Brightness and batter
Ok so I've started making my led string blade and everything is going good so far I have around 130 leds in parallel amd hooked up my batteries 2 AA and there not as bright as I thought they would be even when diffused and everything can anyone help me
Others in this forum will likely have a better answer, but my guess is that the AA batteries don't have enough juice to power the string.
What colour LEDs (what forward voltage) did you use? Did you do all of your electronics calculations first?
I'm no expert on string blades but I hear that the best way too hook up LED strings is in "seriallel", which means making several smaller strings of LEDs in parallel, and wiring the smaller strings together in series. This will prevent your blade from getting dimmer as it gets to the tip.
Unless you are using red/yellow/orange leds your going to need around 3.4 to 3.6v (and that's not accounting for any voltage drop from the resistance of 130 ledsOriginally Posted by Stevenbeck56
also 130 leds run at a average of 20ma (usual rating) your going to be drawing 2600ma (2.6 amps) way more than 2AA will deliver with any reliability
would recommend a 3.7v 18650 with a 1ohm 5 watt resistor
a little trick I found from installing long lengths of 12v led lighting tape (the stuff that comes on 5m rolls) is if you wire your led strings as one long section as I mostly do connect the positive wire to the bottom led(hilt end) but connect the negative to the top led (tip end) ......make sure the wire going to the top is rated for the amps going through it with a good margin for error as when wrapped/defused the blade strings can get very warm .... this trick helps spread out the voltage/current seems to even out the light output on long strings ..
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