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I have decided to make my blade with an RGB tri-color led. I only plan on utilizing the red and green leds. After researching I believe I have an idea for what resistors I will need for this setup. What I am UNSURE of is how to go about wiring up two independent switches for the separate leds from a single battery pack. Any ideas?
One switch for red, one switch for green? That's not too hard. Just make a "Y" split on the positive wire from the battery, and another "Y" split on the negative wire from the battery. You'll connect the red/switch to one pos/neg set, and the green/switch to the other pos/neg set. You'll be running two sets of electronics in parallel.
As an added bonus, if you turn both red and green on at the same time, you'll get yellow.
The yellow was the REAL goal of this build. But I thought if it was a possibility, I would have 1 saber for 3 costumes and personas in 1.
Thanks for the help. Now i just need to narrow down the DEFINITE resistor pair I plan to use. i can use the same resistor on both lines, right? Or would you recommend a different set, Cause it all depends on what shade of yellow i want to get.
HIGHLY recommend each LED die gets its own dedicated resistor. Resist the red die per the normal calculations. Resist the green die at least to the minimum calculation to ensure LED longevity, but maybe resist more than needed to get the shade that you want.
Yes. Each LED die will need its own resistor. They will not be the same value, since reds and greens have different forward voltage values.
If you want a specific shade of yellow, you'll want to get a pair of potentiometers and wire those in temporarily in place of your resistors. Adjust them until you get the shade you like, measure their resistance, and then replace them with a resistor of that value.
From experience if you run the red and green at max you will get a green/yellow. So I sould suggest running ghe red at max and then playing with just the green till you get what you want. I got a orange like yellow with the green at half power, or close to half. It gets hard to find resistors to match what you need sometimes.
When i said "the same resistor" I meant a pair of identical resistors, but you guys still managed to explain that even thats a bad idea, thanks!
Now, any recommendations on where to get a pair of decent potentiometers?
I have a volt meter, so that should tell me what i need to know as far as what resistors to get, right?
http://forums.thecustomsabershop.com...e-to-Ohm-s-LawQuote:
Originally Posted by ArcGunner
The specific resistors will depend on your battery voltage and what specific LEDs you plan to use. Specify what exactly you are going to use, and one of us will probably help you crunch the numbers.