The disclosure is directed to a circuit that may detect a single short in a chain of loads, such as light emitting diodes (LEDs). The circuit may drive either multiple LED chains or a single LED chain to determine whether one, or more, of the LEDs in the LED chain is no longer working because of a short. The circuit determines whether the LED chain voltage satisfies a threshold based on a single LED voltage drop. Therefore, the same circuit may be used for applications regardless of the number of LEDs in an LED chain. Additionally, the circuit, according to the techniques of this disclosure may use may use no output pins, other than those used to deliver current to LED chains, regardless of the number of LED chains that the circuit drives.