Electrical – Building a simple led circuit

designled

I'm a mechanical engineering student and I have a little home project I'm hoping to work on. Unfortunately the only electric circuits class I had to take taught plenty of theory but very little about practicality so I am still at a loss when it comes to designing more complex circuits than the basic ones to prove class concepts.

I'm trying to create a simple circuit that will have multiple leds connected to it (those leds will have fiber optics running off their tops). It seems like connecting them in parallel would be the way to go. If I have a prototype board,a power supply, and a method of turning on and off the power, could I simply solder those leds to wires and create a parallel circuit without any additional elements? I've heard I should include a resistor before each led, but how would I go about choosing which resistor to use, the smallest possible? Would this circuit need any diodes or bridge rectifiers?

Best Answer

If you don't need to control the LEDs individually, you can connect the LEDs in parallel, but you need a current-limiting resistor in series with each LED, like so:

schematic

simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab

The resistor value can be calculated using Ohm's Law. You will need to decide on a suitable current for the LED (NOT the Absolute Maximum value from the datasheet! - 10 mA is safe for common LEDs). Determine the forward voltage drop of the LED, and subtrract that from the supply voltage to get the voltage across the resistor.