LED help needed

hi guys/girls,

i am currently having a problem with an led i have set up in my car. the led gets its power off a 12V wire running to the heater and there is a 510 ohm resistor in that wire also. the negative leg is attatched to a wire which goes to ground under certain conditions, otherwise it is also +12V. This worked fine until i added a 3 pole switch into the circuit so that i could manually earth this wire. now my leds keep stopping working and i cant figure out why. i tried putting a diode on the negative leg but this has not worked either, any suggestions??

ps the 3 poles of the switch are as follows
1. car computer wire (either 12V or ground)
2. (common pole) engine solenoid (either 12V or ground)
3. ground.

any help would be greatly appreciated

It is not clear to me which switch terminal goes to the LED.

nor me, I would suggest that you might check to make sure you are not accidentally bypassing the LED limiting resistor with the switch...

sorry, led's negative leg runs off the wire which is attatched to the common pole of the switch..

Make up a schema which makes it easier to understand.

I think that you are bypassing the 510 Ω resistor with the 3 pole switch and burn the LED out.

wats a schema????? no cant be bypassing the resistor because it is soldered onto the +'ve leg of the led?!???

gtobeck said:

wats a schema????? no cant be bypassing the resistor because it is soldered onto the +'ve leg of the led?!???

Click to expand...

he means draw up a small diagram of what your connections, switch etc look like. schema=schematic=wiring diagram

I think you need to do this :

**broken link removed**

If you are using a Gournd/ignition Live your LED will light with the ignition off and light with the ignition on if you throw the switch.