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More than 20 years ago, I was sitting in the basement of my parents' house. A friend and I were soldering LEDs. The smell of melted solder surrounded us, and Eminem's album "The Marshall Mathers LP" was pumping from the speakers. We were really enjoying ourselves. I didn't know much about electronics. But I had found a circuit diagram that showed how to build a running light strip with LEDs. "Russetiden" was only a couple of weeks away. It is a tradition in Norway where those who are graduating from high school celebrate, usually by driving around the city in a red car or a bus for 17 days straight. We had to get the LED strip to work by then! It was going to be attached to the roof inside our bus to make it look really cool. After a lot of soldering and gluing LEDs in place, we tested the circuit with a 9V battery. It worked! With only one day left, it was time to install the LED strip in the bus. But there was one thing I had forgotten to think about: the power supply... In the bus, there was only a 12V output. Since 12V is not that much more than 9V, I figured it would probably work. Also, I was in a rush to get it done, so without thinking, I connected the 12V to our LED strip circuit. A bright light in all the LEDs lit up for a second, then some smoke came out, and all the LEDs died. "NOOOOO!" We had spent several weeks on this, and now I had destroyed it in a couple of seconds! Very simple stuff that doesn't take much time to learn. But when you don't know it, it can destroy the project you've put so much time into. As an Ohmify member, you'll learn the theory that you will actually need when building projects. And you'll get to practice building lots of cool circuits, like robots, guitar pedals, power supplies, alarm clocks, games, audio amplifiers, and much more. Click here to learn more here >> Keep On Soldering! |