at my wit's end

It might be a better idea to have your resistor before the diode to limit the current. I think having it after the emitter causes some interferance with the transistor turning on, although i could be wrong. Another idea is that you could just switching to a MOSFET driver they're a bit easier to work with.

thanx gerty, it worked :lol: . i'd try ur idea guitar nut, but as i sed, i got it working :lol:

btw, its for an alarm system that im "engineering".

What you should do zach is move the limiting resistor to the collector of the transistor (in series with the LED), and use a resistor to feed the base of the transistor. That's how it's normally done, and for good reason!.

zachtheterrible said:

Hate to beat a dead horse, but i finaly got around to getting on this "project".

Click to expand...

Eh Zach,
I did a post a design on led garden lights a while ago

https://www.electro-tech-online.com/threads/be-my-slave.12177/

Maybe this little circuit built on a small piece of vero board 7x8 holes could power your superbright led as I tried it out with 5-10,000 mcd white led's and it nearly lit up the workshop, I found by putting limitting resistors on each led the brightness only go better. So if you want any futher info let me know dude cheers Bryan1