Contents:

The Beginner’s Guide to LEDs Page 1 Basic Introduction

Pages 2-3 What are LEDs?

By
Jennifer Smith of JS Miniatures/Small Scale Lights Page 4 Using Resistors

Page 5-6 Basic Wiring

Page 7-8 6 volt, 9 volt &

12 volt
Other tips

The Basics
TIP 1: LEDs are a fairly new concept to the dolls house hobby despite being popular in
model railways for years. They are also increasingly being used in our cars and
LEDs have a positive homes. As technology has advanced they have become more affordable and
and negative leg. The also smaller! Perfect for those tight spaces and smaller scale houses that have
positive leg is always started to become more popular as space for new dolls houses becomes limited!
the longest and should
be connected to the I think they are the way forward. Instead of having to replace bulbs every few
positive side of the years you can buy LEDs that are brighter, should never need replacing in your
battery or power lifetime and can even be run off batteries!
source.
There are many different shapes and sizes of LED available as illustrated by a
small selection in the picture above. The shape affects how the light is directed
or allows them to fit into different spaces so they can be great for more unusual
projects such as a tower LED for a lighthouse or side viewing for a fire effect.
There are also flickering LEDs now that have a tiny printed circuit board inside
the LED that creates a random flicker. They are available in 3mm in red, amber,
orange, blue, white and warm white but this makes them perfect for 1/12th scale
fires and candle effects as well as in model railway and other model fire
applications.

more on 2
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JS Miniatures – Beginner’s Guide to LEDs

TIP 2:
If you are connecting an LED
to a 12 volt DC power supply
you must use a resistor. The
resistor limits the amount of
voltage supplied to the LED,
otherwise the LED would be
instantly fried. The resistor is
generally connected to the
positive side for consistency,
but can be on either leg.

So what are LEDs and how do you use them?

LED stands for Light Emitting Diode. The diode glows when voltage is applied. Simple right?

LEDs come in many shapes and sizes with bigger ones tending to be more powerful and brighter. Some
have a very small field of view (so the light is like a spotlight) while others have a wider field of view and
different shapes allow them to be used for a multitude of uses.

Different colours are made by including a different chemical in the diode, although some LEDs also have a
coloured housing. I generally use water clear LEDs which have a clear housing and are high power
producing the most light for the size.

There's an LED for every eventuality (well, almost!). From pencil point sized chip LEDs to 5mm LEDs there's
a shape and size suitable for every project from lighting tiny 144th scale houses to table lamps in a dolls
house, headlights in model vehicles etc. You can even get LEDs on a flexible strip for industrial models such
as warehouses, modern offices, dentists, cafe etc or to simulate daylight in a false window.

Why should you use them?

* Can be run off a 3v, 4.5v, 6v, 9v or 12v etc supply (with suitable resistors)

* Several LEDs can be powered by a single battery

* Don’t get hot so are very safe to use in plastic or paper models

* Very bright for their size with a wide range of colours available

* Last thousands of hours (estimated at 50,000 - 100,000 hours) - a lifetime!

* Come in a range of effects including solid, flashing and flickering

* Can be combined with a microchip for special effects such as a lighthouse beacon

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JS Miniatures – Beginner’s Guide to LEDs
As you can see from the diagram, the light is produced by
the semiconductor die, which is a very tiny component,
with the rest being a casing or lens to project and direct the
light.

LEDs might look complicated but all you need to know is

that there is a positive leg and a negative leg and the
positive leg is always the longest.

As long as you connect the positive leg to the positive side

of the battery or power supply, you will be fine and it’s easy
to test. If the LED lights up you know the wires are the
right way round. If it doesn’t, switch them over.

LEDs are fairly robust and not as easy to break as filament

bulbs. The main thing to make sure of is that you have a
good connection between the LED and wire. The ideal joints
are soldered. You can just form a mechanical joint by twisting the wire around the leg of the LED and using
a piece of heat shrink tubing or electrical insulation tape to protect the joint but it needs to be a secure fit.

You can even sand the top of the LED to help spread the light out wider, a bit like using a diffuser on a lamp
or flash, but I now also have wide angle 3mm LEDs in stock that have a flat top which are very popular.

The plastic casing is an epoxy resin so as long as you only sand the rounded top and don’t go near the
metal contacts it will be fine.

If the LED is too bright you can either use a bigger resistor to limit the supplied current, or you can use
acrylic or enamel paint to cut down the light. Just paint over the top of the plastic casing of the LED. Work
on the principle that less is more. You can always add more paint.

Sizes of SMD LEDs

SMD stands for surface mount

device and these are normally
used on circuit boards, but
they can also have very fine
wires soldered to them to
make the chip LEDS we use
for our smaller scale houses.

I stock most sizes from 0402

pico chips to the larger 3528
& 5050 mega chips.

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JS Miniatures – Beginner’s Guide to LEDs

Resistors – what are they and why do we need them?

LEDs are pretty rugged but the thing they don’t like is being supplied with
too much current. Do that and you’ll see a very bright light for a few
seconds and then have a very dead LED!

Resistors, in simple terms, are used to absorb the excess current in the
circuit. They create resistance and the higher the value of the resistor the
more resistance there is and therefore the flow of current is small.

Resistors can also be used to make the LEDs last longer. You can easily
run an LED so it’s at its maximum brightness, but doing so makes the LED
diode get hotter and so it will burn out quicker than if it is run at a lower
current. Even at half the maximum current it won’t significantly affect the
brightness of the LED but it will extend it’s lifespan. Not many companies
supply resistors in this way. Normally they supply the lowest rated resistor to provide the maximum
brightness from the LED.

The complicated bit comes in here because LEDs are not all alike. Different colours actually have different
voltage values with white and blue being the highest at typically 3.3v and red and amber being the lowest at
typically around 1.9v. Green is in the middle.

As you can probably surmise, if you connect a 3v battery, the white and blue LEDs are going to draw too
much power from the battery because they need more than 3v, thus draining the battery quicker and red and
amber are going to be supplied with too much, hence they’re going to glow quite brightly but with a shorter
life span than expected. They can even be fried if connected to fresh 3v AAA batteries!

This imbalance also causes a problem when you try and connect different colours of LEDs to the same
battery.

Say you want to light a 1/48th scale house with 4 white LEDs and 1 red LED for the fireplace. What you will
find is that the lower voltage red LED will hog most of the power and the white LEDs will not light or they
might if you’re lucky but they will be very dim.

The solution to this problem is to use resistors to help balance the supply to all LEDs.

Now, there is another small problem. Although CR2032 coin cell batteries are the ideal choice to power our
LEDs in terms of their small size, unfortunately they’re not really designed for this purpose. They are
typically found in car remote fobs, designed for low current, short bursts of power and to last for years.

When you start powering LEDs with them, you work them hard, drawing a lot of power, especially if you have
several LEDs connected to the same battery. This means the batteries will last a relatively short period of
time before needing changing.

It also means that they can’t cope very well with powering different coloured LEDs. Sometimes you get a
effect where if you connect for example, 2 x white and 1 x red LEDs to a coin cell battery the white LEDs will
dim significantly while the red will be very bright! It very much depends on the size of LEDs being used and
is most common with SMD chip LEDs.

The solution is to use a 2 x AAA battery box (3v). Because these batteries are designed for higher current
usage in torches etc, they cope well with powering the LEDs and you can more easily connect different
coloured LEDs to the same battery.

If size is very important and you need the small footprint of the coin cell battery, the best solution with SMD
Chip LEDS is to use separate batteries for each colour and I would recommend no more than 5 LEDs per
coin cell, unless you’re happy to replace the frequently or don’t have the LEDs on very often.

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JS Miniatures – Beginner’s Guide to LEDs

Basic Wiring
Now you know the basics the simplest way to start is to wire up a single LED to a 3v battery. The most
common battery to use is the CR2032, often found in car remote fobs, though I prefer using the more
powerful 2xAAA option. LEDs will be slightly dimmer when used with a battery compared to a 12v supply
but the convenience of using a battery outweighs this. You can power up to 10-15 LEDs off of a 2 x AAA
(3v) battery box but bear in mind that this will drain the battery quicker and getting a good connection with
all the wires can be tricky. Other than soldering the wires together, I have found a connector block works
best and this will be discussed on the next page.

For this example I will show how to connect 1 LED to a coin cell battery holder using heat shrink and then a
connector block.

A – Battery holder and battery (Could also be a AAA battery box)

B – Micro on/off switch (On battery box for AAA option)

C – Pre-wired LED

D – Heat shrink tubing to protect wire connections

Using Heat Shrink Tubing

Step 1: Lay out the components and put the battery in the battery
holder. Insert battery so that the plus sign (+) matches with the
plus sign (+) on the holder

Step 2: Slide the heat shrink tubing onto the battery wire, one on
the red wire and one on the black.

Step 3: Twist the red wire of the LED with the red wire of the
battery/switch and then do the same with the black wires. Try and
keep the wire inline as shown.

Step 4: Slide the heat shrink tubing over the wire connections.
Switch on the LED to make sure it is working correctly, then
shrink the heat shrink tubing either using a hair dryer or a craft
embossing heat gun. It should only take a few seconds.

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JS Miniatures – Beginner’s Guide to LEDs

Basic Wiring (Continued)

Using a Screw Terminal Block
The alternative method is to use a screw terminal block and this is ideal for where you want to connect
multiple LEDs to the same battery. It is also my preferred method as it means you can also undo the
connections if you need to! With heat shrink it’s very difficult to get it off once it’s shrunk!

Step 1: Same as before – insert the battery into the holder.

Step 2: Unscrew the little screws enough so that you can insert
the wire underneath. Insert the red and black battery wires in
adjacent holes on one side and tighten the screws until secure.
Ensure you don’t push them all the way through to the other side.

Step 3: Do the same for the LED wires inserting the red wire
opposite the red battery wire and the black wire opposite the
black battery wire.

If you have multiple LEDs you can twist the wires together, then
insert under the screw and tighten to secure as you can see in the
photo opposite.

The single wires are from the battery box.

This is known as wiring in parallel and is the safest way to wire up

LEDs because each LED has it’s own resistor and draws it’s own
current from the battery. If one LED blows for some reason the
rest are unaffected.

If you are only inserting one wire, especially with thinner wire like dolls house white twin core wire, a useful
tip is to bend the stripped piece of wire back on itself, against the insulation to make the connection stronger.
You can then insert this into the connector block and screw to secure as before. The brass pieces inside the
connector block ensure you get an electrical connection, wherever the wires go, but do make sure you don’t
push them too far through to the other side.

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JS Miniatures – Beginner’s Guide to LEDs

Wiring for a 4.5v, 6v, 9v or 12 Volt supply

If you plugged an LED directly into a 4.5v / 6v / 9v battery or 12v DC power supply you would instantly fry the
LED.

Resistors, in simple terms, are used to absorb the excess current in the circuit. They create resistance and
the higher the value of the resistor the more resistance there is and therefore the flow of current is small.

Resistors can be placed anywhere along the length of wire. Resistors can get warm on a 12v supply.
Depending on the project I usually solder them near the plug end of the wire or occasionally on the leg of the
LED. This means there’s not a chunky resistor along a wire that needs to be hidden. The heat shrink tubing
over the top protects the join and is also an insulator and flame retardant. Most companies will supply pre-
wired 9 or 12v LEDs with the resistor on the leg of the LED but this can make it quite hard to hide the LED as
it becomes much bulkier, which is why I place them near the plug end of the wire instead. It’s more time
consuming but better for miniatures. Obviously it’s application specific and for some products it is best to put
the resistor on the leg of the LED.

Should you choose to use your LEDs with a 6v / 9v battery or 12v transformer, I will supply the correct
resistor for your project.

For 12v transformers used with LEDs it is important to make sure that the transformer you buy is regulated
with12v DC output. Most older transformers or cheaper ones are not and this means that the voltage will
fluctuate or spike, putting strain on the LED and shortening its lifespan.

Transformers work by converting the mains power – AC (Alternating current) to DC (Direct current). DC just
means the current flows one way (just like a battery) whereas with mains electricity (AC) the current
alternates direction 50-60 times a second.

All LEDs supplied for model projects only work with DC power supplies, which means batteries or a
regulated DC transformer.

If using DCC track power you can use a bridge rectifier and capacitor to smooth the supply and prevent
flickering of the LEDs. I have a separate sheet on this which can be sent on request.

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 Other tips
LEDs can be used in many different situations. One thing you can do with LEDs is bend them. You have to
be a bit careful not to damage the LED and don’t repeatedly bend the legs back and forth as this causes
metal fatigue and they will snap. A good tip is to bend the legs where the little flat bits are as this is far
enough away to minimise potential damage to the LED. They’re normally a few mm’s away from the head
of the LED.

Hold the LED in a pair of pliers just below the two flat bits and carefully bend the legs to 90 degrees with
your finger. The legs are fairly pliable so not much pressure is required.

This is really handy if you want to use the LED as a ceiling light
or wall light.

Drill a hole in your ceiling or wall, feed the wires through the hole
until the LED head is in the position you require and then fix the
wires in a groove or down the back of the house as usual.

You can use superglue or a two part epoxy such as Araldite or

hot melt glue to fix the LED in position if you wish.

3mm & 5mm LEDs are ideal for use as ceiling lights or spot lights
in a range of projects because you can also get LED lenses or
clips that the LED fits into making a very neat end result. The
clips fit material up to 3mm thick or could be glued in place for
thicker materials. Ideal uses include headlights/tail lights in
model vehicles.

Photo shows black LED clip with 3mm LED on the left and clear
LED lens with 3mm LED on the right. Red and coloured lenses
are also available.

I have provided a lot of spotlights like this and using 3mm LEDs with the clear lens is very effective. Photos
of uses for LEDs can be found in my customer gallery at: https://www.smallscalelights.co.uk/customer-
gallery

I hope you have found this guide useful. If you have any questions or wish to discuss how you can use
LEDs in your project, please e-mail me at: jsminiatures@gmail.com

JS Miniatures / Small Scale Lights

jsminiatures@gmail.com

All photos and information contained within this

document is copyright of Jennifer Smith of JS
Miniatures and must not be copied or used elsewhere
without my permission. For personal use only.

Copyright JS Miniatures 2013 - 2016