3 volt coin cell 9 volt battery 12 volt Transformer/ adapter

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1 If you have never lit up your mini projects before, or if you have never tried out LED lighting or electricity before, you are in for some nice surprises! Lighting can really be a lot simpler than you might think, and lit up projects have a lovely quality that adds drama and life to the mini scene. Anyone can get started with LEDs. LEDs are great to use for mini projects because they never get hot and they just about never burn out. They are very durable too. Get them installed and you are good for years and years of use. Add to that, you can get a lot of light from a small package. So, how do we get started with LEDs? Power Choice: The first thing to do is decide among the power choices. You can use a small nickel sized 3 volt lithium battery we call a coin cell. Or you can use the common 9 volt battery like Duracell. Or for a really permanent display that is on all the time, you can use a 12 volt wall adapter transformer. The choice is yours! When deciding your power source, you can consider the advantages and considerations for each one. 3 volt coin cell 9 volt battery 12 volt Transformer/ adapter The big advantage to using coin cells is the nice small size of the battery. The common cr2032 can be found at Walgreens and the other drugstores. It is only around the size of a nickel. You can slip the coin cell and holder underneath your project or anywhere next to it. Also the coin cell an easy place to start when you are electrifying for the first time. Not much can go wrong with a little 3 volt cell. A single cr2032 coin cell can power 3 lights for almost 24 hours, lots of viewing time before you need to get another battery. The maximum number of lights this cell can run brightly is around 10 LEDs The advantage of the 9 volt battery is the number of lights it can run. A single 9 volt can run 50 lights for almost 5 hours! Or the 9 volt can run 3 LEDs for over 36 hours before you need to think about a fresh battery. Lots of viewing time! And if you choose to have a flashing light or two, say you want to add a fire in the fireplace, the 9 volt is powerful enough to do that. The room lights will not flicker along with the fire in the fireplace with a 9 volt. 9 volt batteries are very common. You probably already have a few of these batteries around the house. And working with a 9 volt is no harder than using the coin cell. The advantage of the 12 volt wall adapter/transformer is permanence. If you know you are going to want to keep your LEDs lit most days of the month, and you plan to keep your project lit up for many hours each day, then the 12 volt transformer is the best choice. A regulated adapter will keep your LEDs lit for years and years of use. Just be sure to get the adapter that is recommended for your LEDs. The transformer needs to be regulated and a high quality one for the LEDs to run right and last for 10 years or more..

2 3 volt coin cell 9 volt battery 12 volt Transformer/ adapter Other considerations: a coin cell cannot run as many lights as a 9 volt battery. If you plan to have a fire in the fireplace or other flashing lights you will need a separate coin cell for any flashers. There can be a bit of carryover flicker when you have both solids and flashing on the same coin cell. Other considerations : a 9 volt is not small like the coin cell. Sometimes it can be harder to hide. While the 9 volt can run a lot of lights, sometimes you really do not need that many lights in a small room box. We have a strap/switch that lets you connect from the battery to your LEDs and easily turn the lights on and off. Other considerations: with the 12 volt wall adapter/transformer, you will need a wall outlet nearby to your project. This can be a problem if you plan to travel with your minis. Also the wall adapter can be a bit more intimidating when first starting out with electrifying projects. Connecting lights to your 3 volt coin cell battery: We have a coin holder with a switch so you can easily turn the lights on an off Connecting lights to a 9 volt battery: We have a strap/switch so you can connect from the battery to your LEDs and easily turn the lights on and off. Connecting lights to your 12 volt adapter Sometimes we get asked if lights set up for one type of power can be used on another power. Unfortunately not. The 3 volt coin cell lights have no resistor. They cannot handle any higher power than 3 volts. If you try 9 volt or 12 volt, they will go out. The 9 volt lights do have a resistor. While you could run them with a 3 volt coin cell, the lights would be dim with only 3 volts. The 12 volt regulated adapter can also be used to run the 9 volt lights, but never the 3 volt lights. Let s say you have more than one light type from us and you are trying to figure out which light is which, look for the bump underneath the shrink tube on the red lead: That is the resistor. Generally if there is a bump the bulb is set up for 9 volt and 12 volt use. No bump visible, then stick to the 3 volt battery.

3 Size: The next thing to think over with LEDs is the size of LED to get for your lighting project. LEDs come in many, many sizes! Chip The choice of size can be based on how much room you expect to have and how big your finished project will be. 1.8mm You can put LEDs in the ceiling or in a lamp, or outside a 3mm window. The largest size, 5mm is great for 1:12 scale, or for when you have a lot of room and need a lot of nice bright 5mm DC LEDs light. Depending on where it is used, quarter scale can use 5mm sometimes, like in recessed can lights. 3mm is the middle size. 3mm is smaller than 5mm but bigger than the 1.8mm. Use 3mm when you need a round classic bulb shape. 3mm is popular with quarter scale, half scale and 1:12 scale. The 3mm LED gives a great amount of light. 1.8mm is our most popular size light for 1/2 scale, 1/4 scale and 1/144th scale. It is the light of choice for many miniaturists! The 1.8mm gives off a nice bright light and does a great job with light coverage. A very popular bulb! Our newest light, the Chip or SMD LED is nice and tiny. And in spite of the small size these Chips still really give a nice amount of light. That little yellow square in the picture at left is the chip LED. You can see how a chip LED can be a great choice when space is a real consideration. Color: Then there is the choice of color of your LED light. There are two colors of white light we carry, as seen in the picture of the 3mm bulbs above. Warm white or soft white and the cooler color white called cool white or daylight. For most uses, the warm white will fill the need. Warm white is an especially good choice for interior living room, rec rooms, dining rooms and bedrooms lighting. Cool white is a great choice for things like bathrooms, modern kitchens, modern commercial shops or factories and diners. Cool white is also nice outside of a window to show daylight streaming into the room from an outside scene. There is even more fun you can have with your LEDs. Use paint! Paint is safe to use on LEDs because as you remember, the bulbs do not get hot. So get out your acrylics, enamels, or Gallery Glass paints. Gallery Glass paint sold by Plaid are found near the stained glass supplies and meant for painting onto glass to simulate stained glass. Check for them at your local hobby store. You can take your warm or cool white LED, and by adding a bit of paint get a whole new color. Paint is also a great way to soften or dim the brightness. And you can add and remove paint with a bit of acetone until you get the color right. In the above picture you can see: unpainted cool white, then pink, yellow, off-white, blue, and green paint. We also carry a full line of true-color LEDs. In these colors: Plus purple.

4 So now you have your lights picked out. And you have your power supply picked out. Now what? Connecting: How do you make the connections?! Here is how to connect to a 9 volt battery using our 9 volt battery snap switch Twist the red leads on your lights with the red lead on this 12 inch strap. Protect the connection with tape or shrink tube. Then twist the black leads on your LEDs to the black lead on this strap. Again protect the connection. Optional: to make your connections even stronger you can use solder on the connection joints Go! Snap on the strap to any 9V DC battery. Press the locking switch. You have lights! Press again to turn off. Here is how to connect to a 3 volt battery using our 3 volt battery holder switch As you can see from this picture: the 3V battery slips right into the holder. And the LEDs are connected red wire to red lead. And black-to-black. Similar idea to the battery strap. Again, protect connections with tape or shrink tube. And in this picture we have the 12 volt wall adapter and power jack example connection. On this power supply, you connect your red wires and black wires to the red and black on the jack. That little black unit the power adapter plugs in to. Again always protect the connections with tape or shrink tube. Then mount your power jack in a convenient location in the back or side or even underneath your project. The great thing about this jack or plug, you can disconnect the power supply whenever you need to move your project, without the power adaptor dangling from your doll house or room box.

5 So, at this point we can go ahead and work on a sample project. I chose the lovely Princess Room from Cascade Miniatures. And since there is only a need for 2 lights in this project, I choose the MLPO mini lighting packet. The packet comes with two lights, a coin cell, holder and switch, and shrink tube. To get started, remove the furniture. Also remove the stairs, slide and carpet and set them in a safe place. With a small drill bit drill a hole in the back of the roombox. The hole only needs to be big enough for the wires from the lights to just pass through. Coin Cell Small hole for wires Now Take your coin cell out of its packaging and look closely at it. You will see one shinier side is marked with a + and the other duller side has no mark. Take your two LEDs and touch them to the coin cell, using your thumb and index finger to firmly pinch the red lead to the + side and the black lead to the blank back side of the battery. With the LEDs pressed to the coin cell in this temporary manner, you can move them around lit up and easily test where you want them in your room box. Try different locations and see how the lights look together or apart and shining in different directions onto your scene. Do not be concerned if the lights seem to flicker a bit. That flicker just means your fingers are not pressing firmly enough. It will not hurt you or the lights! This roombox has a false back wall with a widow. After testing the light out, I decided to put my light just above and to one side of the window. Use a strip of tape to keep the light in place in your chosen spot. You will notice the light is touching the plastic of the window. This is ok because the LED will not get hot. You may also notice something from the pictures. For this project I choose one warm white and one cool white. That is because the warm white will go in the child s room And the cool white seemed to match best with the chilly Winter Scene showing outside of the window on this cold early Easter morning. If you need a mixedcolor or mixed-size kit for an upcoming project, us for details on how to order.

6 With the LED light taped firmly in place I like to give another quick test with my handy coin cell and see if I have the look I want with the light streaming in and illuminating the outside scene. Perfect! Leave the wires where they are at for now. No need to thread them through the hole in the back wall since we will be moving this false wall again. For the inside light, I decided to run the wires across the floor above. Since this floor has carpet it will be easy to hide the wires. We are going to need to bend the LED so it can shine down into the lower room and have the wires run at right angle across the floor above. To bend an LED it is best to grip the LED firmly with a pair of fine pliers right below the plastic of the LED itself. Then with your fingers, carefully bend the stalk of the LED to the desired right angle position. In this lower picture the wires are now bent. Sometimes we get asked What if something happens when I am bending or connecting or what if a wire falls off? We replace all broken lights for free. Just us and let us know, we will get another LED sent out to you. Next poke a small hole in your ceiling material and push the LED into the hole. Since I have carpet the LED wires might not be very visible. To be sure the wires will not show as bumps in the carpet (and also and to show how I would do this if the upper floor had thinner material), I take my handy pliers or other embossing type tool and make a fairly deep groove in the ceiling material, of course being careful not to go all the way through! Tape the light in place and turn the board The LED view from the other side of my material over. This kit came with a great light fixture made from a clear pony bead and a jewelry finding. See what you can find to dress up your LEDs in your projects. Using your quick coin cell test method you can see how they will look lit up. Final Assembly I have room behind my false wall so I am going to run the wires from the upstairs out the side of the false wall to meet up with the wires outside of the window.

7 Wires taped and running in the groove cut earlier. The wires head to the back corner where they now go behind the false wall. Put the carpet in place, no visible bumps! Thread both the wire from the inside room and the wire from the light in the window out the small hole made earlier in the bottom of the room box. Here is a top view of the wires exciting our box. And here the wires are outside of the room. Get out your coin holder and put 1 piece of shrink tube on the black wire. Put one piece of shrink tube on the red wire. Collect the 2 black wires. If you had a project with more wires, collect all of the black wires. Twist the black wires on the lights firmly with the black wire on the coin cell holder Slip the shrink tube up the wire to cover your connection. Repeat this with the red wires from the lights and the red wire on the coin cell holder. Again cover the connection with the shrink tube you put on earlier. Sometimes we get asked about soldering the wires at this step. I generally only solder when I have 6 or more lights tied in and I want to be sure I get a nice solid connection like if I am bringing my completed project to a show. Of course if you have a solder iron you are comfortable with and you want to use it, you can go ahead and add some solder! You can think of solder as metal glue. It will make a very solid connection for you. Slip in the coin battery matching the + sign on the holder with the + sign on the battery. Give the lights a test, pressing the switch on and off. Be careful of course not to let the red and blacks touch. Keep the colors apart and keep the shrink tube on. Heat the shrink tube with a match or hair dryer or embossing tool. About 1 second or less will shrink this tubing. Now it comes to tucking the wires out of the way. If you have a scene outside of your room box like a garden or woods, you can disguise your extra wire by painting it to blend in. Or you might be able to tuck the wire and coin cell underneath a hollow base. In my case, the room box will be on a shelf so the back is not visible, so I just left my wires after coiling them up. I also knew I wanted easy access to the switch.

8 So I located the switch on the side of the room box and glued it in place there. The wires run back to the coin cell holder located in back. If I had not already glued on my textured paper on the outside of the room box I could have used the textured paper to hide the wires going to and from the switch. I could also add a decorative trim strip along the bottom edge of this project, a molding with a hollow channel in it would work nicely to cover up wires. Of course every room box and project is different. It is more fun that way. This sample assembly is meant to be a really general guide for how to add lights to a project. Be creative in your wiring projects! If you can t go along the floor, use the ceiling. Paint both of the wires white, or gold or any other color you need to coordinate with your planning. Finish Our lovely Easter room box project with the lights off.. And now with the lights on! I hope you found this little LED primer to be useful and you have some knowledge you can take away with you for when you decide to make your next project!!