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It's that time of year again... Christmas tree lights
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My father described Christmas lights as being at least two open circuits in series.

@james_s : Over here in Brexitland, we kinda gave up on the trauma of 'Dad' fixing the xmas lights the old fashioned way. Now every tree and house is strung with LEDs. PSUs are tiny switch mode boxes, not those solid brick transformers that will break concrete, and toes, when dropped. Compared with incandescent lamps, LEDs are so cheap there is no incentive to treasure and maintain lamps from year to year. And certainly no need to hold a mix of replacement bulbs at the correct rating. Some local councils recycle defunked lights to keep copper and plastic out of landfill. Furiously cold white LED's are in vogue this year.

btw, we have some very ancient festive lamps, made in China even back then! Sometimes we gently power these through a dimmer circuit. Pictured are 12 volt chinese lanterns from what we suspect is the mid 1930's. But if you guys have a more accurate date, then please do tell.

Season's Greetings EEVBlog.
Zero999:

--- Quote from: james_s on December 20, 2019, 07:23:28 pm ---I don't think I've ever seen any that had a proper SMPS. Here in 120V land miniature christmas lights are invariably series wired and directly mains powered. I was surprised when I initially started discussing this stuff with a British friend to discover that transformer powered miniature lights are common there. I suppose with the higher voltage drove things toward a different design and things just kind of stuck.

I do think that eventually LED tech will get where it needs to be to make this sort of thing really good. Phosphor type LEDs in a rainbow of colors will allow a bit more variation in color output and better brightness matching from color to color. It would also be nice to see more true red LED decorative lights instead of the reddish-orange that is typically used.

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ebay seems to be full of 12V or 24V Christmas lights if you explicitly search for them.

Colour has always been a problem. The old incandescent lamps have a low colour temperature, making blue and green dim and dies fade due to heat, so the colours wash out after awhile. It's true modern LEDs are often a bit blue or cold looking, even the mixed colours. My set which has red, yellow, green and blue use phosphor for red, yellow and possibly green, with blue only being plain LED, and the blue is a little brighter than it should be. It's still dimmer than the other colours, due to the poor sensitivity of the human eye, at that end of the spectrum.
Electro Detective:
It's that time of year again... Christmas tree lights

=  :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared:


fwiw they didn't have all this stuff back in Christ's day, did they even have readily available cheap MIC candles?

so why do we 2000+ years later.. risk life, limb and or sanity to set up these circus sideshow displays?  ::)


Where in the good book does it state or imply 'thou shalt without question expose wallet, and break ass to set up chrissie lights..
and troubleshoot if necessary with whatever means at your disposal.
Yoel Have A Nice Day..' 


???

tooki:

--- Quote from: ebastler on December 20, 2019, 04:53:01 pm ---Candles, anyone?
We still have them on the tree in the living room. Accept no substitute!  8)

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We were absolutely shocked at our first Christmas in Switzerland (1992) when everyone put candles on their trees. In USA, where we moved from, that is absolutely unheard of in the modern era.



--- Quote from: james_s on December 20, 2019, 04:57:34 pm ---Yikes, I'll use 70 year old strings of incandescent lamps with cloth covered wires but I'm not letting open flame anywhere near the tree. Evergreen trees are quite flammable and can go from a small flame to a huge fireball in a matter of seconds.

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FYI, to the other shocked Americans: 1. A properly hydrated Christmas tree will not go up in flames if a single candle flame licks a branch for a second. (Ideally you should cut a fresh edge onto the trunk so that it can absorb water better.) 2. One NEVER lights candles except when the tree will be actively supervised. So that means the tree is lit only a handful of times the whole season. 3. It’s nonetheless a wise precaution to keep a fire extinguisher at hand, just in case. Xmas tree fires do happen every year to people who have violated the prior requirements, especially the one about keeping the tree hydrated, since dry evergreen needles do indeed burn exceedingly fast.
madires:
I've upcycled some old "made in China" tree lights with small incandescent lamps which where popular about 15 or 20 years ago. The lamp's diameter is 5mm. ;) This asks for LEDs and a capacitive dropper PSU. And because we like fancy stuff I bought color changing LEDs (the slow changing type) to replace the incandescents. Looks quite nice and the neighbor's LED lights are all single color. 8)
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