xandrew25xs DIY led build

2quills

2quills

Well-Known Member
I see...thats not going to work. D.C. current has a positive and negative polarity, meaning you cant use the negative side of the leds as a neutral to ground like that. When I get home tonight I'll shoot you a schematic for a parallel and series set up.
 
xandrew245x

xandrew245x

Member
I need to run the wires off the opposite + and - right? This is what I figured out once I had it all wired up, but I didn't think it made much of a difference, other than it being more difficult.
 
2quills

2quills

Well-Known Member
Positive from driver hooks to the positive on the first led in the string. Negative from driver hooks to negative pad on last led in the string. What youve got right now is backfeedin the signal through the leds. Youre bsically creatin a short in your string. Suprised nothing has blown yet.
 
2quills

2quills

Well-Known Member
Thats not going to work either. Positive from driver goes to positie pad on the first led. Then run a wire from the negative pad on the first led to the positive pad on the next led and so on.
 
xandrew245x

xandrew245x

Member
So basically, your wiring as if it was in a series, but your splitting the feed off ahead of the leds which then makes it parallel wiring.
 
xandrew245x

xandrew245x

Member

Okay, well I need to get some resistors, fuses, and more wire.

http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&itemSeq=111563366&uq=634665373714120694 fuses

http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&itemSeq=111563444&uq=634665373714120694 resistors

I found 20 AWG wire, but there is like 4 different kinds of it, will this wire work?

http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&itemSeq=111563507&uq=634665373714120694
They have 20awg stranded in red, but its like $50 more.

I know this website isn't a competitor of SWF, that is the only reason I posted them.
 
cipher43

cipher43

Member
I believe this is the wiring pattern you should be using. May want 2Quills to double check before you un-solder them tho
found this one on another site so hopefully its big enough to see
 
xandrew245x

xandrew245x

Member
Yeah, thats how I'm going to lay mine out, but instead of the terminal, i'm going to just solder the the 2 strings together then attach it back to the - on the driver.
 
acrylic51

acrylic51

Active Member
I think the terminal blocks would make things a whole lot easier and a cleaner setup and less chance of a bad solder or contact joint.....Just my .02
 
xandrew245x

xandrew245x

Member
Well I'm either going to solder or crimp, then heat shrink over it, but then again I could pay the $.70 and by a terminal strip, I would only need 1, I am only running one set of parallel lights, the rest are going to be in series.
 
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