So i was bored, and had a super bright LED knocking around and decided to stick it in my foot well, it worked well, except that the light was very directional, so i went out bought some more from maplins some wire and some resistors... and set out to make it a bit better...

My LEDs and holders, the holders are not necessary.


Cut some lengths of wire and strip them back.




The wrap the wire round the positive leg of a LED (the longer one)


The cut the excess of the leg, and straighten the wire up with the leg


Then solder it, apply a little solder to the iron, and then place the iron under the section you are soldering, and the solder on the opposite side until it melts through and coats the connection.


Then join the negative leg of the next LED to the wire you have just soldered to the positive leg of the last.
http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z...c/DSC00760.jpg

At the end attach a resistor to the last positive leg.
Here's a nice website that tells you which resistor to use, and how to wire them series/parallel...

http://ledcalc.com/#series



Here are all the LEDs and resistor connected, and my coffee table come worktop HAHA.
http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z...c/DSC00762.jpg

The to finish it off, and to prevent shorts wrap some electrical tape round the bare metal connections....
http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z...c/DSC00763.jpg

And that's it finished...

There's no pics of them installed because the damn shop sold me normal LED's instead of the super bright ones, so I don't think they will be bright enough, and when I went back they didn't have any left in stock....[:@] But they do work So when i get some decent ones i shall try again.... maybe using a different amount of LED's different positions etc...

 

What you need to do is if the light is direction, diffuse the top of the LED. You can do this in two ways, preferably get some fine sandpaper and go at the top of (and surrounding top) of the LED. This will remove the directional light of it, and diffuse it so it looks much sofer and you can actually look at it.

If you're feeling dodgy, and don't want to fork out the 50 cents for sand paper, you can get pliers and crush the top of the LED.

 

And you should of wired them in paralell instead of in series like you did, that way each led gets the same maxamount of voltage instead of evenly distributing it to each led. Wiring in paralell will make them brighter.

 

Due to the Led calc that i used, it was ok to wire them in parallel upto 4, if wiring 5 then it must go in parallel. Though i used the spec of the bright leds, not the actual LEDs that i got.

Thanks for the feedback