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Bought the 300 led light strips that many on the forum recommended to light up a subway platform.  Wired 100 lights to bus line that will eventually light up all three stations.  Each station will have 100 but currently only working with the first 100. The bus line is connected to the 10v port on a mth z4000 transformer.  The lights all come on and within 3 second the fuse pops in the back of the transformer.  I disconnected led wire from bus line and held it on the track and pushed arm up to 15v and all lights came on and stayed on until I took the wire of the track, so the lights work.  Anyone see what I did wrong or have a solution.  

 

Thanks for any help.

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Electric trains require electrical knowledge.  Do you have access to an inexpensive digital volt-ohmmeter?  Are you familiar with Ohm's Law? Do you know how to measure Volts, Amps, and resistance?  Do you know how many mA each LED is supposed to draw? What is the rating of the fuse?

 

It's pretty simple, actually. It's just math, in your case. Hook up the 100 lamps, and measure the amperage draw. OR...measure the draw of one lamp and multiply to get the total. Compare that answer to the rating of the fuse.

Each 3 LEDs in the strip pull 20 ma or .02 amps. So 100,(really 99 or 102 of them) LEDs would only use about .66 amps. The 10 volt tap should power the LEDs if nothing else is on the circuit with it,since I think breaker is 3 amps combined for the 10 and 14 volt feeds as I remember. Do not put more than 14 volts to the LED strip. Also from the 10 or 14 volt tap you should have a bridge rectifier in series to the LEDs. AC current is not good for LEDs,though they will run on it.

 

Dale H

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