Hey Guys, your good. I posted this thread a couple of weeks ago on a french Futura science forum and got no help whatsoever.
Second286, your mentioning a fuse in series with the LED got me to thinking. Here I am looking for a diode that survives short duration mains short-circuits, what about the LED that will have more that a hundred volts across it with just a few tens of ohms resistor to protect it.
In the forward direction to my knowlege LEDs have, unlike diodes, very limited surge current capapability and after a few half cycles of conduction the junction will overheat.
In the reverse direction their breakdown voltage is practically nothing, so would the juction go in the very first inverse half cycle?
Would any fusing system be able to protect a LED plus small series resistor against hundreds of volts. If the answer is no, I'm kind of wasting my time looking for super diodes, just take 1 or 2A diodes, any old LED, and find a way to protect the whole circuit.
Or forget about protection, and if someone makes a chort circuit - maybe never -just replace the circuit. Six components soldered on a small piece of veroboard costs nothing and takes just a few minutes. Here I've got a nagging worry. I's at my son's house + gandchildren. Any chance that when it blows it could cause a fire. It's inside a small plastic orange or yellow box behind the wall plate, sharing room with a good few 1.5mm wires as it's a double switch.
Carbonzit, concerning room, I could put additional things in a 6x6x2 inch junction box hidden behind a bookcase. All the wires converge on this box so I can add in parallel or in series.
I'll study the link now. Thanks everybody