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dmudave #1 06/04/2010 - 05h03

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So I'm totally new to this stuff.

I stopped by radio shack and picked up 3 ir LED's, 3 22ohm resistors, and battery holders.

I say holders because they didn't have a holder for 2 AA batteries. I just bought 2 single AA holders.

Well I connected the batteries in parallel instead of in series the first time through. So instead of doubling the volts from 1.5 to 3, I doubled the current.

Obviously I fried something because nothing will work.

At this point, what do I need to replace? Would I have fried both the resistors and the LED's? or can I just replace the LED's?

Thanks in advance for any help.
buccaneer #2 06/04/2010 - 07h19

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You didn't fry anything, if you just put batteries in parallel. There was not enough voltage to push critical amount of charge through your layout. Actually there was not enough voltage to provide current for normal operation either.
dmudave #3 06/04/2010 - 19h09

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It didn't have enough voltage, but did double the current.

I put the batteries in series and it still doesn't work. I don't think it is a polarity problem.

I know that my camera is working because it detects an ir light on a remote that I have.

Any ideas??
dmudave #4 06/04/2010 - 21h27

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One other thought...

The radioshack ir led has a 940nm wavelength... would my ir filter cut the signal out completely?
sirbum69 #5 06/04/2010 - 23h48

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i bought the IR leds from radio shack, and my camera saw them just fine with the IR filter in...

Course i tried to take out the IR fileter and destroyed the camera..

But i used a battery case, 3 resistors and i attached a resistor to each LED and ran those directly to the hot side of battery...
Falcon #6 07/04/2010 - 14h25

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dmudave @ 06/04/2010 - 19h09 a dit:

It didn't have enough voltage, but did double the current.


As he said, you couldn't ruin it. You can double current only by doubling voltage or halving resistance (I=U/R). Paralel batteries just mean, they work longer (each runs half current), but with same voltage (and so total current as well) as one.

If cirquit doesnt work then either and its not polarity of batteries, then it could be:
a) One (or more) of LEDs is attached at wrong polarity
b) One (or more) of LEDs is malfunctioning
c) Dead batteries
d) Bad contact somewhere
e) If you mistakingly soldered LEDs in serial instead of parallel circuit (i use serial circuit btw), you would need 4 batteries (6V) to run it.

BTW IR light can be easily seen by mobile phone camera (weak filter) and some LEDs shine small fraction of red visible light.

Sorry if some sounds too obvious, just brainstoring out all possibilities.
dmudave #7 10/04/2010 - 14h41

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I figured it out and the cap is working great!

Thanks for all of the input.

I made a stupid mistake when buying supplies. I went back to Radio Shack to look at the resistors again and realized that the resistors that I got were not 22 ohm... they were 22k ohm.

oops. No power was ever getting to the leds.  Fixed that and the cap is awesome!

Thanks everyone for the help!

Thanks for this awesome software and community!

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