Help with simple circuit

Other Hardware LEDs and Multiplexing
1

I am VERY new to electronics and was hoping someone can help me with my circuit. I want to power my LED's using an external power supply, but I have no idea how to go about doing that. The entire circuit is comprised of 17 LED's, and arduino's basic 5V supply is just not enough to power all those. What is an easy way to go about powering the circuit? Should I buy a heavy duty battery online?
I have included an image below of my circuit. The LED's in series fade in and out, and the LED's in parallel turn on and off with the switch button at the bottom.

Side note: None of my resistor or battery values are accurate (except for the 9v powering the arduino), just placeholders. I could really use some help with figuring out what resistors and batteries to use.

image
image1188×420 10.2 KB

2

Please calculate the voltage required to light up these many LEDs. You'll need a power supply of at least that voltage and a driver circuit for that high voltage.

3

Are all your LEDs plain old RED 5mm round with leads?

4

Welcome to the Forum!

Me too, but this :point_down:t2: :point_down:t2: looks like a bad idea:

image

DC fonts from 7-12V might be connected at Vin pin.

5

What is a driver circuit?

6

The 12 in series are red, the 5 in parallel are white. yes all standard rounded heads 5mm

7

thats not accurate now that I look at it. The arduino is simply powered at the standard round plug jack, its not wired into the pins. sorry.

8

Hmm, perhaps you should start with a simpler project. You are going to spend some money with killed equipment.

A simple driver circuit provides more voltage or current than a logic output can provide.

9

That’s what I need help with… finding a way to add more power. Any resources you can point me to?

10

Read about transistor or MOSFET circuits. The Related Topics at the bottom of this page can provide some information.

1 Like
11

What is the negative of the 5V battery actually connected to? As shown the battery is shorted.

1 Like
12

Then you will need a 30V power supply for the 12 LEDs in series.
If you make 3 srings of 4 RED LEDs than you would only need a 12V supply.
Would that work for you?

14

I’m open to any suggestions. So should I wire the 12 in 3 parallel sets then to achieve that? I don’t actually have to have the LED’s in series unless there’s somehow an advantage to it

15

Not sure if you saw above, but that was a mistake on my part. It’s not connected like that, just imagine the arduino as being connected to a 9v power supply

16

The advantade is that you don't need much current, the disavantage is that you need more voltage. I think 30V is out of the question.
Before we decide on how to connect everything let's also consider the white LED.
We need to know the forward voltage (Vf) of the white LED otherwise I just make a guess if you can tell me the white LED power?

17

Just used my multimeter, the voltage drop on the red LED's is about 2, and the white are 3.2.

18

Are the white also the 5mm round type with leads?
So what value resistor did you have in series with the white LED?

19

Yes, the same kind. Right now they are running with 560 ohm resistors

20

There are several ways to do this.
My preference would be to use one 9V power supply for everything or if you want to use bateries then 6AAs in series.
I'll draw a schematic of how to do it with a 9V supply OK?

22

Sounds good thank you. I uploaded an incorrect schematic so i deleted my post. I'll look forward to seeing what you come up with