net99200

DaTruthV2

jkarle1106

Unless they can come up with an LED like those clear ones, I'll never used them.

Who has the real info on cost? I would like a true comparison of LEDs and other types we have been using for years. Let's compare a string of 100 of each in terms we can all understand. How much per hour for each.

Thanks,

Don in Chatham

jerseydon

jkarle1106

I also swapped out all of my old lights for LED strands this year and have been very impressed thus far. The first few strands I bought exhibited the dreaded flicker, but I made a full wave bridge rectifier with $5 in parts from Radio Shack and Home Depot - problem resolved.
The second batch I bought came from foreverled.com, and have the rectifier built in.

portlander

[www.holidayleds.com]

But whew, there's a lot of horror stories here! I dunno, I'd still like to try them out I think...maybe I can find a sample display somewhere first, though...

edmicman

Khufu01

Khufu01

Pichu0102

DJJS

TheDude06

However, I'm willing to bet the cheap-ass manufacturer didn't tin any of the leads on the sockets, which would lead, naturally, to oxidization (which would probably deposit on the LED leads anyways), but not aluminum/copper corrosion.

shepd

Ahhhh, I love the way nature works together with such (cough, cough) atmospheric results.

Just to be clear I am a capitalist. I just hate that we are all forced to buy gifts to celebrate some guy's birthday when even the experts can't agree on just who he was, son of God, prophet, dude with magical powers, or what? How does buying a Chia Pet for someone I barely like honor this dude, whoever he was?

How did I go from LED's to Chia Pet? I think i better stop typing now.

kdaphoto

bikerglen

CapitalC

quiksilver180

dhaberer

AndersonBMX

graphophone

Me, I have C9's on the house, commercial-grade minis outside, C7's on the tree, and have started switching to LED's for outside mini applications. Lower light output is offset by the fact that I can drive 10 times the number of strands for the same power (in reality I'll use 2-3 times as many).

Also intriguing is the possibility of driving strands with batteries at various points in the yard, rather than throwing line voltage everywhere.

Steve Hollasch

willray411

geekofTheFire

rbb

ASAP man.

strider_mt2k

Bodypainter

While still potentially dangerous, Chanukah candles do not burn for an overlong time (usually a couple of hours) and are lit before dinner (sundown is before 5). They must not only be able to burn for 1/2 an hour after nightfall, on Shabbos, the Chanukah candles are lit before the Shabbos candles (which are lit 18 minutes before sundown).

Most candle fires happen because of candles left unattended. Candles left burning overnight account for 1/8 of candle fires. Unattended or abandoned candles account for 1/5 of candle fires. In other words, if you get home late during Chanukah, the first thing you should do is light the Menorah so that you don't have to stay up late until the candle burns out.

God made the pretty girls pretty because he likes them more

scampy

Brian Lam

Spaceships are my LED Christmas tree lights!
(Many, many spaceships!)

It's a very long process every year putting up and taking down, but man it looks awesome.
You should hear the cacophony when the tree is turned on!

strider_mt2k

Any word on how many people per year are killed by menorah fires? [note the spelling: Menorah]

ideaman2020

SkyLab

You have to carefully shop for them, but I was able to get a sets of LED christmas lights with 'full wave rectifiers'.

What causes the flickering in most sets is that half of a set is placed on a rectifier which feeds it electricity when the AC is on the positive half of the cycle. The other half of the set is on an inverse rectifier that feeds it electricity when the AC is on the negative half of the cycle. (They're put on opposite halves, in part, to produce a power factor that is more clean, rather than just eating up half of every cycle... that pollutes the mains).

But the result is that each individual bulb is energized and turned off 30 times per second. Result: flicker.

Some of the newer sets that use full wave rectifiers will power the bulb on the up cycle and the down cycle of AC current. the result is a flicker of 60 times per second, which turns out not to be noticable, even indoors.

I believe that it may be (abusive) patents that are standing in the way of all sets using them?

I believe, from memory, that the Forever Bright brand is flicker free? I could be wrong there.

I had some cool LED floodlights that worked on a completely different principle. They were also flicker free, but it was because they had a tiny built-in switching power supply. (Charges up a capacitor in the order of hundreds or thousands of time per second, in order to maintain a constant voltage.)

The only downside with those is that they didn't work very well with a dimmer. The circuitry compensated for the loss of input voltage and tried to maintain a constant output.

mantari

bdkennedy1

Rususeruru

I never trust the reasoning behind statements like this. How do you know one of those 14 killed by a christmas tree fire wasn't about to go out and kill 53 people? In that context, the christmas tree fire SAVED lives.

FilthyHarry

airmon

That, plus it's just plain tacky. If you want a good menorah, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has a nice selection, including an art deco brass menorah and a minimalist wrought iron menorah. Lenox also produces some very nice Judaica including several beautiful menorah.

If you live in an apartment on either the ground, second, or third floor, tradition states that you should have a menorah in a window facing the street. Obviously, if you live in a house, you should put a menorah in a ground floor window facing the street.

For window menorah, light the candles left to right (it will appear right to left for passers-by - kind of like hanging the field of blue on the flag on the right so that it appears on the left outside).

God made the pretty girls pretty because he likes them more

bohemian

itsgene

itsgene

jovino

ethanthom

As for the discussion at hand, for color, yes the LED coloring and brightness are a bit "off", but In my case they worked better. My wife is VERY neurotic about fires and has to shut down the tree before leaving the room. She goes to the kitchen, tree goes off, comes back, tree goes back on (sometimes). This means I do not get to see the tree lit up when I am lazy. Also, she is not happy with the electrical bill around Xmas, so the savings we saw (you can't really measure, and probably offset from having some lights on year round) helped.

I prefer to see our colored LED lights outside though, as the "flicker" bothers me a bit. The Forever Bright lights have a high speed flicker that has to do with the AC to DC conversion.

Lizard_King

That was in 1972. And we paid less than $2 per strand.

When LEDs reach that level of durability...

infmom

My Philips lights were also the 'icicle formation'. They rusted from the inside out. I'd be happy to provide pictures of several of the ~25-30 strands. The rust is very visible from the outside -- you don't even need to open up a socket to see them.

Guess what? Surprise! No warranty. If they don't last past the season, the problem is yours alone. The risk of these 'long life LED bulbs' is completely on you. The manufacturers do NOT back up their claims with ANY warranty. If Philips had offered a warranty, they'd be out the cost of 25-30 sets. They know what they're doing.

All it takes is water and air.

Actually, out of all of them, the Philips were the worst about rust... and also color consistency. But their newer models (which they stop socketing, I've heard... again.... "wonder why?") are better.

mantari

Monty

Galley

4 years ago, I purchased 10 strands of Forever Bright lights on sale at Boscov's....for $4 a strand. I have used them from November until January every year, removing the lights in the off season. One strand had to become a donor unit, but so far, I've gotten to use 9 strands each year. A couple of years ago I purchased the Philips icicle lights and have had them up and on ALL year for two full years (We have the lights INSIDE porch frame and tuck up the icicle strands during the off season so as to not look like the trailer-park crowd). Obviosly I have gotten my money back and then some.

Basic Xmas lights that you buy for $2-$3 a strand do not last in weather. The LED lighting I got has nbetter connections that previous lights, and Ive had no problem with shorts or failures. Save two or three burnt bulbs on the Forever Bright, Ive had 0 issues. My time is more important than a few bucks anyway. If they lasted only 2 years, it would have been worth it.

Lizard_King

I could probably have dealt with the colour if the brightness had been there.

Marty200

The ones that are socketed? They corrode from the inside out. Why? They inappropriately mix copper electrical wiring with the aluminum leads that come out of the LEDs themselves. Really. They rust from the inside out, and stop working. Quite visible. Problem apparent after a single season.

The ones that are not socketed? When an LED bulb burns out, you can't replace it. But what, these are supposed to last millions of years or something, right? Wrong. Especially when you have lots of them. (And some colors seem to burn out quicker than others, like the blue.) Go for two or three seasons, and you'll have quite a number of burnt out bulbs. No, they don't choose the top of the line long-life expensive LEDs for christmas lights. What, are you surprised?

LEDs generally get dimmer as they get older. The white ones are the worst, because they act like a fluorescent light. They are actually ultraviolet LEDs that shine against a phosporescent coating on the outside of the bulb.

Many manufacturers (again, to save money) allow for some variance in the color of the LEDs. If you get give blue strands, some may be blue-green. Some may be purple.

I have so many LED strands, it is crazy. But these things are NOT an investment to save money. They will NOT last you for 10 seasons. You will have a very hard time breaking even on costs.

mantari

Falconfire

It's what Jesus would do.

-AP-