# NEED HELP: rewiring battery operated votives



## Lord Homicide (May 11, 2012)

I want to wire 4 electronic votives together with one power source and on a single switch. This is going into the base of a table lamp globe.

The negative on the battery faces down, positive up. I've got an idea how to do it but just want to make sure I don't miss anything.


----------



## Lord Homicide (May 11, 2012)

I think if I solder all the + together and - together in series back to a battery compartment, that would work. Then put a switch on the negative side. Each votive takes 3V


----------



## corey872 (Jan 10, 2010)

Don't know your exact set-up, but if I had to do it, I'd cut up an old cat5 network cable and use those twisted pairs. Solder one wire to the + and one to the - at each votive. Run those back to the battery, lump all the -'s to the - battery and lump all the +'s to the + battery. Should run fine off 2 AA cells in series.

Alternately, you could run wires from the battery and just 'string' to each votive using the same +>+>+>+...+bat and ->->->-...-bat configuration.


----------



## Lord Homicide (May 11, 2012)

Cool, will do it that way. I just need to make it idiot proof


----------



## Lord Homicide (May 11, 2012)

I've got a ton of cat5 cable. How many twisted pair wire should I bunch together to make a single wire?


----------



## Haunted Spider (Sep 6, 2010)

A single wire out of the group will work to solder into a + or -. You don't need both in the twisted pair, just one. The only bad thing about cat 5 is the wire is solid and easy to break if twisted enough. ( can't tell you how many I broke last year on my LED display. Going to All RCA cables this year, with braided copper vs solid


----------



## corey872 (Jan 10, 2010)

Sorry - should have been more clear. As spider says - I'd use one twisteded pair per votive...one wire to +, one wire to -. If you have solid core, that will be a pain... I've gotten used to having piles of stranded wire around and just think of that as the default - though not all cat5 is stranded.


----------



## Lord Homicide (May 11, 2012)

Got it soldered up.

EDIT: 
I will put a AA battery holder with a slide switch on positive - connect it up. I should post results in a couple of days.

Solder


----------

