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| LED Christmas lights - love 'em or hate 'em? |
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| Ed.Kloonk:
--- Quote from: AlbertL on November 27, 2020, 06:25:32 pm ---Yup, that's the Washington Post all right - owned by Jeff Bezos of Amazon! --- End quote --- Washinton Compost |
| Red Squirrel:
Speaking of LED lights, is there any suitable replacement bulbs that are LED that fit in "mini light" incadescent sockets? The ones that are in series where the bulb has a shunt so it closes circuit if it dies. I have a tree with them built in and they are burning out, and if too many burn out the whole string goes as they are getting too much voltage. I have yet to find suitable replacements, I tried different voltage ones but sooner or later the whole string just dies. Also, can someone explain this one? If I put a 12v rated bulb, it dies immediately, while the 3v one does not. Why would the higher voltage one die when the lower voltage one does not? Since I did not know the voltage originally I figured I would start with highest and work my way down but that did not quite work! |
| james_s:
I've never seen retrofit bulbs sold, but there is nothing stopping you from installing ordinary LEDs and then add a suitable current limiting resistor or proper constant current power supply to each string, ready made LED mini lights usually just have a resistor in series. How many bulbs are in each segment? 20 used to be common but now most are 35 or 50 using 3.5 and 2.5V bulbs respectively so the 6V bulbs required for the 20 light segments are somewhat difficult to find. Things are complicated by the fact that some bulbs use more current than others so you may replace a 3.5V bulb with another 3.5V bulb and find that it runs high or low, throwing off the voltage on the rest of the bulbs in the string. I usually wait until right after Christmas and then buy up a bunch of bulbs at steeply discounted prices and then in my vintage strings I'll replace all the bulbs in a segment if the spares I have don't perfectly match. A light dimmer set at 80-90% will dramatically increase the lifespan of incandescent lights for only a modest penalty in apparent brightness. |
| themadhippy:
--- Quote ---A light dimmer set at 80-90% will dramatically increase the lifespan of incandescent lights for only a modest penalty in apparent brightness --- End quote --- A diode is another way |
| james_s:
--- Quote from: themadhippy on November 27, 2020, 10:17:58 pm ---A diode is another way --- End quote --- I find that I can see the visible flicker when using a diode on incandescent though even at 60Hz, I'd imagine it must be much worse on 50Hz, and also it drops the power down enough to be noticeably dimmer. It's also a curious fact that incandescent lifespan is reduced on DC vs AC, which will partially offset the gains of the lower voltage. Either way a dimmer is nice in that you can customize the brightness at any point. I usually run my christmas lights a bit dimmer in the weeks leading up to the holiday and then turn them up higher during events when people are over. |
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