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Here's the next installment in the e-book that I am writing dealing with electronics for model railroaders. This installment begins a chapter on specialty LEDs. Flashing, bi-color, surface mount, LED strips, etc. will all be covered in this chapter. This is the first part.

Using Specialty LEDs - Part 1

The material in this chapter will be old hat to those savvy in LEDs. Comments and questions are welcome.

TT
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David:

If the flashing LEDs are used with clean 3-5 VDC, like battery power, a regulated lab supply or a converted PC power supply, there is no risk of damage to the LED. The Lumex flashing LEDs are good to about 14V so running them on 3-5 VDc has a good margin of safety.

Wall warts, and model railroad power supplies are something else and that's why I included resistors in those set ups.

TT

P.S. Thanks for the compliment.
Dale:

You are correct, of course. However, I am trying to explain electronics in terms that everyone is familiar with. When I finally do pull the e-book together, and I can use hyperlinks freely, I intend to have several sidebars explaining the theory and practice. When I do that I'll be sure to use the term capacitance.

In fact, in writing this installment I did several paragraphs, graphs and photographs on caps and filtering. In the end I decided to pull that material out as it was too detailed. I saved the material and it will become one of those sidebars.

Thanks, I will incorporate your comments.

TT
The "capacity" of a capacitor would probably be defined in terms of the amount of total charge that the capacitor can hold. Charge is capacitance times voltage - Q=C*V. The maximum capacity is then the rated capacitance times the working voltage.

Re-arranging this, the capacitance is the amount of charge stored per volt -
C = Q/V.
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