Cannot for the life of me come up with a name that will enable me to look for them on Ebay. (It's an age thing). Best way to connect them to a power supply and what voltage will these be or will that be a guess as the images will not tell you much, or do they?
I'd call them a Water Clear LED, as opposed to diffused. IIRC, the forward voltage depends on the colour of the LED. I've seen charts showing this somewhere - *pause to google* have a look at this say: Choosing the resistor...
Water Clear LED works on Ebay so thanks for that. And I will need some sort of resistor before connecting to a PSU?
They look like 8mm water clear LEDs. They most certainly will need a resistor. A PSU throws out 5V and 12V on the HDD lines. LEDs use a much lower voltage, depending on their colour (red uses the least, blue and white the most). LEDs also use about 20mA current. Armed with these facts you can calculate the value of the resistor with Ohm's Law: R = V/I, or Resistance in Ohm is required Voltage drop divided by 0.02. Say you want to run a blue LED on 5V. If it needs 3.2V (and draws 20mA), you need to drop the voltage by 1.8V. So required resistor is 1.8/0.02 = 90 Ohm. For 12V power supply, you need to drop the voltage by 8.8V, so required resistor is 8.8/0.02 = 440 Ohm.
I knew I should have paid more attention in maths classes all those years ago. Thanks Nexxo you have given me some very useful information here and I think I know what I am looking for now.
Nexxo, nice work, much more coherent that my rushed post. I thought I had written it more clearly and mentioned resistors better...seems not. Glenn, have fun with getting your LEDs going - not as exciting as your overnight lighting by the sound of it! I've been waiting ages for a good thunderstorm, haven't had one since I upgraded my DSLR a couple of years ago, so no chance to try the increased resolution, lower noise and other better features that make it better to use at night.
