Silverado LEDs

[Sonny01]

I bought a set of Alpena 14" LED lights and went to work...it was probably the easiest thing I have ever done to my truck. I wired them to the DRLs but would also like them to be on with the park lights. I bought a package of 2 Zener diodes from Radio Shack to use on the park light hot wires so the current from the DRLs doesn't get into the park lights but I have never used Zeners before...any suggestions? I was just going to wire the park wire to the Anode of the diode and then the Cathode to the LEDs...does that sound right.
I didn't try the diode route...I just bought another set of lights and wired them to my park lights. So at night these are on and during the day the top ones are on.

[j cAT]

Led requires a dropping resistor to limit current to about 15MA. or what the led spec says is the current max.

I got some led lamps from radio shack to operate on a 14volt circuit and the resistance was about 560 ohms in series with the led .

the standard lamps use about 1-2amps, this is far less than the led .

[j cAT]

Originally Posted by Sonny01

There must be a resistor in the LED light strips themselves so that's not a problem because they work just fine. What I want to do is to connect my park lights to the LED and not have the current go to the DRLs or when the DRLs are on not have it go to the park lights. I know this is done with a Zener diode because it only lets current flow in one direction but I have never used one. I know what you re talking about because the most popular use for a Zener uses a resistor in the circuit to regulate the current. I don't want to regulate it but just stop it from traveling back into the lights that aren't on.

all you need is a diode. like you stated zeners are used to regulate voltage to the zeners rating voltage.

positive on the anode the diode acts like a closed switch.

measure the current demand of the lamps and get a diode that can handle this amount plus 20-30% higher.