Can someone give me some direction or info on this?

[hynostroza]

Hello everyone, this is my first post here on this board so please forgive me if this isn't the right place for this specific question. My son has been interested in doing electronical projects, anyways I feel this is a great place to ask questions regarding my novice approach.

Anyways we are going to build a project that requires external power of 12V. Now we have four strips of lights that need to be powered by this, and my question is (well if there is a site someone can direct me too if no one wants to address this) is can I solder the positive onto a board and then 'dont know how you would say it' but make a soldering path to four seperate pins on the board and then connect each positive of the lights to those pins?

Thanks

Hank

 

[analogLow]

Hello everyone, this is my first post here on this board so please forgive me if this isn't the right place for this specific question. My son has been interested in doing electronical projects, anyways I feel this is a great place to ask questions regarding my novice approach.

Anyways we are going to build a project that requires external power of 12V. Now we have four strips of lights that need to be powered by this, and my question is (well if there is a site someone can direct me too if no one wants to address this) is can I solder the positive onto a board and then 'dont know how you would say it' but make a soldering path to four seperate pins on the board and then connect each positive of the lights to those pins?

Thanks

Hank

Hank-

You can build a Printed Circuit Board (PCB) if you want. Maybe you should draw a picture of what exactly you are trying to do and I can help you more. List the power, voltage requirements of the 4 lights you want to power.

Here is an excellent page on PCB design (and also learning how to solder)>
Tangent Tutorials

cheers,
analogLow

 

[hynostroza]

Thank you for the fast reply analogLow. Thank you for the link, I dont know if we are at the level to build our PCB just yet. He has been itching to buy a bunch of Arduino boards to correspond with his computer. Anyways what the project is basically a moodlight for the back of his fishtank and his little knick knacks in his room.

I got a couple of people I met online who told me a walk through of this kind of project with the arduino (which I know we dont really need the arduino but I want him to have it anyways)

The power needed is 12V 1A minimum. The Light Strips are three seperate lights R G B, dont know how much each are though, but the guy I talked to has the same exact ones (we bought from the same place) and he said all I need is a 3 resistors and 3 transistors for each Strip. The resistor is 2200Ω, I was just wondering if I did buy like a seperate board (besides the arduino) and build the circuits from there and then connect it to the arduino. But I am just not sure how to power each Light strip. Except to solder the positive into the board and make a path to each positive of the light strip and then just plug them in.

But I am defintely going to watch those movies with my son, like I said he is really interested in this subject.

Thanks again for the link!

 

[analogLow]

Thank you for the fast reply analogLow. Thank you for the link, I dont know if we are at the level to build our PCB just yet. He has been itching to buy a bunch of Arduino boards to correspond with his computer. Anyways what the project is basically a moodlight for the back of his fishtank and his little knick knacks in his room.

I got a couple of people I met online who told me a walk through of this kind of project with the arduino (which I know we dont really need the arduino but I want him to have it anyways)

The power needed is 12V 1A minimum. The Light Strips are three seperate lights R G B, dont know how much each are though, but the guy I talked to has the same exact ones (we bought from the same place) and he said all I need is a 3 resistors and 3 transistors for each Strip. The resistor is 2200Ω, I was just wondering if I did buy like a seperate board (besides the arduino) and build the circuits from there and then connect it to the arduino. But I am just not sure how to power each Light strip. Except to solder the positive into the board and make a path to each positive of the light strip and then just plug them in.

But I am defintely going to watch those movies with my son, like I said he is really interested in this subject.

Thanks again for the link!

Ok now I understand. You are trying to bias three LED lights. The current through a LED needs to be limited by a resistor or else it will break. The LED has a recommended forward bias voltage (to forward bias a PN semiconductor junction). At this forward bias voltage, the LED will start to turn on. You need a somewhat precise resistance between the supply and the diode to bias the LED at this forward bias point. A good explanation here:
**broken link removed**
>Except to solder the positive into the board and make a path to each positive of the light strip and then just plug them in.
You can connect the 12 V supply to other circuits depending on how much power each load draws. If you are using a battery to get the 12 V then you have to understand how much power the battery can deliver and for how long. If you are using a AC-12V DC from the wall voltage then dont worry since it can deliver lots of current indefinitely.

Transistors can be used to switch on or off the LEDs. I would start just with getting the LEDs working first though.

analogLow

 

[hynostroza]

I was hoping you can help me with buying the resistors. I went to our local hardware store and they had a couple of resistors. I need 2200Ω and i saw a couple but I didnt know exactly which ones to get. They had 2.2k ohms. they had 22ohms and they had 22k ohms. Which one do I need to get? The guy told me his bands were red red red gold. I saw them on the 22ohms but I didnt want to get it without asking here first.

 

[enjunear]

I was hoping you can help me with buying the resistors. I went to our local hardware store and they had a couple of resistors. I need 2200Ω and i saw a couple but I didnt know exactly which ones to get. They had 2.2k ohms. they had 22ohms and they had 22k ohms. Which one do I need to get? The guy told me his bands were red red red gold. I saw them on the 22ohms but I didnt want to get it without asking here first.

You mentioned needing a 2220 Ω resistor, that corresponds to a 2.2kΩ, since 1k = 1000 (so 2.2*1000 = 2200). The color bands should be red red red gold. Red = "2", so that would read 2 2 x 10^2, or 22*100 = 2200. Gold relates to the tolerance... gold means 5%, so that means the part you get will be 2200 +/- 5%, or a range of 2090 - 2310 (perfectly acceptable for your needs).

The other item to note is the power handling of the resistors. These sound like leaded carbon film resistors, correct?
**broken link removed**
There should be a rating on the package for the resistors, typically for carbon films they are around 1/4 Watt to 1 Watt.

Can you tell us how much current and voltage each string of LEDs is supposed to draw? (or give us a make/model to Google, or even a link to the website you purchased them from)? If we know the specs on the hardware, it'll be much easier to help you through some of the calculations.

 

[hynostroza]

Here is the link
**broken link removed**
I really do thank you all for taking the time to talk to me and guide me through these questions.

 

[kak111]

If you look this web site there is......................

- No Ledcontroller needed, directy to 12V

Consumption
Red: 100mA @ 12V (~1.20W)
Green: 80mA @ 12V (~0.96W)
Blue: 87mA @ 12V (~1.04W)
Total:~260mA @ 12V (~3.12W)

And when you zoom picture whitch show the resistances you can see
that one strip-module is connected as 2 led´s and 1 resistor serial
times 3.

( 2 leds and 150 ohms & 2 leds and 180 ohms & 2 leds and 330 ohms )

................so you can connect these strips without external resistors
to the 12 V power supply.

1 strip all leds on draws 260mA
so 4 strip needs 1.04A
You need 12Vdc / 1.5Amin. power source.

I drow connection example for you.
(Warning : Check right polarity or you gonna destroy all leds !!!! )
You can protect power supply by adding 2A fuse right after output connection point.

View attachment RGB Led Strips Connection.pdf

KAK

 

[enjunear]

Here is the link
**broken link removed**
I really do thank you all for taking the time to talk to me and guide me through these questions.

Like KAK said, this LED strip already has current-limiting resistors built in. You can connect this LED strip directly to your +12V supply. As noted in the comments on that webpage, these are a common-positive, so connect the yellow "V0"? line to +12V, and then connect R,G,B to ground... one at a time, or in combination. As KAK suggested, use a few small switches to connect the RGB lines to ground... then you can route them to a nice, clean-looking board with some labels for Red, Green, and Blue.