Comments on: Scrounging LED Christmas Lights

By: Milton

Milton — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 02:30:20 +0000

I bought LED lights to replace my halogen MR16 bulbs the other day from a website called Eaglelight.com that I would recommend enthusiastically. They had good service (good phone and email support), great FAQs so I knew what I needed, and competitive prices; also, their shipping was fast and the LEDs were as good as advertised. http://www.Eaglelight.com. Highly recommended.

By: mrmeval

mrmeval — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 04:23:17 +0000

I did pick up some strands at 75% off. Because they’re already strung and working I’m going to see how cheap I can make them individually addressable and run them from isolated DC. I have a pile of switchers which should work well.

You need an isolation transformer for any AC work. You want the ‘device under test” to be on the transformer. It prevents blowing oscopes and killing you.

By: Alan

Alan — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:47:15 +0000

What brand name were these led lights from, I need to do some scrounging.

By: signal7

signal7 — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 19:10:52 +0000

It’s hard to work on anything using 110V ac without an isolation transformer. I would recommend buying one at the same time you buy or acquire your first ‘scope so as to prevent the inevitable short circuit.

By: Berni

Berni — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 09:07:52 +0000

Thats a real cheap way to get a pile of bright LEDs.

As for the waveform on the LEDs its probably a distorted 60Hz square wave, Also the LED strings are probably wired anti parallel so one light on the positive half of the sine and one on the negative.(Thats a very common way of connecting LEDs to AC)

Oh and yeah that scope ground thing can be quite annoying. A lot of people forget it and short stuff that way.