Thanks for the sound advice
First of all, Happy New year to all of you.
Thank you for that wonderful advices you gave.
Safety occupies my head, more than, any thing else. As you well quoted “AC is dangerous, it can hurt or kill you”, I always(I mean it), double check the circuit and surroundings before putting my finger weight on that, ‘ON’ switch. I sort of, Dry Run it in my mind first and then proceed.
Now coming to the circuit. Definitely the schematic is whacked and worth throwing away but for me, I checked all the components and changed the Cap(C2) value to 100 uF 50V and only the first LED (D1) turned on. As you all anticipated well the rest of the LEDS were fried by overcurrent caused by overvoltage. I redesigned the LED array increasing the quantity to 10 this time and It was just like old days (Bright and Clear). I hope it will keep on working that way.
The facts : The original assembly use to work fine, daily, every night, for continues 3 hours at a stretch. (for a duration of about 2 months) and finally on THE DAY, I forget to turn it off and in the morning the Cap was spotted with a head (no to severe though, just a POP). Hope the new assembly works a little longer.
To learn more of this and other electronics, I am going to stick to the project for a wile.
I just want to draw your attention to this section ‘Lighting LEDs on mains’ on the page “LED circuit - Wikipedia”
“LEDs, by nature, require direct current (DC) with low voltage, as opposed to the mains electricity from the electrical grid which supplies a high voltage with an alternating current (AC).
A CR dropper (capacitor and resistor) followed by full-wave rectification is the usual electrical ballast with series-parallel LED clusters. A single series string minimizes dropper losses, while paralleled strings increase reliability. In practice usually three strings or more are used.[citation needed] An advantage of a capacitor is that it can reduce the high line voltage to an appropriate low voltage, without wasting power, with a very simple circuit; a disadvantage is that there may be a high surge of current for a short time when it is first turned on.
Operation on square wave and modified sine wave (MSW) sources, such as many inverters, causes heavily-increased resistor dissipation in CR dropper, and LED ballasts designed for sine wave use tend to burn on non-sine waveforms. The non-sine waveform also causes high peak LED currents, heavily shortening LED life. An inductor and rectifier make a more suitable ballast for such use, and other options are also possible. “
In respect to the this, I think I have got a chance to try something more rewarding if you guide me. I am ready to invest (DIY) in a small circuit that is compact enough to fit in a CFT cassing.
Some more facts to be considered of they help in any way :
1) Without the LEDS & the Cap(C2) the voltage is near 148V DC
2) Without the LEDS, but with Cap(C2) 100 uF 63 V, the voltage is near 87 V DC
3) Without the LEDS, but with Cap(C2) 100 uF 50 V, the voltage is near 80 V DC
4) Without the LEDS, but with Cap(C2) 100 uF 35 V, the voltage is near 56 V DC
5) With the LEDS (8) & with Cap(C2) 100 uF 50 V, the voltage is near 32 V DC
I lack a good electronic head like yours. So can some please explain this, in layman terms. And also suggest me the value of C2. How about adding a current limiting resistor in series to the LED array ?
Thanks for the patience with a electronics numb.
Zmint.