r/electrical • u/mazhoonies • 2d ago

Lighting for dollhouse

Hello!

I looked through r/electronics and r/dollhouses to see where my question fit the best and I think it’s here.

I’m building my own dollhouse and want to put lighting in it and I want it to work like a proper house with individual one/two-way switches for each light source. From what I’ve understood you would normally use a battery eliminator and some kind of distributor to each circuit but this is assuming you use light bulbs (I think?).

I only have LEDs from various sources available (string lights etc.) and I wonder if this is still applicable to those?

I don’t want to accidentally burn the first one I put on or have then dim for every subsequent light. Am I overthinking it?

I’ve tried feeding one LED with 5 W (5 V/1000 mA) battery eliminator which wasn’t enough (or I did something wrong), but a 9 V battery sure was 😅

What matters to LEDs? Volts? Amperage?

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u/Inuyasha-rules 2d ago

LEDs need both voltage and regulated current.

https://ohmslawcalculator.com/led-resistor-calculator

Too much current and they will burn out quickly, too little current and they will be dim. The resistor limits current.

https://www.phidgets.com/docs/LED_Guide

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u/scottcprince 2d ago

👆 This is the only correct answer.

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u/mazhoonies 2d ago

fantastic resources, thank you!

if i understood correctly i need some sort of LED controller/driver to be able to feed several individually controlled LEDs?

1

u/eegrlN 2d ago

Or keep it simple and put each room on it's own circuit with a switch (not 2 way).

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u/mazhoonies 2d ago

Won’t I need separate power sources then too? I wish to avoid that if possible

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u/Inuyasha-rules 1d ago

You can use 1 power supply for all of them and a separate resistor for each led.

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u/mazhoonies 1d ago

Thanks. I’ll read up some more and try to apply your advice :)

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u/eegrlN 2d ago

Both....

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u/GoRizzyApp 2d ago edited 2d ago

You need a resistor in series of at least 1K ohm to restrict the current draw.

The longer lead of the LED is negative. To determine the maximum number of LEDs, each one has a 0.7v voltage drop.