Wiring ?

Well.. right now you've got them connected in serial.. and if i'm not misstaken LEDs shoudl be placed parallel. If not then it's still better incase one LED burns out the whole circuit doesn't collapse.



This is a 5min sketch of how it should be connected. hope it helps.

**edit**
How come you have a resistor after every LED? Why not one "big" one?

Oh.. sorry.. its the electritian in me..

Here's what to do.
The circles with triangles are LEDs. The "fat legs" and "thin legs" are the short and long legs of the LED's.
The fat bar with a thin bar under is the battery.
The only real important thing is to connect the fatleg to the following fat leg and the thin leg to the follwing thin leg.
The gate looking thing is the swtich.
the box with the R is a resistor.
Do you know the resistance of the three resistor that you are useing?

LED's often require 1,5 V and you have 3 of them 3x1,5 = 4,5 V and you've got a 9V battery which means that the three resitors have to take care of the remaining 4,5 so that the LED's don't burn out prematurely.

If the guy said you needed three then i'd take his word for it. The legs are the same thinkness.. i just made one leg thicker to distinguish the two.

when soldering connect the long leg to the following LED's long leg and so on till you get to the battery.
The whole set up on your pict is fine.. just re-arrange the LED's

Revised...

Thanks so very much ... thanks for for sharing your knowledge, really do apreciate it

No prob.. what goes around comes around..
what is it for anyway?

im bettin gauntlets... want to do soemthing liek that aswell...

With out the resistors you run the risk of burning out the LEDs.

Here is a site that has a lot of LED circuits.

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Bill_Bowden/
Alan

LED's don't blink... you'll need some sort of chip or a bi-metal circuit... like the ones used in christmas lights...

And technically yes.. you can put the LEDs in a series... BUT if one burns out... all of em go out. If they are placed in parrallel the circuit is still complete and only the LED that has burned out doesn't shine.. the rest do..

If you want them to blink alternatly place the LEDs in parrallel with a bi-metal circuit on each (instead of resistors in the original schematic)

The LEDs I brought today blink.. approx twice every second ... I'll wire them in series and replace as needed... I'm not going anywhere near anything as complicated sounding as bi-metal circiuts and such ..

hmm.. i guess those LEDs got bi-metal circuits built in then.. kinda lika the christmas lights.
A bi-metal circuit is a two strips of metal peices that bend when heated. It then breaks the circuit. LED goes out.. When the strip cools the circuit is whole again and the LED goes on again. Thus.. blinking..

But again.. if you place them in serial and one LED stops working ALL of them stop working and you'll gonna have a hard time finding which one it broken..

If they are placed parrallel you imediatley se which one is broken since that one is the only on not lightning up..

So Parrallel would look like this ?... how important is the resister as they are all the same value/power/thing ?

This electrics thing is complicated.. I knew I should have stuck to ancient texts

The resistor has to be matched to the LEDs' current rating.

Alan

Check this out too. Good documentation for a lot of electronic applications

dan

pretty much.. yeah..

Thanks .. I'll give that a go.. I'll go and buy a resister for 9 volt rated LEDs .. and if that does not work I'll befriend a electrical genius

keep a lookout at your local dollar store during x-mas aswell. At mine they sell little sets of trees and streetlamps and other accesories for village sets. At mine they sell lamps and railroad crossing that light up, and the railroad crossing has 2 red LEDs that blink in an alternating fashion. I bought them all and am going insane on my armor, stripping off the signs and using the innards to make my front helmet triangles blink, and my rangefinder LEDs blink, and everything else they fit on. Just a hint on saving money/time/effort.

It worked !!! the little LEDs are really bright and look really cool !!! 8) .. and best of all I've learn to wire little lights ( it is worth learning )

Thanks everyone

Nice thread. Got some good resources out of it. Thanks guys.

FettTheHunter: Lets see some pics of your job! I had thought about doing something with the tri-holes in the helm attachement as well.

Glad i can be of some service.. It feels nice to be able to give something back to a community so wealthy with information as this one is..

Now.. Lets se some pics of your work!!

I was in Radio Shack a couple of weeks ago for something very similar to what you're doing. The guy there pointed out a pre-made flashing led circut that was the led and battery case all together. I think you can find it on their website. Just type in led or flashing led curcuts or something like it in their search bar.

Oh.. right.. Will get some pictures taken of the light show tommorow ( today ) ....