# 5mm LED Light question????



## Spoonhead (Jan 14, 2014)

I am about to begin wiring some 12V 5mm pre-wired LEDs together per stiltbeast studios instructional video on mini-led spotlights, but was wondering if these can be wired piggy back style like Christmas lights in order to use less speaker wire? I'm going to be using about 3-4 of these in each of about 8-10 rooms in our haunt. 

Thanks for any help offered!:jol:


----------



## SoCal Scare (Aug 3, 2007)

Yes you should be able to as long as your power supply can support the total amperage of all your lights together. I have probably 15 LED spots of varying size attached to a large outdoor transformer and have had no problems. I use vampire connectors so I can easily move my lights around if necessary.


----------



## goneferal (Sep 8, 2010)

I have about 200 LED spots I made running that same way (in about 6 separate strings) on one 12 volt power source. I've never had any problems.


----------



## corey872 (Jan 10, 2010)

Not exactly sure what "wired piggy back style like Christmas lights" means. Some Christmas lights are wired in series (usually the miniature bulbs) and others are wired in parallel (C7 / C9 bulbs and/or when you add multiple strings to the same plug).

If you wire in parallel, the amperage draw on the power supply increases withe each LED added, but overall voltage can remain the same. This is probably what you want as you say these are prewired for 12V, and even a small supply would have enough amperage for a lot of LEDs.

If you wire in series, then amp draw says the same as one unit, but you need to increase the voltage of the power supply for each LED added...24V for two LEDs, 36V for three, etc. This is likely not what you want in this situation, but if running off a battery, it is a good way to economize power as you can build a LED string which runs right off battery voltage. So all your power is used to create light and not burned up as heat in a limiting resistor or voltage regulator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_and_parallel_circuits


----------



## Spoonhead (Jan 14, 2014)

Well the only reference I have for this is the stiltbeast studio tutorial which would have branches of 4-5 lights wired together for each room, then each branch or cluster ran with a long wire directly to the 12V power supply. (I do realize than the mA determine the quantity of lights using the formula of approximately 20 mA per light.). What I'm wondering is how or if I can wire the lights in order to prevent several long runs from each room all the way back to the power supply such a string of Christmas would be? This may not be possible but I just don't know enough about it at this point. I can follow direction but need some general direction as to the how-to of it all.


----------

