/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>2542513
I don't know how many LED's OP has in parallel (and how bright each one of them is at 1 or 5mA) but the average warm white LED has a voltage drop of 3V at 20mA (pretty bright). I'd get 5 220ohm resistors (very commonly found in LED kits) and put them all in parallel to eachother (all in series with the LED string), remove one by one until you get the required brightness. If we have 4 220ohm 0,25W resistors (equivalent to a 1W 55ohm resistor) and we know that the voltage drop of the LED's is 3V then we will only have 2V across the resistor (5V from the supply voltage minus the voltage across the LED's). This will give us a current of 36mA which will have to be spread between all the LED's in the LED string. I recommend you fiddle around with the parallel resistors until you get the required brightness and if the resistors get too hot then get the equivalent value of resistor for a higher wattage. There are better ways to control LED brightness but for someone with no electronics experience they aren't very doable.