Steve,
On 18 Jun 2019, at 1:44 AM, Stephen Lowens via Groups.Io <sjlowens@...> wrote:
Please educate me. I've always put the resistor on the long lead which in turn goes to the yellow, white, green or purple wire, NOT the blue wire. The thought being that if more than one of these LEDs are on at the same time, it would overheat the resistor if the resistor is on the blue wire.
If you use one resistor (say 1K) in the blue wire, shared between all LEDs (that was never suggested), you will have the following problems:
- If you have only one LED on at a time, that LED will glow normally.
- If you have two or more LEDs on at the same time, the current will be shared (possibly unequally) between all the LEDs. The more LEDs you turn on, the worse the situation will become.
Unless you do something stupid (like reducing the single resistor to a much lower value) you won't get any increased heating, no matter how many LEDs you try to turn on at a time, but your results will not be pleasing to the eye.
The general rule is one resistor per LED, unless you are sure only one will be on at a time (as in some signal heads).
Dia
