Three pin lamp or LED

Jul 15, 2005 2 Replies

I have an application which requires an idiot light. However, my ECU has only one pin available and it's only capable of 4mA. Does anyone know of a lamp or large LED that has three pins: two for power and ground and the other for a 5V switching signal?



We could easily design a small circuit board to do what we want but for the quantities we anticipate, it would be too costly. I'm just wondering if there is a well packaged off the shelf solution.



Thanks in advance.



for

I bought a Leviton night light, model 48582-RBO, made in China. I opened it up and found a single LEd with two wires connected to the electronics. I'm still scratching my head on how it puts out red, green and blue colors, rotating thru them slowly. Apparently the LED die has some active circuitry on it.

Anyway, you should be able to get plenty of light with 4mA or less, and with both red and green LEDs connected anti-parallel, you should be able to get it to put out either color with only one pin.

There are LEDs that get plenty bright at just 4 mA -including in general green ones with InGaN chemistry (wavelength around 520-530 nm). Most better white ones also do this. So do most better blue ones with wavelength 470 nm or known to use InGaN chemistry.

So do most with rated brightness at least 2,000 mcd.

Some examples in

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- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)

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