Step 7: Wire and Mount LEDs

Now we need to wire and mount the InfraRed LEDs. There are several options available, the easiest and fastest is to use a breadboard for your circuit. You should probably use this to figure out your circuit anyway, once you have everything working you can always go back and hardwire everything together on a circuit board.
So for now lets use a breadboard to make our electrical circuit for the LEDs.

You can use these LED calculators to determine your circuit needs.
http://ledcalc.com/
http://led.linear1.org/led.wiz

I am using 30 IR LEDs that I picked up through Mouser. They use 1.7 volts to power each LED. My circuit has 6 sets of LEDs in parallel, each set is a series of 5 LEDs. On my breadboard each series has a 47 ohm resistor leading into it. All of the LEDs are powered by a 12v ac/dc adapter. You could run your LEDs off batteries but the adapter is easy to use and since there is a surge protector in the frame anyway its a simple solution for power.

After determining the circuit I mounted all of the LEDs in the C channel frames, 15 on each frame. Then I wired them together. Wiring 5 LEDs together - to + in a row. Then wire the first + and the last - to the breadboard. After 6 sets of 5, the LEDs were all wired in.

Plug the adapter into the outlet and check out your lights. But wait, you can't see them...