LED Question for the less Electrically Challenged

[Durahl]

Greetings!

I own a bunch of Tamiya RC Tanks among them two whose Road Light Effects are being emitted inside the Tank using an SINGLE LED whose Light then gets split and redirected outside into the Light Buckets using Fiber Optic like clear "Filament".

For the purpose of better results I'm planning on replacing this mildly unreliable System ( over the years the Fiber Optics have turned brittle, started breaking, and thus have stopped passing through the LED Light ) with dedicated LED's inside the Light Buckets in most cases DOUBLING up the LED Count attached to the wiring of the respective Tamiya DMD Controller.

How should I go about this for the best results while ensuring the DMD Controllers not be at risk?

• Can I simply add a 2nd LED where necessary without doing anything Resistor related? ( there's no Resistor to be found on the PCB housing the LEDs - Probably all inside the DMD )
• Should the LED's be run in Parallel or Series? ( again, in regards of not causing any electrical harm to the existing DMD Configuration )

Thanks in advance!

[DANOEL]

Resistors would be at the led itself, usually soldered to it, then heat shrink over so you may not see them. Most of what Ive seen is they are run in parallel sort of way. Positive and negative ran to 1st LED and then a positive and negative ran to the second. This works for 2 LEDs pretty good, but thats it from what I've seen and tried. Not going to hurt the DMD, LED's are low amp draw. The only issue is to much voltage to the LEDs and they will just burn out. Most of the tank lighting ports are low voltage though so that shouldn't be a issue. Just wire up a pair and plug it in a try it before fitting the actually LEDs inside. Here's a example from a small tracked vehicle's headlights.