How to Wire Strings of Micro Leds

For those of you coming back to this post please note I have reduced the resistor from 36 Ohms to   15 Ohms for 200 lights or less.

The first thing I would like to say is that I have put this extensive post on my blog, on how I wired this particular board in my model, for three reasons. One, I have a head like a sieve. I do soo much stuff that I forget what I am doing. This way I can come back on it and go "Ah ha! Is that what I did!" The other reason is that when I was young, and attempting to learn all of this stuff, I had to figure it out by myself because no one would tell me. It took years! I suppose their idea was that it had taken them so long to figure it out why should they just give the information away for free? In one way I don't listen that, on another, I can understand it. So you can use this information, although I take no responsibility if you follow it and it does not work, for free BUT I would really appreciate it if you could link back to my blog. Also, in the future, I am going to do an e-book on how my models were made and this is a good start, although I think I might add videos to that.

This is the effect that I was aiming for and I am very pleased with it.

The second thing I need to say is that I am NOT an electrician and so I have wired these micro LEDs as a novice. This works for me but if you are going to follow in my footsteps and have any reservations please contact an authorised electrician. Always be careful when dealing with electricity.

I have probably said this before in other posts but I will say again - wiring lights are the bane of my life. There are soo many ways to wire lights and it can really become a very complicated thing. As I am not a person for complication I  believe I (after all these years) I have figured out a simple way for me to use LED lights within my model.

I am presently going through Pebble Cottage changing the lights. It is a model that is approx 20 odd years old and was filled with 'rice bulbs'. These chew up a large amount of power to run and so I have been methodically going through each section (7 of them) and changing them to LEDs.

I am using two types of LED's. The first are the individual 3mil and 5mil bulbs. These are mainly used inside the houses. The other type is the fantastic strings of micro LED's (Fairy Lights) with an added decoration over the top. Later I will be using the tape LED's for the fungi I want to light up and using Optic Fibre within the model.

I am also making it so the models can run on battery and also mains power through a 12v transformer which means that the 3mil & 5mil LED's can run on both sources of power. The micro LED's can only run on 4.5v batteries for the moment.

This is a lengthy post so if you would like to read more please click on the Read More link below.