LED’s

I would think even wired in series the first LED would blow if you are using 2-3v LEDs. I mean good ol' K mans law says series is additive, so 4 3v LEDs in series should = 12v's, but the first LED would see 12v's, and the second would see 9v's, so on so on untill 0v's at the ground. Basically a voltage ladder using LEDs as the resistors. So the first LED would blow so it would'nt work. As Sammy was saying, use a 500ohm resistor on the power wire side for each LED. You can play with the resistor size to make them brighter or dimmer, sorry but I don't have my paperwork in front of me for the min/max size of resistors for the LEDs so they don't blow up or don't light up. Hope that helps! Good Luck! -Kyle

I have 11 LEDs I need to wire and figured that wiring them in parallel is best and that way I only need a 44ohm resistor. No to find some cheap blue LEDs.

You have to limit the current going through the LEDs. For that you need to know 2 of the LEDs parameters: Operating voltage and current. So, to wire up 3 LEDs at 1.5 Volts(operating voltage) drawing 20 milliamps (operating current) from 14 volts, you would go like this: 14 - 3(1.5v)/20Ma 14 - 4.5 / .02 475 Ohms I would use a larger resistor value (510 ohms) to avoid burning the LEDs prematurely.

However in parallel your equation would be wrong, it would need to be 14 - 3(1.5)/60ma. I did some research and found this site for calculating such things . http://linear1.org/ckts/led.php

Sorry, I forgot to mention that that equation is for LEDs in series, and yes, it should be 60Ma.