Bright Red/Green 3mm LED?

[findbuddha]

From the BLM forum ages ago:

While I haven't proved this yet, I think you would need some ultrabright waterclear bicolor 3mm LEDs, like found on eBay... and not the weak diffused kind like you find at Mouser (and what I used on my MB-SEQ). SMD LEDs might work but it's too hard to find them with good brightness and low cost, plus they might not illuminate the cap as well as a 3mm LED which is more in the middle of the hole. 3mm LEDs are cheap and available from many suppliers so that's good. It's bad enough to lock into one design/supplier of the rubber button pads.

Is this the sort of thing you mean from ebay? http://cgi.ebay.com....L-/300365559276

As far as I can see it's common cathode, bright and with clear lens.

So I bought 500 of the clear, 'bright' LEDs from ebay, and compared to the LTL1BEKVJNN Wilba used in MB-SEQ they're

- not as bright

- don't diffuse as nicely through my illuminated acrylic prototype caps

The ebay ones also don't have a polarity marking, and took at least 7 weeks to arrive. At least I got them cheap.Yes, I've learned to hang the postage cost and get samples before buying in bulk. :thumbsup:

Does anyone have a better suggestion than getting the LTL1BEKVJN? I'd prefer to shop at Mouser, but if there's a smashing deal somewhere else I'm interested. I've searched Mouser and the only options that are brighter are significantly more expensive.

Cheers :)

Edited January 16, 2011 by findbuddha