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Probably a stupid question, but I couldn't find an answer with Google. I have one of those light stands that are in the shape of a Christmas tree, but I don't like the look of the old style twinkle bulbs and I have a lot of led bulbs that go into light strands. I don't want to try to find/buy a new tree thing for outside, and it would be a pain in the butt to actually replace the strand of lights itself and would be a lot easier to just replace the bulbs. Are there any issues with doing this?
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Dec 6, 2015 23:31
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Most incandescent strings run the full 120 volts through the strand - relying on the bulbs themselves to act as resistors to drop the voltage down to what they can handle. LEDs, on the other hand, require either resistors and/or transformers to drop both the voltage and amperage down to what they can handle. If you look at an LED strand, you'll likely find some sort of small plastic thing on the wires between the plug and first bulb. tl;dr don't do this unless you like magic smoke
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Dec 7, 2015 06:20
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Doctor Butts posted:Are there any issues with doing this? It might be possible, but there would still be problems. First off, LEDs are DC devices, with definite positive and negative leads. The D in LED stands for "diode". A diode is like a one-way valve for electricity, so if all the one-way valves aren't all flowing in the same direction, no electricity will flow and no light will be emitted. This means you would need to rewire the cable snaking through the tree into series, not parallel, with a definite positive-negative terminal pattern for the sockets. Second, a white LED needs around 3.5V each. The power coming out of the wall is 120V. Wired in series, that's a max of 34 white LEDs per series. You could probably get away without using a resistor if you use the full amount. Third, the power coming out of the wall is 60 Hz AC. Well, LEDs again are DC devices. If their power alternates direction, it will try to flow in the opposite direction of those one-way valves 60 times a second. That means LEDs flicker when powered via AC. Some people are sensitive enough to see the flicker. If old CRT computer monitors bothered you to look at for long amounts of time, then you might be sensitive enough to see it too. Their default refresh rate for CRT monitors was... 60 Hz. Still, AC can be converted to DC with a rectifier. Simple, right?
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Dec 8, 2015 05:59
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