Led lights

[Johnboy99]

Hi All, I have a lima gw rail car that I want to put leds in the car where passengers sit it has a Hattons decoder fitted not sound please where on the motor do I connect the positive and negative to what colour wires on the motor.

Thankyou.

[Rog RJ]

What sort of LEDs are you thinking of? There are various types of LED lighting available.

[jane1707819582]

they do not connect onto the motor ,the leds connect onto blue + and then use the green or purple wire for - 

you can use the yellow /white wires , these are the direction lighting and will require function mapping to alter it's operational characteristics.

[Johnboy99]

Thanks Jane and Rog,

the type are on a strip of like paper and you can cut off what you require in multiples of 3 minimum and 12 maximum,

Do I connect to the decoder and not the motor????

thanks

[jane1707819582]

yes up to a limit of 200ma

[Chrissaf]

Apart from being inappropriate to connect LEDs to a motor of a DCC controlled loco. LEDs only light up when the applied voltage is the right way round. This means that if you did put the LEDs across the motor they would only light up when the loco was going in one direction. Not only that, the LEDs would go out when the loco is going slow or at rest. Remember the motor does not have a constant fixed voltage across it all the time, the voltage varies with speed and direction. The Green wire when 'on', on the other hand will have a fixed negative voltage on it to work with the 'always' live positive blue wire.

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Since you are talking about the LEDs on strips (blocks of three) for use as general interior lighting in the passenger compartment. You would use the decoder Green wire connected to the negative side of the LED strip and the decoder Blue wire connected to the positive side of the LED strip. The LED strip already has integral current limiting resistors of the SMD variety (tiny little black rectangles circled in red in image below) on it. If the strip is too bright then you can add an extra resistor in the Blue OR Green wire to tone down the brightness (experiment with values starting at 4.7K and going upwards in value from there until you get the brightness you want).

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You will need to check the Hatton's decoder manual to see what Function number switches on the Green wire. Assuming the manual from which the extract below is taken, it is F1.

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[Johnboy99]

Thanks Chris, I did what Jane said in previous post but no joy I tried purple then green but no joy WHAT I have not done on my prodigy controler is pres the function button you refer to so I will No go back to to room and try button (1) with green wire as negative and blue as positive I will let you know soon , don't go away!!

[Johnboy99]

BINGO !!   We have lights in railcar now working ,

thanks Jane Rog and Cris for all his imput in helping me with my new hobby,

Thanks again Kind Sir.

[Chrissaf]

Glad to hear that Jane, Rog & I have been of service.