10 MM LEDs

[jbyrns1993]

I went to my local RadioShack and bought a 10 MM LED because I love big things and they usually end up impressing me. Not this time... I hooked it up on my breadboard and it glowed fairly nicely, but was definitely not super-bright as the packing claimed. Once again the marketing people with money pouring out of their 6th story windows win. Putting super-bright on a package will make someone buy it. I was quite disappointed. I put it in my LED storage and forgot about it. A few days later, I was building a 555 timer circuit with a potentiometer and a place for an LED or 2. I looked in my pill jar (I store components in re-used pill jars (recycling?)) full of LEDs and found the little red 10 MM LED on the top of the stack, sitting there waiting for use. I soldered it in and it glowed a lot more impressively. I keep it on my table to keep track of 1/4 hours passing. Is this a weird story?

And now for some more strange news: I ordered a new Arduino through Adafruit about 5 hours ago. I have been wanting one for a few months and got my paycheck and said "Arduino Time!"

--
Johnny

[westfw]

Kids today! LEDs used to be REALLY dim. 1 to 10mCd or so. As they got brighter, they applied names (high brightness = > 10mCd, ultrabright > 100mCd, superbright >1000mCd (not standardized, and perhaps not in that order, but that sort of thing.)) They ran out of adjectives before the technology stopped improving, and now the marketing teams are sort-of stuck on the current round of 10000mCd+ LEDs.

The only way to know what you're really getting is to look at the actual specifications (which are frequently lies) or "real" datasheets (somewhat better.) And then you have to understand the terms, too.

I was going to add a snarky comment about Radio Shack being a lousy place to buy LEDs, but I vaguely recall that they were one of the few sources of one of the truly bright Toshiba LEDs (orange?) back when most vendors didn't have anything other than diffused "indicator" LEDs... (even then, it was way overpriced!)