LED Christmas lights - love 'em or hate 'em?

[floobydust]

Look how cheap these chinese Christmas lights tend to be, complete with annoying blink flash blink flash and 1/2 wave flicker.
No fuse, no strain relief, loose strands, inadequate spacings... let's kill the "capitalist running-dogs" or burn your house down or both. I don't know why this stuff is allowed in the country.
http://www.bigclive.com/noflash.htm
https://auschristmaslighting.com/wiki/Bypassing-multi-function-LED-controllers

[james_s]

A lot of the really cheap junk technically isn't allowed in, but it's pretty hard to stop people from buying it direct from China. They can't even stop the flow of obviously counterfeit goods.

[Ed.Kloonk]

What has LED lights got to do with the birth of Jesus Christ? Nothing whatsoever.

Warning: incoming truth bomb...

The Dec. 25 day is disputed.

[madires]

What has LED lights got to do with the birth of Jesus Christ? Nothing whatsoever.

It's a way to bring some positive thoughts into the dark winter time.

PS: You're free to use classic Roman oil lamps if you prefer those.

[VK3DRB]

What has LED lights got to do with the birth of Jesus Christ? Nothing whatsoever.

Warning: incoming truth bomb...

The Dec. 25 day is disputed.

There is nothing documented in the Bible or by the scribe Josephus or anywhere else that we know of that there were three wise men. There might have been 27. Or maybe only two. And there is nothing to say they were kings. They were probably Persian magi. The great Italian Renaissance painters and the American movie moguls were either racist or just ignorant... Jesus almost certainly did not have to have blue eyes and fair skin. Ethnically he would have had dark hair, dark eyes and dark skin. There is no mention in the Bible of animals at his birth and nowhere does it say he was born in a stable. There is no mention in the Bible of LED lights, happy holidays, seasons greetings (whatever that is, LOL), "I'm Dreaming of White Christmas", Santa, elves, reindeer, stockings, a time for rampant consumerism or any other such crap.

In replicating mindless tradition to the masses year after year, there’s a risk in accepting subtle inaccuracies and convenient assumptions as historical fact.

[VK3DRB]

What has LED lights got to do with the birth of Jesus Christ? Nothing whatsoever.

It's a way to bring some positive thoughts into the dark winter time.

PS: You're free to use classic Roman oil lamps if you prefer those.

What dark winter time? Last year half our country was on fire at Christmas time. And it is light from early in the morning to late at night where we happily get plenty of Vitamin D for free. As for the Roman oil lamps, they have been a little hard to hard to come by since China started dumping fake knockoffs on the market .

[themadhippy]

What has LED lights got to do with the birth of Jesus Christ? Nothing whatsoever

Indeed,but  the use of light is very much linked to the winter solstice celebrations.

[madires]

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.

[madires]

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.

I'm not sure, but directly mains powered LED strings should be still allowed over here. My guess is that a low voltage string plus wall wart is cheaper to produce than a fully compliant 230V version.

[S. Petrukhin]

What has LED lights got to do with the birth of Jesus Christ? Nothing whatsoever.

Virtually none of the Christmas traditions have anything at all to do with the birth of Jesus, but that's beside the point. Many elements were borrowed from existing Pagan holidays, some are much more recent than that. Santa's red & white suit came from a Coca Cola advertising campaign, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was an advertisement for the Montgomery Ward department store chain.

In Russia, there was no CocaCola when Ded Moroz and Snegurochka appeared. Yes, and even the United States was not.
I do not know their history of appearance. 

[VK3DRB]

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.

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]

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.

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.

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]

it comes from a pagan tradition, the goal/message of the decorations fits in with the chirstian faith

Decorations have nothing to do with the Christian faith. It has everything to do to with concocted traditions.

[james_s]

Well I'm not religious so I never cared one way or another about that side of things. Christmas is a family tradition for me and I enjoy the traditions, celebrations and lights, it cheers up the otherwise cold, dark and gloomy season in my half of the world. If some want to pretend that these mostly ancient Pagan traditions have something to do with Christianity that's totally fine with me. If someone doesn't want to celebrate then that's fine too. Don't come in here and complain though, we were having a perfectly good discussion about decorative lighting.

[bombledmonk]

I disliked led's until I permanently installed this. 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/2p6MU5JZiiSphiRCA   (video)

[RJSV]

AlbertL:  Thanks for your thread, here is a picture, of my LED controller (bought at local Auto Parts store).

  Up top, of the 3-D Paris scene featured on Hallmark greeting / holiday card.
There are both white light and the regular usual R-G-B sets. I've brought the wires out to a breadboard for easy changes.
   Controller is that little square box; there is a remote.
Bringing up RED feature, some LEDs are below deck, for a 'dawn-like' effect with controller sequencing. Up top, I made a simple 'egg crate's light baffle, for downward lighting (Blue and white led).

[Zero999]

I've generally had a positive experience with LED Christmas lights. I now have two sets. A large one of 100, which cost £8 and I have around my tree at home and some much cheaper lights at work, which I've modified. The cheap set is made of two sets of 10 lights, which were originally designed to run off two AA batteries. The LEDs were all wired up in parallel, without any series resistors. I cut them into strings of 5, connected them in series and powered them off a 12V mains adaptor.

I don't like the deep blue/indigo/violet LED lights, which look very harsh, but white (both ice and warm) are nice and multicoloured is always good. I've not noticed any flicker. All of the LED lights I've seen run off a DC power supply, rather than directly off the mains.

[VK3DRB]

I just evaluated some Christmas lights. Quite ingenious. Two wires out the controller. All 100 LEDs are monochrome. They use PWM to drive the LEDs, reversing the polarity to switch between one set and the next. So with two wires, they create a vast array of patterns. The wiring we very well done. It runs on 4.5V (3 x AA cells), and so electrically it is safe. This entire set cost $10 ($7 USD) RETAIL. The lights had no regulatory certifications (eg: the mandatory RCM mark), and RF emissions are quite detectable on an AM radio within a few metres. The cost of the set was probably a dollar or two out of China. I suspect the people who manufactured this were prisoners or slaves; but one thing is for sure - those who buy them do not spare a thought for the people who put them together. Today, Christmas is more about jing jing jingling of the cash register, hoarding more stuff and gluttony - not too much goodwill and almost no thought about the Christ in Christmas. I don't want to sound like one of those big note look-at-me celebrity, but this year we decided to give no-one in the family gifts, but have sent a sum of money to a local food bank to help mainly foreign students who are stuck here due to COVID to get a Christmas hamper. I won't know who they go to. But it would be nice to know who actually put the Christmas lights together, and send them something in appreciation. At least when you turn on your Christmas lights, or pop some bonbons, spare a thought for those who assembled them.

[AlbertL]

Over the holidays I like to walk around various neighborhoods in my vicinity and see how people are decorating.  To me, the worst of the LED lights are still the dim "warm white" strings with the distinct sickly greenish (or sometimes violet) tinge.  To me they look like a cool-white fluorescent seen through a grimy window.

The color of a clear low-wattage incandescent lamp is very close to a candle flame, and in fact I believe the original role of electric Christmas lights was to replace the dangerous use of candles on indoor trees and greenery.         

[Cyberdragon]

Over the holidays I like to walk around various neighborhoods in my vicinity and see how people are decorating.  To me, the worst of the LED lights are still the dim "warm white" strings with the distinct sickly greenish (or sometimes violet) tinge.  To me they look like a cool-white fluorescent seen through a grimy window.

The color of a clear low-wattage incandescent lamp is very close to a candle flame, and in fact I believe the original role of electric Christmas lights was to replace the dangerous use of candles on indoor trees and greenery.         

Correct



I even left a comment saying "What's next? Those damn diodes everywhere bulbs should be!"