Electronic – Power indicator for circuits with voltages much higher than LED forward voltages (say 15-48V)

debuggingled

I have a circuit that has a 24V power rail and I put an LED and series resistor on it for power indication. Even at 10mA forward current, over 200mW of power is dissipated, over 90% of it in the series resistor. This is more than many (but not all) SMD resistors can even provide. This seems like a lot of power for a simple LED.

Neon indicators might work at the higher voltage end, but they aren't commonly available in SMD packages and they're bulky, expensive and can have limited life.

I also considered an astable multivibrator to do a low-duty cycle flash to keep average power down, but that needs 4 resistors, 2 capacitors and 2 transistors, or an IC (which would be unlikely to work at 24V) and some passives.

Is there a very simple (low component count, cheap, low-power and low-board-area) way to show power indication in circuits with a rail voltage more than about 10 times the LED \$V_f\$ (say around 15V up to 48V).

Best Answer

Use a different LED. High brightness LEDs should still be plenty bright enough for an indicator at 1-5 mA.

The problem you have is whatever component(s) you use to do this linearly will be dissipating the excess energy as heat.

The only way to perform this more efficiently if you wish to run from a high voltage, and put 20 mA thru the LED is to use some kind of switching device but that goes against one or more of the simple, cheap and low component count requirements.