Lights (LED?) for "Barbie House"

I am not sure if this should go here, so please move if this is not the correct thread!

I built a house for my daughters barbie dolls, and she always wants to use one of my flashlights to "light up the house". Is there any way, I can buy and install led bulbs in the ceilings of the rooms and wire them all together? It could run on batteries with a switch, or it could be pluged into the wall with a switch. Any ideas? Links?

I think leds would be best, because they won't get hot, but I suppose that any type of bulb would do!

Thanks!

White LEDs would work fine. Probably 3mm diameter would be better than 5mm just based on size. Run them off batteries - a couple D cells and a simple resistor for current limit will more or less run forever. I wouldn't make something myself that would plug into the wall for a kid to play with.

How many lights are we talking about? A simple design would take about 5 minutes to pound out.

MikeLip said:

White LEDs would work fine. Probably 3mm diameter would be better than 5mm just based on size. Run them off batteries - a couple D cells and a simple resistor for current limit will more or less run forever. I wouldn't make something myself that would plug into the wall for a kid to play with.

How many lights are we talking about? A simple design would take about 5 minutes to pound out.

Click to expand...

I think 1 in each room, and one in the hall, so about 7 or 8 lights total.

OK, a resistor, three C or D cells and 8 LEDs in parallel would work. You could add a potentiometer to dim them if you wanted. Probably $20 total in parts from Radio Shack.

MikeLip said:

OK, a resistor, three C or D cells and 8 LEDs in parallel would work. You could add a potentiometer to dim them if you wanted. Probably $20 total in parts from Radio Shack.

Click to expand...

SWEET! Thanks, I will have to check them out!

Try direct driving one of the LEDs from either 2 alkaline batteries or 3 rechargeables (NiCad or NiMh) and see how much current flows through it. Depending on the Vf of the LEDs you get, you may be able to do without a resistor.

if you want it to be really complex but versatile you could wire LEDs in parallel with mini SPST switches mounted into the wall and have all the LEDs run off 3Ds, with current drop resistor of your choice

I'd consider buying 5mm LEDs from DX, cheaper this way, the shack sells em for $3ish/per LED

switches
http://www.radioshack.com/product/i...yId=2032058&kwCatId=2032058&parentPage=search
http://www.radioshack.com/product/i...yId=2032058&kwCatId=2032058&parentPage=search
heck, you could use one of this if ones so inclined
http://www.radioshack.com/product/i...yId=2032058&kwCatId=2032058&parentPage=search
mounted on a PC board
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102844&cp=&parentPage=search

You might want to consider getting some surface mount white LED's. They would be lower profile, you could solder then to a small piece of PCB material to mount them with double sided tape, and you could also solder on a surface mount resistor for each LED.

If you decide to go the SMD route, get LED's with a wide viewing angle. I bought 50 high brightness red SMD LED's from e-Bay for about $8, including shipping. Here are some white SMD LED's for the same price. The best practice is to use a resistor for each LED. But for this project, you could probably get away with using a single dropping resistor.