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Are Christmas Lights in Series or Parallel?

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Re: Are Christmas Lights in Series or Parallel?

#51

Post by _mulder_ »

icebraining wrote: post #47
Rapzid wrote: post #45

I understand the article is about series vs parallel but I'm sort of... Taken aback by the premise setup in the beginning that: A.) Its hard to find the burnt out bulb(hint its almost always the one with the broken filiment) B.) You should just throw the strand away Maybe I'm just too old at 30(?) or I grew up underprivileged because I recall untangling lights and replacing burnt out bulbs well, as far back as I can…

I agree with you, and I also replaced burnt bulbs as a kid, but nowadays I'm seeing more and more Christmas lights using molded plastic instead of sockets (also, usually with LEDs instead of bulbs), so replacing them is much harder than it used to be.

True, but you shouldn't need to replace an LED bulb like you did the incandescent's. More likely to be a problem with the transformer or cheap wire and connections.

Re: Are Christmas Lights in Series or Parallel?

#52

Post by bradfa »

Animats wrote: post #43

The price ratio between comparable LED and incandescent holiday light strings is now between 2 and 2.5 to 1. Incandescent holiday lights probably have about two to three years of life left as a product.

The white LED strings look very nice and I definitely agree that white incandescent strings have a very short market life left. But the colored LED strings which are sold at Home Depot and similar merchants in the USA have very different colors than the incandescent strings.

I personally find the colored LED strings to have very unpleasing colors compared to incandescents. I've tried a few different "brands" (in quotes as the brand is mostly meaningless afaict) of LED strings and all were not to my liking.

Re: Are Christmas Lights in Series or Parallel?

#53

Post by dhimes »

prof_hobart wrote: post #48
Rapzid wrote: post #45

I understand the article is about series vs parallel but I'm sort of... Taken aback by the premise setup in the beginning that: A.) Its hard to find the burnt out bulb(hint its almost always the one with the broken filiment) B.) You should just throw the strand away Maybe I'm just too old at 30(?) or I grew up underprivileged because I recall untangling lights and replacing burnt out bulbs well, as far back as I can…

It's not always easy to see the broken filament, or at least didn't used to be (I've not really examined many in detail recently). As a kid in the 80s, I used to work in my dad's hardware shop and people regularly used to bring in lights that didn't work. We had a little test area set up where we would put each bulb in turn to find out which one(s) wouldn't light.

I used to use an ohm meter and a binary search algorithm to find the broken bulb in the series strands (waaaaay back in the day). My dad gave me the task as a challenge. I was quite young and into electronics, but it was before I had access to computers (or even calculators for that matter).

Re: Are Christmas Lights in Series or Parallel?

#54

Post by sokoloff »

copperx wrote: post #46
mindslight wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Piercing blue, icy white, and unfocusing violet aren't so inviting on a cold winter's night. Black body 4 life.

What's the problem with coloring the lens?

LEDs emit a limited number of wavelengths of light.

Incandescent lamps emit a broad spectrum of light.

Filters (colored lens) can knock out certain colors, allowing others to pass. Filters cannot add colors that aren't there to begin with.

You can't just filter a monochromatic light into another color. Filtering LEDs doesn't work as straightforwardly as your incandescent-based intuition would lead you to believe.

Re: Are Christmas Lights in Series or Parallel?

#55

Post by jacquesm »

copperx wrote: post #46
mindslight wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Piercing blue, icy white, and unfocusing violet aren't so inviting on a cold winter's night. Black body 4 life.

What's the problem with coloring the lens?

Width of the emitted spectrum.
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