Wires on LED spotlights

[neilbarnwell]

I have some LED spots that I got from a friend, but they have three wires on each - red, black and white. I'm guessing red and black are live and ground, but what's the white wire likely to be for? Literally each light has a cable with three wires, no harness or relays or anything else evident (unless there's something inside the lights themselves, of course).

Many thanks,

 

[diehli]

Assuming you cannot find information from the manufacturer, best bet is going to hook up each circuit to a power source to see what lights up (a small 12V drill battery is a good power source to test that kinda thing).

My initial thought is 2 separate circuits within the light with a common ground. Perhaps one for a lower output level and one for a higher level.

 

[arjayes]

I wouldn't recommend applying power as a way to figure out what each wire is. My first recommendation would be to look for manufacturer and model # info on the lights and then contact the manufacturer, or google for info. If that fails then I would go back to google to look for how 3-wire LED lights are normally wired. Googling on "LED spot red black white wires" brought up a bunch of hits and this one looks like a good start:

https://www.12volt-travel.com/knowledgebase/led-lights-wiring/

Bob

 

[Checkswrecks]

Two will be power for different intensities and one will be ground, as arrays link says. However, do NOT guess at this. Running power backward through a LED can destroy it, unlike a regular incandescent bulb.