Blue Philips LED icicle lights! (pictures)

Redhook6 · #1 10-27-2005, 06:48 PM

I've always liked the idea of putting lights on my house during the holidays, but I haven't gotten around to it until this year. I love LED technology, and I was in Target a few days ago and found that they now carry blue LED icicle lights. Each strand uses 4 watts of power and has 70 LEDs, and costs $15. Yes, that's a little high, but they are LEDs - they will last for many seasons and I don't need to worry about bulbs going out!

Nine strands (630 LEDs) later...

I'm quite happy with how they come out, and once Thanksgiving Day passes, I'll run them off a "dusk to dawn" photocell through the new year.

--Redhook 6

p.s. Thanks to xs.to for the free image hosting!

p.p.s. don't worry, I don't plan to turn them on again until after Thanksgiving. But yesterday was a nice day for stringing them up and testing them...

WildRice · #2 10-27-2005, 07:03 PM

Looks REALLY sharp. I love the idea of LEDs for Christmas lighting, because of the vivid, non fading colors. The only thing I don't really like is the use of non-diffused and the effect they can cause, ie the blue spots all over your house. but thats just me. Your house will really stand out especially if your neighbors use regular lights.

Jeff

wallyrulz · #3 10-28-2005, 12:05 PM

Very nice!

I like the way the blue lights cast on the house, gives it a very festive look.

We put leds on our tree last year, and EVERYONE said something about it. We even had people driving by to see the brilliant lights through the window. No heat, fake tree, we just left them on all the time. No worries.

BTW, I have a buddy in Col Springs and his house looks exactly like yours. Very interesting.

yuandrew · #4 11-06-2005, 02:47 AM

I've been looking for LED icicles as well. Prefer to get white ones this year but blue is fine as well.

I found some white Forever Bright brand LED lights at LOWES and I might give them a try this year. Haven't bought any yet though, Traditionally, I start decorating right after Turkey Day (Thanksgiving).

CroMAGnet · #5 11-06-2005, 03:56 AM

Very nice! I have the awesome looking C7 strawberries from Costco for around $15 a box. Eac box has a strand about 50ft long! Very economical and very brilliant. They only have Multi color and Red. (I got 4 boxes of Red last year and 3 more this year)

I'd like to try those blue ones. Can you tell me how long across can you stretch one strand?

MacGyver · #6 11-07-2005, 11:33 AM

Redhook, so that's 36W lighting up your whole house...that's awsome!!

Redhook6 · #7 11-07-2005, 07:58 PM

According to the box, each strand is 11.5 feet, with the lighted portion being 9.5 feet. That sounds about right, as it took me nine strands to do my house. I am quite happy with how it came out, and that all nine strands will only use 36 watts.

PhotonWrangler · #8 11-07-2005, 08:26 PM

Very nice, Redhook! I'm sure they look even more dramatic in person.

Erasmus · #9 11-09-2005, 07:17 PM

Very nice! Can anyone tell me what the Philips part number is? Or can anyone take a photo of the box? Then I can call Philips Europe to ask where these are for sale. I even don't find 'em on the Philips website.

Redhook6 · #10 11-11-2005, 05:32 PM

Erasmus, here you go:

I hope you are able to track them down...

PhotonWrangler · #11 11-11-2005, 05:41 PM

I believe Target has those in both blue and white.

hotbeam · #12 11-13-2005, 01:28 AM

Great lights! Are these 12VAC, DC or ?

Erasmus · #13 11-16-2005, 11:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Redhook6

Erasmus, here you go:

[img]

[img]

I hope you are able to track them down...

Thank you very much

IsaacHayes · #14 11-16-2005, 06:47 PM

Hmm. white leds would look cool with thier bluish tint to them anyways. Perfect match!

yuandrew · #15 11-22-2005, 05:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hotbeam

Great lights! Are these 12VAC, DC or ?

120volts AC without a transformer I think. My ForeverBright sets run like that as well with all the LEDs in series. Each socket gets around 2.2 volts when I measured it with my multimeter.

hotbeam · #16 11-22-2005, 08:52 PM

hmm, 70 lights in series. If one goes, they all go. And I was planning on getting 2 strings of 70 leds in series so it would run from 240-250VAC here. Too risky from a power perspective?

PhotonWrangler · #17 11-22-2005, 08:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hotbeam

hmm, 70 lights in series. If one goes, they all go. And I was planning on getting 2 strings of 70 leds in series so it would run from 240-250VAC here. Too risky from a power perspective?

There is always a chance of lamp (and thus string) failure with series lamps, but it's less likely to happen with LEDs than with miniature incandescent lamps. I have at least one dead string of incandescents every year.

hotbeam · #18 11-22-2005, 09:15 PM

PW, true. At the end of the 60/70 LED string of lights, are there plugs/connectors that allow you to join another string of 60/70 LED string so you can theoretically go for hundreds of meters? Or do you have to plug each string into its own 110VAC supply. Thanks

Redhook6 · #19 11-22-2005, 09:39 PM

Yes, they plug into each other. I have nine strings plugged together in series. Technically the box said not to plug more than three strings together, but it is my understanding that that is due to an old UL requirement, and they haven't updated their requirements to accomodate low-power LEDs.

hotbeam · #20 11-22-2005, 11:17 PM

Thanks Redhook!

shiftd · #21 11-23-2005, 07:01 PM

Anyone of you with one box of this and a weighing tool can help me weight one box?
I planned to ship couple boxes overseas and weight is a very important issue.

Thanks much.

jmccorm · #22 11-26-2005, 12:30 AM

I just bought as many as my local Target stores had. Which was nine of the blue ones. They were on sale, too, Currently $11.99 each instead of the regular $14.99.... so if you're looking to buy these, this weekend is a good time. (I got a raincheck for up to eight more in case the nine don't do the trick.)

What I like the best about these is the purity of the blue, which really stands out, especially compared to standard christmas lights. Such a vivid blue really is an attention grabber.

The spotlight effect is kind of interesting... the LEDs are not full brightness at 180 degrees, but rather, have more intensity coming out in a forward arc. Kind of good, kind of bad. The effect will be that ones that are pointed at your house will paint blue light on the walls (see picture in first message). The ones pointed at the street will appear brighter than the surrounding bulbs, which I think adds interest. (If you see in the picture, some spots look a bit brighter than others.)

I've also got four of the regular string ones (not icicle) with diffused bulbs draped around some miniature evergreens I have in the front yard (about 3-4 feet tall). The really are a quite vivid blue. Model # is "051 04 1536". Says "60 L.E.D. LIGHTS" on the front package that otherwise looks similar to the icicle package shown towards the top of this thread.

A big THANK YOU for the encouragement to pull the trigger and to get these. I always kind of wanted LED sets for the long-term energy saving aspect and lifespan, but I had no idea the appearance was so unique. You just don't see that detail in the stores.

SHIFTD: I weighed the 70 LED icicle package, as shown in the picture above, model #051 04 1529. I put it on my food scale and I'm happy to say it isn't TOO heavy. Very close to 14oz or 400 grams.

BTW.... the set appears to be split in two halves of 35 bulbs each. If a bulb goes bad or gets loose, half of the set will go dark, not the entire site The reason I'm told, put in basic terms, is that one half feeds off of the + A/C cycle, and the other half feeds off of the - cycle. So they flicker @ 30hz which I can notice if they are indoors and moving... but normal people don't readily observe. And I don't notice it at all when they are outside and on the house. If you are trying to run this on a 50hz system, the flicker is likely to be noticable... it'll be flickering at 25hz.

A small shock/surprise that they go ahead and include some bonus replacement bulbs in the set. That's probably to help meet customer expectations more than anything. Kind of for the same reason that the blue bulbs are painted with a light blue coating. More for the customer's peace of mind than for functionality. Perhaps for easy identification so that customers don't go... WTF? "The box said it was a BLUE set, but these lights are CLEAR!"

Again, thank you for this thread. This will be golden for next year when I go to a nice computer controlled and music synchronized light display. This year's fun consists of reprogramming an animatronic Santa Claus.

yuandrew · #23 11-26-2005, 11:00 PM

I just bought some Philips Icicles in white LEDs to go with my red green yellow first generation Forever Brights. Although they are brighter than the colored LEDs, they do make them stand out a little more.

The white leds have a strange "grey" cool look to them when compared to the incandescant icicles my neighbor has. The cool white color does draw some attention though.

I spent the afternoon hanging them up.

Edit: Pics

No Flash

Side. You can see my neighbor's incandescant icicles in the background

Closeup

hotbeam · #24 11-27-2005, 03:40 PM

Nice pics. Looks like this is the default the thread for Xmas lights. I guess I'll do the same when I get my lights

jmccorm · #25 11-27-2005, 10:04 PM

"LET IT SNOW"
1000+ LEDs

I couldn't convince my camera to give a realistic rendering, but this is as close as I got. Unfortunately, this picture minimizes the impact of the blue glow cast on everything (not saturated enough with blue), and the lights themselves looked more washed out and white in the eye of the camera. Almost the opposite of what I wanted to show.

The theme is "Let It Snow". My first attempt at Christmas lighting. I've got the 60 count Philips blue lights on the four small topiary trees in front. The 70 count Philips blue icicles everywhere else. There is a giant snow globe with a snowman in it (and fake snow is pouring down inside of the globe). Behind the snow globe, which also didn't get captured well in the picture, are white snowflakes falling down the house via a projector. Those are the white blobs on the wall.

The carport was lined with two strings across. Bay window was only one string across. Above the bay window was three strings slightly compressed together (two didn't cover it, and three was too much, so I had to scrunch it together a bit). I have five on the upstairs roof line. (It also wraps around the corner.)

I'd say the "blue effect" is much like in Redhook6's last picture. But for the life of me, I can't get my camera to capture something close to what the eyes see.

ADD'L INFO: The white light that is just under the snow globe is a 25 watt blue party bulb. Which, even in this picture, absolutely looks white compared to the LEDs.

hotbeam · #26 11-27-2005, 10:25 PM

Welcome to the CPF jmccorm. Nice Xmas light decoration indeed.

BuddTX · #27 11-29-2005, 03:00 PM

YEA!!!

Before finding this post, I found the Phillips LED lights at Target. I put them up on Sunday 11-27.

BTW, I found a device that ALMOST made hanging Christmas lights enjoyable, it was an 11 foot adjustable pole with specially designed gutter clips, that screw on to the pole, and one end clips onto the gutter, and the other clip holds the light string. I installed all my lights WITHOUT USING A LADDER this year!

Back to the lights, They look FANTASTIC! Vibrant blue, and supposedly they will not scratch or fade. My incandecent blue lights always "lost the blue tint" and became almost white by New Years. The incandecent BLUE color only lasted for one season.

Some observations:

Why is the LED acrylic colored blue? arent all LED "protective acrylic" clear, and the LED itself generates the blue (or whatever) color?

The LED is directional (as others have said). So, when viewing the lights, a few seem to be very bright, (because they are pointed directly at you) where others appear to be less bright. As you walk or move, different lights become bright, and the bright ones go dim. It is actually pretty cool.

Some people have noticed a flickering, and I see it, when I first turn on the lights, and am looking closely, but from a foot or two away, I see no flickering.

Check out this review:
http://led.linear1.org/led-christmas...-from-philips/

Even with the shortcomings, I give these lights TWO THUMBS UP! VERY HAPPY, and I can re-use them next year!!!

jmccorm · #28 11-29-2005, 03:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BuddTX

Why is the LED acrylic colored blue? arent all LED "protective acrylic" clear, and the LED itself generates the blue (or whatever) color?

Humans.

It is the same reason that the marketing department will have a dry dog food manufacturer make the different pieces of dog food have different colors. Or even shapes.

It is not for the dog. Not for the nutrition. It certainly isn't to make manufacturing easier. Rather, it is so humans will look at it and say, "Oh! This has a variety of different things in here. This will be better for my dog than just this box of brown dog food over there."

The reason, of course, is slightly different in this case. It isn't for the quality of the light. It likely isn't for the manufacturing process. It is for when you get them home, and you pick up the set, you don't see clear bulbs and wonder... what the heck is this? Wasn't this supposed to be a blue set? So you return it.

Or next year, someone thinking that they're a clear set and hangs them up in the wrong place, etc etc.

I think the LED christmas lights kind of have an inferiority complex. It seems that Philips did just about everything that they could (except for the focused lenses and slight up-close indoor flicker) to make this at least equal to a regular light set in all respects except cost. Tinting the bulbs blue is just another disadvantage of LEDs that they decided to address.

Minor, but a nice little touch.

BTW... about the flicker... these don't have the 30hz flicker that I would expect out of them. I think this may have something to do with Philips "advanced LED technology" that they trumpet but don't go into any detail about.

I'm tempted to hook one of the spares up to a microcontroller I have here, right next to an RGB LED I have, and see if it'll perform (flicker or not flicker) differently under different square-wave duty cycles.

yuandrew · #29 11-29-2005, 04:04 PM

When I first got the LED icicles, I plugged them in while they were still bundled up (as I took them out of the box and the bag) and the flicker was very noticeable with them all grouped together.

It was less noticeable after I hung them. The only time I noticed the flicker when they were installed was when I was viewing them up close while installing another string of lights above them.

jkuo13 · #30 11-29-2005, 08:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jmccorm

BTW... about the flicker... these don't have the 30hz flicker that I would expect out of them. I think this may have something to do with Philips "advanced LED technology" that they trumpet but don't go into any detail about.

Umm... I wouldn't expect 30 Hz flicker. I'm pretty sure it's 60 Hz flicker. AC voltage should go through both the positive and negative phases of the sine wave 60 times a second. If you could find a rectifier, you could bump the flicker up to 120 Hz at which point the flicker should be hardly noticeable. Of course, it would also double the duty cycle of the LEDs, but it probably wouldn't be enough to significantly heat up the LEDs.