New project - need wiring help

[Jonitus]

I'm putting together a Vader replica for the grandson of the Systems Analyst where I work, and he's asked me to build it on the more "dollar friendly" side, so I have put together something out of parts from a scrapped Vader ESB, an Anakin ROTS, and a sinktube. It looks friggin' sweet, but I have a wiring issue.

I'm using a 4.8V NiMH pack in the saber. The board is an Anakin ROTS board, and I had to wire the LED leads individually because the connector piece was busted. Well, I did that, and it all works fine, but the multimeter is giving me some weird readings.

My digital multimeter reads 1.390 amps on the LED leads, and 5.05V. The saber will have a Lux III Red/Orange, so the current is fine, but what about the voltage? Also...how am I reading more voltage out of the leads than I am supplying to the board?

[neophyl]

Most '4.8v' nimh packs are actually around 5-5.5v when charged fully.

[Jonitus]

Okay. That makes sense. What about the voltage to the LED? Should I resistor it? I wired things like shown in the tutorial here, so am I overdriving the LED?

[Hasid Lafre]

I thought mr boards only put out 900ma?

So in a "conversion" type setup your underpowering the led.

[Novastar]

Jon, a Lux III red-O (or red, amber)'s max cont. current is 1540ma, so you should be just fine.

Besides, slightly "over-driving" an LED will only shorten its lifespan in a small way... which is no big deal considering the normal lifespan of a Lux.

Now, GREATLY over-driving can kill the LED, so no you wouldn't want to do THAT... but you don't have much of a chance doing that with LEDs that already "get happy" with 1500ma or more (such as Lux III "darksides" and Lux K2 "lightsides")...