LED's on 240 volt ac

Surely neon lamps like

david

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Thing is I need one blue and one red. Trevor Smith

Firstly, consider a neon indicator -- it's a better fit to main voltage.

If you stick with LED, then 5mA is enough current for an indicator, or make that 10mA for half wave rectified...

---/\/\/\----|>|-------|>|--------- 24k | | 1.5W --/\/\/\-- 10k 0.25W

The 24k resistor drops the mains at 10mA, but gets hot. The 1N4006 diode rectifies the mains. The 10k resistor ensures reverse mains voltage is all across the 1N4006, and not the LED which couldn't handle it.

We could reduce power consumption by dropping most of the voltage across a capacitor rather than the resistor. Can't completely get rid of the resistor as the inrush current to charge the capacitor if swithed on mid-cycle would destroy the LED.

LED

---||-----/\/\/\--------|>|--------- 0.068µF 6.8k | | 400V 0.25W ---|

In article , Trevor Smith writes

Ok, diagram below but please think about safety before implementing this circuit. Neon cases are designed to be safe when used at mains voltages but LEDs are not. An LED mounted in a clip and poked through a panel or even in a panel bezel is not safe when used with this circuit. Unless you are prepared to totally enclose the LED in something like a salvaged neon housing then please don't implement this circuit.

Anyway, lecture over:

C is 400V ac rated 22nF for 1.6mA, 100nF for 8mA, 220nF for 16mA

View with a fixed width font:

| | | --- --- C (value) | / \ / 470R \ | ----- | | | | --- --- 1N4007 / \ \ / LED --- --- | | | | ----- | | |

Resistor values (ohms) = (Vs-Vf)/If

where Vs is supply voltage Vf is the forward voltage drop across the LED If is the forward current through the LED

Vf and If are shown in the specs for each LED in the Maplin etc catalogue

For AC supply connect a diode eg 1N4148 in inverse parallel with the lED and halve the value of the resistor

(says the Maplin Catalogue from long enough ago when it contained Useful Information)

The whole lot will have to be insulated for 240V.

Owain

Oh, and put a 1M resistor across the capacitor too, so it can't retain a charge after use and zap you.

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Search for 'neon blue' on rswww.com (Radio Spares)

Ready made mains LED indicators are available and might be the easy answer as regards safety etc. I've got some which are identical in diameter to a normal 5mm LED plus bezel with the electronics mounted inline behind and the whole lot sealed with flying leads for connections. Overall length about 1.5 inch.

On 14 Nov 2006 15:13:25 -0800 someone who may be "Trevor Smith" wrote this:-

Why do you "need" a blue one?

Maplin sell snap-in neons in red, amber, green *and* blue

Neons simply don't look as good as LEDs, though. They're also a source of RF interference which might matter on sensitive equipment.

Probably the best thing to do is to use a capacitor in series with them

- resistors to get to say 20mA will be large and bulky and get hot (5W). Then you want a diode across them so they don't get reverse voltage across them.

Working on 20mA for half the time - so 40mA in all, you need around

The other otion is an inductor - 50mH..but that is a fairly large chunk of iron and a lot of fine wire.

Ah,. Pretty much what I came up with..except you have forgotten that the current through the LED is half wave..I made it .5uf for 20mA average..and I see no need for a high voltage power diode like a IN4007..it doesn't have to take more than 5v reverse across it after all..the LED takes care of that and clamps it. The 470R is good to limit transients.

I had another thought on this..it might be possible to use a triac as a fairly crude 'chopper' - like a basic dimmer type circuit - and then a resistor and capacitor to smooth it out a bit. More expensive, but more efficient.

That's probably what they use in these

Probably available from RS components and the like

Thanks for the advice and I have decided to go for ready made indicators. Trevor Smith

Doesn't work for AC.

Not even where it says "halve the value of the resistor for AC"?

Owain