My Leds's Keep Burning Out!!!!!!!
 

So I bought some 3mm LED's off ebay and they finally arrived. I opened them and started to make a custom neon light kit for my Lambo. The problem is when I hook them up to the power source(2 AA batteries) the diods immediatley burn out, and start to smoke. Am I doing something wrong? Let me know. Thanks.



Cory

I'm no electrical expert on these things but I can only guess it's either too much power and it's overloading and burning out the diodes (course 2AA batteries doesn't seem like that much power to do that) or something in the way your wiring it and causing a short.

Can ya put up a pic of the custom neon kit your making? That would help to show others here more knowledgeable if your doing something wrong or if it is something else like just bad diode.

LED cannot be directly connected to batteries. Use a Resistor between them. That should solve your problem.

I haven't put the light kit together yet because of this problem. I will try to get it together l8er tonight.

I tried that but it makes the light dimmer.

Does the light still fry with a resistor? Chances are there is too much electrical current so they are frying up, that's what resisters are for. 3mm LEDs are at their full level at brightness around 20mA of current. Maybe your batteries are unloading too quickly. Like I said I am not an expert either... Just trying to help.

No with the resinator they stay lit, but the light is really dim.

My bad, lol I did a typo, Iw as asking if the light still fried with resistors. Me and My horrible english =P

yeah I understood what u were saying. the don't fry with the resinators but the are really dim.

The RESISTOR limits the current to prevent frying of LEDs. Your resistor is too powerful, giving it less current and making it dimmer. A weaker resistor should prevent frying and be still sorta bright.

OK, Thanks. I have some weaker ones so I will try those and let you know what happens.

I fixed the problem. I used different(higher quality) LED's and it works fine now. Thanks for all the help everyone.

so anticlimactic lol. hehe. . . resinators.

A little tip when buying resistors for LEDs. For voltages like 9v, 6v, 1.5v, etc. etc. try using 470 ohms, 10 ohms, 100ohms, 1k ohms respectively for higher voltages. Here's a great website for that stuff.

http://metku.net/?path=mods/ledcalc/index_eng