LED Xmas Lights

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by KrazyKuch

You can cut the string and put in the amount of bulbs you want....You do not need to alter the power supply...the flicker he was talking about is that those light are running off 120Volts AC, now ac cycles 60 times a second so the LED's will go on and off 60 times a second!!!

Also if you want to buy some LED's to make your own moon Lighting the all you have to do is buy some LED's whatever color you want and get a power supply of any voltage ( has to be above 3 volts, LED's have a range or 3 volts to 220 volts) Through in a resistor or proper value.....if that is to bright or if you want like a dimmer to control it then just by a Variable resistor and throw that in line with the whole circuit....then you can control the intensity of the lights!!!

I will advise against cutting down the LED christmas light unless you plan on altering your power input with a resister.

Some of the stuff in the second paragraph is not nessasarly true or it can be true in certian situations. you cannot use any power source from 3 volts to 220 volts, nore could you use a household dimmer with out risk of blowing up all your LED's. most LEDs have a break over voltage. that means unless you have that Voltage they won't light. once they are lit they can operate down to what ever voltage specified. there are two ways to power LED's the first by limiting the current to the string to the specified amount of the LED. so say 20milliamps. this will light any number of LEDs in series up to the maximum wattage rating of your transformer. the other way is by limiting voltage ~4V for each LED. so if you have a string of 10 LEDs and you want to put 4Volt to each you need a 40V power supply at least but if you go over you need to limit the current. the way I run them is off a DC power supply say from a walkman or something and use a resister to set my voltage. In this situation you could have a variuable resister (which dimmer switches can be) and you can use that to "dim" the LEDs but you have to make sure the resister at its lowest setting will not sent to much voltage to the LEDs or you will burn them out (I went through 20 one day untill I realized I was reading the bars on the resister wrong )

anyways hope this clears a few things up.

Steve