three pin multi colour led to two pin led

Look at the circuit diagram or reverse-engineer it. Tying pins together might work just fine...maybe...or it may let the smoke out. I can't count the number if times I assumed the designer was logical and F'd something up.

Depending on how clever the original designer, there's more than one way to connect stuff. Tying pins together is a risky thing to do. Might be safer to replace with two blue led's. Or, since you're throwing away one indication, use one led and forget the other.

What's the cost of a new drive? How badly do you want the blue light?

The thing has two colors for a reason. I don't remember the Shakespeare quote, but to goes somehthing like, "if it bothers you, stick tape over it." Or just Leave it alone and train yourself to ignore it!!! If you have to ask the question, leaving it alone is appropriate.

Assuming for discussion the three-pin is a red/green LED, one circuit powers the red LED while another circuit powers the green LED. Are these circuits suitable for wired-OR operation? How is the LED current limited?

He might also try installing a diode between each input lead and the controlling lead of the LED. This would provide isolation and possibly damage to the other control circuit.

he

ead and the

There's a schematic on the board: ---------------------------------- =20 | | =20 | | | --*---------

• | | | | | | | |
• * | | | |____|_>|__| ____| | |__|__+___________| __| =20 | | A slightly cruder version(I hope this formats ok) :) The asterisk denote contact points. The top three are what is currently used to power the three pin led, the other two sets are not being used.

he

ead and the

Thanks for the replies. There's a schematic on the board and it looks like this.

Your schematic is missing ALL the critical parts. What drives the leds? Likely comes out of some chip somewhere and you probably still won't know what drives the leds unless you reverse-engineer the circuit and/or the chip, depending on what documentation is available.

Put two blue leds and be done with it.

I am kinda curious what's so important about this that you'd risk blowing up the drive??

You need to use a fixed width font, if you want most people to be able to view your drawing. Google uses a proportional font as default.

That 'schematic' appears to show two manufacturer's options, the first being the three pin bi-colour LED that you currently have fitted, and the other being two single colour LEDs - one in each of the hole pairs below the three hole set. One thing that you might like to bear in mind is that a blue LED requires approximately twice the voltage across it to illuminate satisfactorily, than does a red or green or yellow. This may or may not be an issue, depending on how the original LEDs are driven. I'm basically with everyone else. You're asking how to fit triangular wheels to your car, but nor telling us why exactly you need to do it ...

Arfa

Use 2 white LEDs and color them blue with a Sharpie or similar translucent coloring.

-- Cheers, WB .............

On 4/28/2011 2:29 PM tom spake thus:

IF the 3-pin LED is what's at the top of that schematic, then yes, you can easily replace it with TWO leds connected as shown. (The three-pin device is simply two separate LEDs in one package with a common cathode.)

I wouldn't mess with trying to replace this with a single LED. You never answered the question: why are you doing this?