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| Dimmer switch on a LED ? |
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| Oldskool:
I currently have a 6-LED bulb under my trackball. It is pretty bright, and MAY distract during gameplay (although I'm not yet sure as my cab isn't complete). My mind is now focusing on bells and whistles, so I thought it may be a cool idea to add a dimmer switch for the LED. A dimmer and a potentiometer are one and the same right? The bulb is a 12 volt wedge style, that can be used in a car. Any ideas on how to hook one up? I'm sure it's pretty straight forward, but I'm a bit clueless when it comes to things electrical. |
| Druin:
I don't know how those particular things are set up but assuming it's just a bunch of LEDs set up normally, you can dim by using a potentiometer (making sure no matter what, that there will still be safe current limiting to the LEDs if it's not already built into that array)....or by getting fancy you may have success making the LEDs appear dim if you flash them at a certain fast rate so they are appearing to be on dimly. The pot is probably the easier method and most impact. So whatever your setup is right now to operate that LED system, just add a POT in series with one of the power leads and see if that allows control. A 3 terminal pot, you would use the center wiper pin and one of either end, those 2 terminals to join into the broken power line. If you do see an effect with the pot but it's too drastic (lights go from on to suddenly off) then you need a smaller resistance. And the POT should be able to handle whatever current this thing uses, probably not an issue...but otherwise you'll notice the pot gets warm. |
| Oldskool:
As I do not have an extra pot lying around, do you have a suggestion as to what I should buy? 100K perhaps? |
| Beley:
more like 500ohms or less |
| Santoro:
I am not sure on this, but I don't think it will work well. I imagine a lot of the range of the pot will render the LED dark, with a narrow range where it lights up. Unless you can get some super-sensitive pot.... I am not an expert though - give it a shot. I'd be interested to see if it works. |
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