Last night I screwed something up and I don't know what happened. I was trying to wire two leds into my stock HU, to light the LCD display. The display has two incandescent bulbs lighting it originally, one on either end. I wanted to hook the leds into the power source the bulbs were using, so they would turn on and off and dim the same way.
First I tested it (after waiting 20 MINUTES!!! for my pos soldering iron to warm up) by soldering a couple of wires to the board on one end of the display, and feeding them through a hole on the board. Then I took it into the car and plugged it in without its housing, and just held the led to the wires to make sure it would turn on and make sure I got the polarity right. It worked perfectly.
Then I went back and removed the wires, and soldered the led into the same spot. I also soldered the one on the other side in, without testing the polarity (I assumed it would be the same, but that was probably a mistake). After both of them were soldered I took it back to the car and plugged it in again. The whole thing lit up for maybe half a second and then both the leds and the stock bulbs shut off (behind the display only, all the rest worked fine). I thought maybe I had just wired the second one wrong so I took it off, and it still didn't work. Then I took the first one off also, and the bulbs still won't light up.
As far as I can tell there are no fuses or breakers anywhere in the circuit, and nothing seems to have actually burned through. It doesn't make sense to me. I didn't remove anything from the circuit, I was adding the two leds, which would increase resistance. But they shouldn't need enough power to burn anything out. What did I do wrong?
First I tested it (after waiting 20 MINUTES!!! for my pos soldering iron to warm up) by soldering a couple of wires to the board on one end of the display, and feeding them through a hole on the board. Then I took it into the car and plugged it in without its housing, and just held the led to the wires to make sure it would turn on and make sure I got the polarity right. It worked perfectly.
Then I went back and removed the wires, and soldered the led into the same spot. I also soldered the one on the other side in, without testing the polarity (I assumed it would be the same, but that was probably a mistake). After both of them were soldered I took it back to the car and plugged it in again. The whole thing lit up for maybe half a second and then both the leds and the stock bulbs shut off (behind the display only, all the rest worked fine). I thought maybe I had just wired the second one wrong so I took it off, and it still didn't work. Then I took the first one off also, and the bulbs still won't light up.
As far as I can tell there are no fuses or breakers anywhere in the circuit, and nothing seems to have actually burned through. It doesn't make sense to me. I didn't remove anything from the circuit, I was adding the two leds, which would increase resistance. But they shouldn't need enough power to burn anything out. What did I do wrong?
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