So I have another question for smart people/pedal builders

[Mistersuperfly]

I'm building a massive loop strip and I've got a few weeks to mess around with it and explore all the options... I came to the part in the build where I was going to wire up the LEDs and decided that I wanted to see about adding a brightness trimmer pot into it. I researched a bit and saw that I could use a 10k resistor pot with a 1k resistor in series (so as not to burn out the LEDs when all the way up). My question was, how do you go about connecting all of the LEDs to this one pot, the diagrams I was following as far as wiring up the 3pdt switches all involved individual resistors on each of the switches for each LED. And would having multiple LEDs effect the value I would need?

 

I know everything I just asked probably sounds stupid to somebody who knows electronics, but this is my feeble attempt to learn, bear with me.

[Mr.Grumpy]

You're heading in the right direction, but It's not quite that simple. The problem is as more LEDs are turned on, the current draw will increase, and with a simple resistor in the circuit, the LEDs will become dimmer as more are lit up. Because as the current (mA) thru the resistor (pot) increases, the voltage drop increases too.

 

What you need to do is make an adjustable voltage regulator (only takes a few parts) to adjust the overall brightness of the LEDs, but I would still use individual dropping resistors for each LED.

 

Basically, something like this:

http://www.electronics-lab.com/articles/LM317/