I’m the middle of reading your comment I realized what I did wrong when making it in the breadboard.

So I got the switch and parallel LEDs working, but the single LED connected directly to positive wouldn’t light. The resistor and LED made a loop back onto the same positive side of the breadboard, so the current had no reason to flow through them.

Something like this?

Also, are there any glaring issues with doing it like this?

Yep, the power source is a 7.5V wall wart

The lights are going to be on a wall, around 7’ up, with the power running straight down to an outlet. About halfway up will be a switch

Yeah, I’m not surprised help is limited without a diagram. Maybe I can get around to making one tonight

18? Yeah I doubt it

30yo here, I usually only use it to answer questions where I’m apathetic about the choices

What are you feeling for dinner? Meh🤷

I still need to run the numbers to figure out exactly which transistor fits this application, but I feel like anything getting that hot isn’t properly matched to 8 LEDs

How do I calculate which transistor to use?

I love The Oatmeal, but yeah, this one’s a miss

Huh, if I had the time I’d do some reading about it. Sounds like there’s some really interesting physics going on there

Fair point

That’s actually really really good to know, I would have just dove right in, heaedless of color

That being said, I redid it with your input in mind. It’s currently got 100U resistors and draws a good bit more than the power supply is capable of

When you say “the real world” what do you mean, exactly? Because the 12V, 200mA power supply I used to power it for these pictures is likely what will ultimately power it

I had that same thought, but I’m running 4, 3.3V diodes per parallel branch/arm/whatever, with a 12V power supply, so the calculations I’ve seen for determining the appropriate resistor tell me this doesn’t need any.

It felt wrong, but I wanted to see if it would light up, and it did! I tried to wrap this concern into the “is it going to start on fire?” Bit lol

And then cut it to shape?

I love it

This was a wonderful comment to read and video to watch, thank you

Ohhhhhh the bernoulli effect?