# Superior Christmas Lighting?



## SeaLight (Nov 2, 2006)

I live in a small seaside town that put up 'a million' Xmas lights all thru downtown each holiday season. A local organization puts in the huge hours and does the fundraising every year. 'They' are having trouble beginning to convert to LED, as may locals view conventional LED strings as too dim, or too directional. Negative comments include 'you can't see them from down the block". 
Does anyone know of some creative Christmas lighting technology that can show off the strengths of LED? 
Reduced power consumtion is a hard sell, as various business donate the electricity. The 2 or 3 month term of the light show further reducs the saving power argument.
So I am trying to gather some tips for moving in the LED direction, arguments, but mostly actual examples of great LED useage. And at the same time overcome worries about LED's being 'not warm' in colour cast.
I am thinking that there must be some strengths in the fast-on & fast off characteristics of LED; a Santa and Reindeer scene that winks and blinks or patterns run around the outside, whatever. The locals make many displays of this type (i.e. painted plywood patterns, wire frames, & strings of bulbs) and there are generally outlined or highlighted with 5 watt incandescents. They are utilized both on the street and on top of the typical 2 or 3 story builidings. These require lots of annual mtce, naturally, (in the off season) and bulb changing and so on, so reliabilty could become one argument for LEd's. 
But initially I am interested in locating the sizzle to sell the steak; some things that cannot be done as well with incandescent, and things that look great using LED's.
Right now it's a local battle of the traditionalists, 'incandescents', versus the LED's are coming, just do it crowd.





Any helpful tips greatly appreciated!


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## jtr1962 (Nov 2, 2006)

Reliability is definitely one good argument in favor of LEDs. I'm gradually replacing all my Christmas lights with LEDs mostly to avoid the annual after holiday ritual of replacing burnt out bulbs. Besides being time-consuming, often it costs less to just replace a string than to replace 10 bad bulbs.

As for brightness concerns, blue LED lights are actually brighter than their incandescent counterparts at this point. Green and red are probably about the same. Yellow is a little dimmer both because yellow LEDs are behind the curve compared to other colors and filtering incandescents to produce yellow causes the least amount of light loss compared to other colors.

Whites are comparable in brightness to the miniature whites. If the highest efficiency whites instead of the cheapest ones were used they would actually be brighter. As for the lack of warmness, I suppose you could make strings of lights with warm white LEDs but I tend to think the cool whites look much better reflecting off snow. They don't spoil the appearance of snow by giving it a dirty yellowish cast as incandescents do. You could use that as part of the argument against the "lack of warmness". I tend to think people complain about this aspect of LEDs (or fluorescents in home lighting) simply because they are _used to_ incandescent. Most actually like whiter lighting better once they get used to it. I do agree though that most white LED Christmas lights are a bit too cool. I'd prefer something around 6000K versus the 8000 to 10000 I usually see.

Directionality? That depends a alot of the type of LEDs used. Some strings just put 20° LEDs in holders with no diffusers. Yes, these are very bright but also very directional. The better ones use wider angle LEDs and put these inside plastic crystals of varyings shapes/sizes. These tend to be dimmer but not directional at all.

LEDs at this stage obviously won't match the output of the larger incandescent Christmas lamps such as the C4 or C7 size. Perhaps in time Luxeons or Crees will become cheap enough to use for such an application in order to match or better incandescent output.

Another strong point of LEDs is that less heat is generated so they won't dry out whatever vegetation you string them on as incandescents sometimes do. That is the practical side of using less power.

The main downside to LEDs is the cost. The cost has come down quite a bit but it's still 8 to 10 times more per bulb than incandescent. For example, I bought a string of 50 LEDs for $8 but I could have bought 100 incandescents for $2. However, the savings in time replacing bulbs makes the LEDs pay for themselves. Granted, the payback time for power savings is still way more than 10 years so it's difficult to use that as part of the argument. LED Christmas lights are only going to get cheaper/brighter though so if not this year then next year you can probably contemplate replacing at least some of the strings. For now if I were you I might just replace any older strings with lots of burned out bulbs with LEDs. You can make the argument that the time and money to fix them or replace them justifies buying a string of lower maintenance LEDs.


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## brickbat (Nov 3, 2006)

jtr1962 said:


> Reliability is definitely one good argument in favor of LEDs.



Well, that'd be true if there was reliable data or testing substantiating the manufacturer's claims of long life. I've been running a few strings of Philips brand multi color LEDs from last Christmas. Over 50% of the green LEDs have gone out.

Sorry, this doesn't help your case for LEDs, but IMHO, LED Christmas lights are not quite ready for prime time. There's just too much cost pressure on the manufacturers now, so they opt for the cheapest components, not necessarily the best.


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## SeaLight (Nov 3, 2006)

Well thanks for your comments. I think pricing for hugely mass-produced items (e.g. Xmas strings) seems to sink right through the floor, making anything new not price-competitive. 

The reduction in labour argument might help, although there are banks of volunteers, seniors, who refresh the strings each winter. 



It makes sense to find LED strings that are wider in beam, properly diffused, and bright, so that any beginning efforts are rewarding.



I have not spent time looking in the local marketplace to distinguish quality factors. 

I am not involved as a director, just as a casual volunteer, which is why I hope to contribute through more perhaps through this kind of information research.

It is early days yet, I suppose, and as always mass production is providing a marketplace with a variety of quality and features. 

One thing I hope to find is outdoor-quality programmable timers which might provide interesting lighting patterns when combined with creative layout of LED strings. When I get time!


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## brickbat (Nov 3, 2006)

SeaLight said:


> I have not spent time looking in the local marketplace to distinguish quality factors.



That's the problem. The average Joe can't do anything except look at the box. The lights I bought were Philips - fairly high end. Great claims about long life on the box. But it didn't work out that way...


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## jtr1962 (Nov 4, 2006)

brickbat said:


> Well, that'd be true if there was reliable data or testing substantiating the manufacturer's claims of long life. I've been running a few strings of Philips brand multi color LEDs from last Christmas. Over 50% of the green LEDs have gone out.


I'd say this is more due to poor quality control and/or poor design. The best way to run LEDs off 120VAC is to use a capacitor around 0.22 uF on one leg of a full wave rectifier to limit current. The resulting full-wave rectified DC should then be smoothed using a filter capacitor of a few tens of uF. This circuit illustrates these concepts. The LEDs won't flicker and they will be protected from power spikes/surges. I'm 100% sure that the LEDs on your string blew out from such spikes or maybe just from being overdriven during the high point of the full-wave DC.

Unfortunately in the interests of saving every penny you're lucky these days to even get full-wave rectification, never mind filtering and limiting. Hopefully soon someone will make a very low cost IC which can handle all these functions directly from the line voltage with just one or two additional parts. That would take the cost pressure off LED Christmas light manufacturers while allowing the LEDs to be protected. For now it's a good idea to operate LEDs off surge protected power strips.


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## SeaLight (Nov 4, 2006)

Ah, so you're saying that in spite of all the reasonable claims for long life with LED, this long life can still be _scuppered_ by having inadequate cheap circuitry feeding the darn things?

I imagine one case where they _are _putting in the quality might be street light replacements, where the long life claim is readily checked by real maintenance people with real maintenance budgets. So fairly reliable data would be available on service life.
In a race to the bottom in pricing, it seems one of the two major claims for led - long life - is being put at risk with more disposable cheaper technologies. Such a shame, the marketplace is too able to accept larger failure rates counter to the promises of led lighting in general.
jtr1962, you are suggesting using surge protected power strips, this is to protect the typically purchased led Christmas string, right? Are some of these of 'outdoor' quality?
It sounds like this would further increase the costs of moving to led.


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## brickbat (Nov 4, 2006)

jtr1962 said:


> I'm 100% sure that the LEDs on your string blew out from such spikes or maybe just from being overdriven during the high point of the full-wave DC.



I'm 100% sure that statement contains no useful information...

Anyway, it doesn't really matter the root cause. The facts remains that LED Christmas lights can't be counted on to meet the manufacturer's claims when used in the 'real world'.

If you want to recommend LED Christmas lighting, do it because they deliver unmatched saturated colors, unavailable in incandescent. Recommending them because of their supposed long life very well could backfire...


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## jtr1962 (Nov 4, 2006)

SeaLight said:


> Ah, so you're saying that in spite of all the reasonable claims for long life with LED, this long life can still be _scuppered_ by having inadequate cheap circuitry feeding the darn things?



Yes, but to be fair incandescent light strings also suffer from the same problems of shoddy manufacture. I've seen the corroded contacts on quite a few so-called indoor/outdoor light strings when I've replaced bulbs. I've also had many strings fail due to internal breaks in the wires. The push for ridiculously low prices is what has caused this. $2 for a string of 100 lights? Wonderful if they don't fall apart but I'd rather pay $10 or more and have something which lasts. Unfortunately though there doesn't seem to be any correlation between paying more and getting better quality either. This applies to both LED and incandescent. You really don't know what you're getting until you actually buy it.



> jtr1962, you are suggesting using surge protected power strips, this is to protect the typically purchased led Christmas string, right? Are some of these of 'outdoor' quality?
> It sounds like this would further increase the costs of moving to led.


I don't know about outdoor quality surge protectors but I believe surge protected outlets can be purchased. Just replace the existing outlets with surge-protected ones. Surges can also affect incandescent so it's probably a good idea to do regardless, especially if the display is located in a suburban or rural area. Open areas tend to have dirtier power because there are fewer residences per square mile to dissipate spikes so the spikes end up being larger. Also, more miles of power line act as antennae to pick up EMI. My sister lives on Long Island. She's already had two VCRs and a TV destroyed by surges. I haven't had something like this happen once in the nearly 44 years I've lived in the city but I now use surge protectors on many things just as a precaution.


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## jtr1962 (Nov 4, 2006)

brickbat said:


> I'm 100% sure that statement contains no useful information...
> 
> Anyway, it doesn't really matter the root cause. The facts remains that LED Christmas lights can't be counted on to meet the manufacturer's claims when used in the 'real world'.
> 
> If you want to recommend LED Christmas lighting, do it because they deliver unmatched saturated colors, unavailable in incandescent. Recommending them because of their supposed long life very well could backfire...


Well, such info might be useful to the manufacturer or to someone willing to mod the strings so they're driven properly. I've used LEDs in various projects for years. I've yet to see a properly driven one fail. The cheaper ones may fade prematurely but they'll still remain lit. I find these reports of premature failure disconcerting because it means cheap manufacture/poor design is negating one of the advantages of using LEDs. To save a few cents the manufacturers are shooting themselves in the foot. I think anyone who is already willing to pay a premium for LED lights would be willing to pay a lousy extra dollar or two for a properly protected string. I know I would. I really don't see how any money can be made on $2, 100 light strings anyway. While it makes sense to try to buy cheap for repeating purchases you can have a good set of LED Christmas lights forever so I don't understand this race to the bottom. LEDs are getting cheaper already. Why force the issue with shoddy designs? I'd say you could sell a decent set of 50 for about $10. That price makes them attractive to lots of people who wouldn't touch them when they were $20 or $30. In a year or two we could do the same thing for maybe $5. That seems very reasonable to me. Forget trying to match the stupidly low prices incandescents are going for. Let the incandescent strings cater to the rock-bottom portion of the market for now. In time LED will become price-competitive with them, even properly protected LED. But don't prematurely give LED a bad name by making designs which don't last or flicker. Sad thing is, I _knew_ this would eventually happen since it seems every company these days is controlled by bean counters making (mostly) asinine decisions. I'm all for cost-cutting by virtue of volume production but not due to loss of quality.


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