I’m trying to turn an old, leaking aquarium into a terrarium and have a set of three grow lights that I salvaged. The switch for original lights was smashed and not repairable, but the three lights and power supply are good and working correctly.

12V Power cord BLACK & WHITE (NEUTRAL SHOWN IN GREEN ON DRAWING)

This power cord goes into a manufactured splitter and 3sets (made up of 3wires each) leaves this splitter location. So that’s 2 wires entering and 9 wires leaving. Each set of 3 wires goes to an LED strip that has blue and red lights. What I would like to do is turn on the RED and BLUE lights of each LED strip one at a time.



SWITCH #1:
POSITION 1=LED #1 RED LIGHT ON
POSITION 2=LED#1&#2 BOTH RED LIGHTS ON
POSITION 3=ALL RED LIGHTS ON
POSITION 4=ALL RED LIGHTS OFF

SWITCH #2: SAME AS #1 EXCEPT WORKING BLUE LIGHTS

THIS SHOULD GIVE ME THE ABILITY TO TURN 1 TO 6 LIGHTS ON INDEPENDENT OF OTHERS:
ONE RED, TWO RED, THREE RED
ONE BLUE, TWO BLUE, THREE BLUE
ZERO, ONE, TWO, OR THREE RED PLUS ZERO, ONE, TWO, OR THREE BLUE

Do I tie the three red wires together and three blue wires together (leaving SPLICE) before going to switches?
What would be the best switch to purchase for this project?
Do I need to add a switch to 12V before the splice to turn everything ON and OFF?

Thanks for looking and any help you can provide. POPPA D

 

The splitter will give out a supply for each Red and Blue and a common Negative, are there resistors on the led strips?

The Blue leds may take more current than the Reds , pictures of the unit would be good.

 

Looks like resistors between each led




Was using this to test the LED strips one at a time

 

Looks like resistors between each led


View attachment 299634

Was using this to test the LED strips one at a time
View attachment 299635

So the leds are all in parallel, so you can use a rotary switch for the switches after the splice.

 

The easiest way to do it is to use a 3 pole 4 position (3P4T) switch for each of and blue. This might be hard to find. Each pole would switch the red or blue wire one of the 3 strips. The power wire would be connected to each position for which that strip would be on.

With some diodes, you can do it with single pole 4 position switches, much more common and certainly less expensive. The switch would switch power and the red or blue wires would be connected to the switch outputs through diodes.

On my phone so, can’t draw the circuits now.

 

DOES THIS LOOK LIKE THE RIGHT WAY TO WIRE A SWITCH FOR RED LEDS AND SIMILAR ONE FOR BLUE LEDS
FOUND PLENTY ON DIGIKEY AND MOUSER, JUST WANT TO KNOW IF THIS WAY TO CONNECT THEM. THINK THIS GIVES ME THE A BUNCH OF OPTIONS: 1R, 2R, 3R, 1B, 2B, 3B, 1R+1B, 1R+2B, 1R+3B, 2R+1B, ETC, ETC.

 

No. Notice that you have all three red wires connected together on one terminal. Which means that if you power any of them, you power all of them.

Here:

 

Thanks BobTPH your schematic was great (a real learning experience) but, after thinking about this, it does not give me the flexibility that installing 6 single switches would. Single switches would allow any single light (front, middle, back: red and/or blue) to be controlled individually, which seems like the best scenario for controlling amount of light being delivered. Will post photo of completed project when I can find the time to work on it!
Thanks again, Poppa D

 

Fine. Do

(a real learning experience)

Can I ask what you learned?