On Thu, 15 Feb 2007 20:02:12 +0000 (UTC), (Dave
Martindale) wrote:

Mark Lloyd writes:

I hooked them up in parallel and they seem to work just fine. Incredibly
bright too.

LEDs in parallel with each other? It's unlikely that all would light,
since the threshold voltages would be slightly different, and the one
that's lowest would prevent the others from lighting.

If they're all from the same batch, they're probably pretty well matched
in forward voltage, and it only takes a little bit of series resistance
within each LED to approximately balance the current between LEDs.
This isn't a *good* way of connecting multiple LEDs, but it's not
automatically doomed to failure.

Modern LEDs can appear very bright. I noticed that with the holiday
lights I had this year (yes, I know that's "last year", but it is
still less than 2 months ago). Those LEDs look brighter than the
miniature incandescent's.

The little 1 W and 3 W LEDs appearing in flashlights are now brighter
than anything I ever saw from any incandescent bulb in the same size of
flashlight (2 AA battery).


Yes. I have one of those 3W LED flashlights. It's brighter and whiter
than an incandescent flashlight.

Dave
--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.laughingsquid.com

"Unlike biological evolution. 'intelligent design' is
not a genuine scientific theory and, therefore, has
no place in the curriculum of our nation's public
school classes." -- Ted Kennedy