Best way to wire LED's?

[DigDreams]

I just bought I bunch of buttons and high output LED's and was wonderig what is the best way to wire it up?  I seems kind of bulky to just solder or twist together all of the positives and grounds from a molex.  Is there something I can use that is cleaner?

I was thinking something with screw terminals like on the i-Pac, with one side being ground and one being +12v.  Is something like this available?  23 leads all twisted together seems like a mess to me. (I have 23 buttons total).

And help would be appreciated - this is my first cab.

- DigDreams

[RickDIII]

Don't know if this is exactly what you are getting at, but I'm using two barrier strips (part # 274-670) with some jumper strips (part 274-650) from Radio Scrap.  They are a couple of bucks a piece and allow me to run the + to one of the sets of terminals (leaving 7 more screw downs) and the - to the second set of terminals (again 7 additional screw downs).  I'm pretty sure this is overkill, but I thought it might make troubleshooting easier.

Basically, the barrier strip I picked up is a block of 16 screw down terminals in rows of 2 (each connected) that are seperated by plastic barriers - forming 8 usable rows.  The jumper strip jumps accross each row, connecting them.  This allows you to share a connection with seperate screw downs. 

Does the explanation make any sense?

Try this lousy diagram of a barrier strip.

____________________________
| X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X |
| X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X |
____________________________

Or go to this site to see one:
http://www.oz.net/~coilgun/mark3/barrierstrips.htm

Good luck!

 

[DigDreams]

That's almost what I need - just I need it "sideways".  In other words, the barrier strip connects sets of 2.  I want the shared connection going length ways.  Let me explain it this way...

|A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H
|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8

A barrier strip would connect a to 1, b to 2, c to 3, and so on down the line.  What I want would connect all the letters together and all of the numbers together.  The goal is to have a long row of + and a long row of ground.   This way I can run individual +/- paired wires to my LEDs.

I know this thing exists, I just don't know what it's called.

- DigDreams

[RickDIII]

That's what I was getting at with the jumper strip.  If you put a jumper strip on a single barrier strip it would connect all of them giving you a strip of positive connections.  Add a second barrier strip/jumper combo and you have a strip for negative connections. 

Good luck!

[DigDreams]

Got it!  Thanks!

- DigDreams