Chibitronics now carries NEW learner-friendly Through-Hole LEDs and easy-to-use Resistor Stickers! After hearing stories about educators using through-hole LEDs with their students to cut costs and encourage rapid prototyping, we’re excited to introduce two new products that will make this practice easier and even more educational!
The Long and Short of It
Through-hole LEDs (the ones with metal legs designed to be used in a breadboard) are often viewed as an affordable option for classrooms exploring paper circuits. However, we’ve heard that some of you have been spending precious prep time using Sharpie markers to color-code the positive or negative legs, to make them less frustrating for your students. We’ve also heard how challenging they can be during debugging, since it’s difficult to confirm their polarity once they’ve been bent open and taped down.
Our new Through-Hole LEDs make identifying the short, negative leg unmistakable—even when the LED has already been added to a circuit! That’s because we’ve shortened it significantly, making it easier to contrast with the long, positive leg! Making the legs easy to identify at a glance may help reduce frustration for new learners by making circuits easier to debug. This can save time and result in fewer broken legs.
For convenience and easy storage, our new 5mm through-hole LEDs come packaged in a plastic box containing six compartments. Each compartment contains forty LEDs in one of six colors: red, yellow, green, blue, white, and rainbow fade, color-changing LEDs.
When using bare Through-Hole LEDs without resistors, it’s a good idea to separate the warm colors from the cool colors during circuit construction. As a general rule, red and yellow LEDs (warm colors) require less power than green, blue, and white ones (cool colors).
But, if you or your students prefer to mix warm and cool colors, we’ve got you covered!
Like Training Wheels for Resistors
We’ve heard how frustrating it can be when you (or your students) are trying to mix certain colors of through-hole LEDs together in the same circuit (red and white, for example) and are unable to get them all working at the same time.
Our NEW Resistor Stickers were designed to help balance the flow of current in your circuits, to help you light up all of the colors at once!
Unlike Circuit Sticker LEDs and Launchpad LEDs, which come with built-in resistors that enable different colors to be mixed together, bare through-hole LEDs do not. This means that LEDs with lower power requirements (red and yellow) will not play well with LEDs with higher power requirements (blue and white), unless you manually add them.
Adding Resistor Stickers allows you to help balance the flow of current in your circuits. Less fiddly than through-hole resistors, which are designed to be inserted into breadboards, Resistor Stickers are flat, sticky, and easy to use—like training wheels for resistors!
Learn How to use Resistor Stickers:
To learn more detailed information about Through-Hole LEDs or Resistor Stickers (or to watch a video demonstration), visit: How to Use Chibitronics Resistor Stickers.