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LED Christmas lights - love 'em or hate 'em?
VK3DRB:
--- Quote from: madires on November 29, 2020, 03:26:59 pm ---If you like to get an original oil lamp bring your shovel. I'm living just a few meters away from the Limes Germanicus. Plenty of Roman forts. :)
Gosh, 40°C in Sydney.
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That's one thing we don't have here, unfortunately, and that is ancient artefacts other than a few Aborigine rock paintings and shell middens. If I lived in Europe, I'd be out there with a metal detector, exploring forests looking for stolen loot from the middle ages, ancient Roman coins or oil lamps. One thing we can do here is go metal detecting around the goldfields areas right here in Victoria. There are still gold to be found, as well as coins and other stuff from the 1850's. Some people strike it lucky... https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/20/asia/australia-gold-nuggets-scli-intl/index.html.
Cyberdragon:
--- Quote from: james_s on November 28, 2020, 09:54:48 pm ---
--- Quote from: madires on November 28, 2020, 12:45:26 pm ---So far I've seen LED fairy lights with some sort of controller powered only by a small SMPSU wall wart. Half the LEDs in the string are wired in parallel, and the other half anti-parallel. The controller generates a PWM and also switches the polarity to select which half of LEDs to light. Usually they have 8 modes.
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I think that's probably due to regulations in some 240V countries. Here in the US transformer powered miniature lights were never really a thing, they were always just series strings of lamps fed directly from the mains, when LED strings appeared they used the same arrangement with the addition of a ballast resistor. Some have sections wired in anti-parallel to reduce flicker, some don't. More recently I've seen some multi-mode lights that have electronic controllers but there are still a lot of the plain series string LEDs.
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The tiny little ones (grain of wheat lights) are transformer powered, usually 24V and series parallel.
RJSV:
I had a lot of fun, adding Christmas LEDs strings, to a controller I bought at auto parts store. The controller runs in 12 V battery, and does sequences of red-blue-green, as each has a channel.
But one often overlooked point: You don't have to always follow the RGB in strict order. Even a white led set can be put somewhere in the sequence.
I made a Hallmark 3-D CARD, into a holiday display, Paris scene with blue and white sky, RED horizon, etc.
(All in the cheap, using car enhancement lighting products!)
coppercone2:
it comes from a pagan tradition, the goal/message of the decorations fits in with the chirstian faith
VK3DRB:
--- Quote from: coppercone2 on November 30, 2020, 04:42:34 am ---it comes from a pagan tradition, the goal/message of the decorations fits in with the chirstian faith
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Decorations have nothing to do with the Christian faith. It has everything to do to with concocted traditions.
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