After having a very frustrating day of trying to figure out how to connect my LEDs to fit into a ping pong ball I had finally gotten them to work. The problem is that my 5v battery appears to have ended up burning out two of the three LEDs I was putting inside and the third one flashes now. I think this is because I was trying to get maximum brightness without a resistor and it turns out I needed one.
My other guess is that the battery pack is running low on power and maybe it’s not able to completely power the circuit. I’m hoping it is the second option. Unfortunately, I do not have pictures of the piece lit up because of this. I do, however, have pictures of some of the wiring work I did and the ping pong ball that I was going to insert into my project. I’m currently in panic mode trying to figure out how to fix this.
I think this is a lesson in size scale – being forewarned about smaller being harder. Of course, I thought I was up for the challenge. I think as I try to fix this for tomorrow I may go with a bigger option. If you have any suggestions please leave them.
sorry you’re in panic mode 🙁 you always (unless explicitly told you don’t in the specs) need a resistor with LEDs, otherwise they will surpass their current limit and burn out (which is probably what you did here). To get the maximum brightness out of LEDs, use the minimum possible resistor that doesn’t max out the current limit. Check out this Adafruit article for the tutorial: https://learn.adafruit.com/all-about-leds/forward-voltage-and-kvl
My guess is you need a 75 Ohm resistor to max out brightness.
Thanks Hannah! As soon as the lights burned out I realized that I had an issue. I believe I was able to solve the problem (by adding a resistor). Still working on it but should be good for class later