Simple LED Circuit help.

[Harlequinzombie]

Could anybody possibly show me how this would work on a breadboard? Or even on the actual circuit board itself. It's my first circuit and I'm a bit lost on what to do.

 

[duke37]

The circuit drawing and design could be improved.

It is convention that the positive is at the top, then the conducting diodes point downwards.

The leds should not be connected in parallel, you should use a separate resistor for each led.

The breadboard has a conncting bus down each side. The battery should be connected to each bus. The board has cross conncted busses whic can be used to connect components together.

 

[Harlequinzombie]

Okay so how should I draw the diagram?

 

[davenn]

Okay so how should I draw the diagram?

rotate it 180 degrees would be great

its a kind of convention to also have the power supply on the left side of the circuit

you can use 1 resistor ... not really a problem ... but it is good practice to have a resistor for each LED

Dave

 

[Harlequinzombie]

I'm still not sure how it should look on the circuit board itself.

 

[davenn]

redraw you circuit correctly for a start and repost it

are you going to use one of those solderless experiment breadboards ?

a great idea for learning

 

[Harlequinzombie]

I was planning on it. To see how it works before I did any actual soldering to the circuit board.

 

[davenn]

thats good
do you already have a breadboard ?

 

[Harlequinzombie]

Yes I do. Also, is this any better?

 

[davenn]

much better

ok so I assume you have one of these breadboards .....

or at least one that is much the same ?

Dave

 

[Harlequinzombie]

Yes, that's actually the exact one.

 

[davenn]

cool
so do you understand how the holes are connected together on the board ?

D

 

[Harlequinzombie]

A very loose understanding. This is something entirely new to me.

 

[davenn]

OK I have done a mod to that BB pic.....

OK so you can see how the 2 long red and dark blue strips are connected

we use them for our power rails

its common to use the red one at the top of the board for the positive
and the blue right down at the bottom ofthe board as the negative line

the sample of vertical light blue strips shows how the holes in the middle are connected
thats the same right across the board ... I have just shown a few of them OK

Dave

 

[Harlequinzombie]

Ok, I'm following pretty well so far.

 

[davenn]

just some hints on B-Board use

1) ... dont try and poke wires that are too thick down the holes it will damage the contacts ---- keep jumper or component wire thickness to about the same as that on your LEDs
2) ... its best to use solid wire not stranded wire
3) ... dont ram the wires in the holes, push them in gently ... else again you could damage the contacts


D

 

[davenn]

OK good

now, do you have your battery, LEDs, resistor(s) and BB with you now ?

do you have a selection of resistor values ?

an edit to a previous comment in the hints ....
2) ... its best to use solid wire not stranded wire

you can use stranded wire .... you just need to twist it tight and solder it so its like a solid wire
you 9V battery clip should be like that

you do have a battery clip with the red and black wires coming out of it ??

 

[Harlequinzombie]

I have a clip, a switch, 470 ohm resistors, the BB, the 9v, and the LEDS. Also, I have an actual board.

 

[davenn]

OK great lets start constructing .... I have ~ 30 mins before I have to go out for a while OK

dont worry about the switch at the moment ... just plugging the red battery in and out of the board is good enough for the switch
Do you have a camera that you will be able to take pics of your construction and post them here ?

for a start we will use 2 resistors ... one for each LED OK as suggested earlier in this thread

1) ... push one end of one resistor into the top red row and the other end of the resistor into one of the blue vertical strip rown

2) ... take your LED ... see how there is a flat bit on the edge ? ... that will go to the negative blue rail at the bottom ... the other leg of the LED can go into one of the vertical blue strips above the negative rail

 

[davenn]

step...
3) .... you need a short length of jumper wire to go across the centre gap between the blue vertical strips