Wiring lighted rocker switches...

J

jrignall

n00b
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Jul 5, 2004
Messages
16
Hello,

I bought 4 of these:

Lighted switches

I was wondering if someone could help advise me on how to wire them? (They are going to control 12V lines to various bits of case lighting so I can turn it all off when I want to)

They have 4 terminals on the back, and I'm not sure what to wire to what.

My other concern is the LED... what voltage do y'all think it is? I assume I need to wire a resistor in there somewhere... unless the LED could possibly be 12V?

Also, any special things I should do to wire up 4 of them? (Like wire all the LED's together in parallel, etc...)

I found this diagram for another lighted rocker, not sure if it is the same as mine, but it DOES have 4 terminals:

Other Switch

Thanks in advance, I'm a total wiring noob, and these lighted rockers didn't come with any instructions!

-Jess
 
Are the 4 terminals the same as the one you linked to? If so, then I would guess it to be correct.
 
I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure that you don't need anything special if the LED is connected to the motherboard header since it has it's own wire I'm assuming thats the intended purpose for the LED.
 
Well, I followed your trial-and-error advice and got it to work!

How does this look to you folks who are wiring-saavy?

switch_diagram.gif


Seems to work fine, but I don't know enough about electricity to know if I am doing something stupid.

I am testing it with a 12 volt cordless drill battery hehe. Oh, and it says right on the barrel of the switch... 12V LED... :eek:

Thanks guys, Jes
 
if it hasnt blown up by now you're probably good, although it would be a good idea to find that switches spec and figure out what voltage the LED wants.

jrignall said:
Well, I followed your trial-and-error advice and got it to work!

How does this look to you folks who are wiring-saavy?

switch_diagram.gif


Seems to work fine, but I don't know enough about electricity to know if I am doing something stupid.

I am testing it with a 12 volt cordless drill battery hehe. Oh, and it says right on the barrel of the switch... 12V LED... :eek:

Thanks guys, Jes
Click to expand...
 
Whatsisname said:
if it hasnt blown up by now you're probably good, although it would be a good idea to find that switches spec and figure out what voltage the LED wants.
Click to expand...

Hehe... yes... the old modder's credo: If it doesn't explode, it must be working!

(I will be chanting that when I try to hardmod my ATI x800pro to an x800xt in a week or two...)

I let my setup run for about a half hour at 12V, and the LED seems fine, so I think I am good to go. Thanks!

And thanks CrimandEvil, I found that one too, but that is a 3 terminal switch and mine has 4... But I think I got it now.

-Jess
 
If the switch is rated at 12v then the led must be able to handle it. The led can't handle the voltage itself, so they just wire it to a resistor inside the switch.

Wiring it to the motherboard header would not be good. It's only ~4.5v. I doubt it would even light at such a low voltage.

The switches are probably meant more for car use, hense the 12v rating, and why the led connection must also be rated for 12v. But it is odd to hear that it has 4 poles, usually the led/lamp ground would be tied into the switch ground pole.
 
btw: Good diagram. I like the extra effort you put in to make the wires look wiggly. ;)

whoops.. quoted instead of edit
 
I hate to resurrect a dead thread but I wondered if someone could confirm that the diagram post in OP is the correct way to wire lighted rocker switches for controlling lights and other things?



I bought some switches like these from Performance PCs and was going to wire them to turn off my CCFLs but I wasn't sure about the 12vdc and ground for the led poles.

 
With a 4-terminal switch like that, the two small terminals are for the internal LED and one should be marked with a '+' for the LED anode. They DO need an external LED resistor fitting to suit the supply voltage; the only switches that don't are designed for 12V auto use where a built-in resistor can be scaled for that one voltage.

The LED pins are nothing to do with the switch pins - for example I've a similar switch for operating the mains (230V AC) power ON/OFF on an amplifier, when the power is on, the amplifier's DC supply provides power to the LED.

Your diagram is correct for a 12V DC supply, though I'd use a 1k resistor - it's only an indicator light and with the 470R the enclosed LED may get over-warm.
 
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