks again for the quick response. i'd love to see if my leds and resistors are right b4 i solder. so i followed another one of your instrucatbles (great too btw) and ordered 5mm blue blinking leds and 150ohm resistors. will these work with either a 7v or 9 v phone charger or ethernet power supply?

[seligtobiason]

Well again, the resistors really depend on what voltage you use, so if you change the voltage, or the amount of LED's in parallel then the resistors will need to change too. Take a look at the LED calculator ( http://led.linear1.org/led.wiz ) and plug in the info that you are wanting to do an it will let you know exactly what resistors to use and how to wire them up. If you are not sure about what to put into the calculator click on the little "?" marks and they will give you an explanation.

Take a look at that website and go from there, if you are still not sure you can email me your info (how many LED's, what voltage you are using, along with the Ohms available on you power supply) and I can help you out.

[mightyhogan]

ok so i tried to use the calc but the wiring diagrams that they give me a pretty confusing. i was hoping to use the copper tape in the same scheme you had to wire it up. its suggesting wiring two leds togetther pos to neg and the the neg of one to the resistor. i just dont understand how i would lay the tape. Here the break down; esp. if i try for a 3 or 4 row scheme piece of sheet metal 12/24 hoping for 3 rows of leds 4in apart or 4 rows 3 inches apart horizontally and 8 comlumns of leds vertically so either 24 or 32 leds so; 24 or 32 5mm leds.3.3-3.4v 20ma with a 7.7v 700ma power source. your help is greatly appreciated man, i cant thank you enough

[seligtobiason]

Well, I am sorry that the calculator is a bit confusing... you just need to get a little creative with it, figure out how you can get the answers you want.

SO going off of that, you want to have it the same basic setup that I was using, which is one resistor to each LED... so that means that you need to know what resistor to use with that power source to power one LED.... which when you think about it, when you put in the number of LED's in the calculator just put ONE! Easy as that, now you know what resistors to use.

If you were to do what is explained above the calculator would tell you that a 220 Ohm 1/4 watt resistor would be the correct fit.... so just go out and buy one resistor per LED and you got it! Hope that helps, and when it comes to problem solving, you need to think outside the box!

[catz369]

How do you add the charger to it?I'm new at all this and trying to learn.

[seligtobiason]

Well out of the charger there are two wires, one is the positive and one is the negative. While the charger is unplugged, cut the end off of the cord and strip back the cord so the wires are exposed... then if you have a tester you can find out which is positive and which is negative. OR just take the two ends and temporarily attach them to the positive and negative of the project. then plug it in, if it lights up then you got it right! If it doesn't light up, just unplug the cord and switch the leads and plug back in! I hope this helped, if you have anymore questions please let me know! thanks

[phil_s_stein]

I've never used the copper tape before. Is it possible to just lay one layer of the tape on top of the other, sandwiching the leads between them? This would save the (enjoyable) hassle of soldiering them all.

[seligtobiason]

YES you can do that, the only issue with doing that is that the copper tape only is sticky so the LEDs and Resistors can be pulled out if you are not careful, so it is not as sturdy as soldering them.... but the short answer is YES that would work!