LED Christmas Lights at Wal-Mart

I saw the posts about Halloween lights at Target. Looks like Walmart is selling LED Christmas lights for $10 to $12. They are sold in 50, 60 and 70 light sets, 10 to 22 foot lengths, multi, clear colors, and various designs (Icicle, Star shapes, Teardrop, Faceted, Round...) They are made by Noma (Not sure if it's related to the UK Noma Lites)


Here is a web link to the Walmart LED's (inliten.com)

http://www.inliten.com/products/plmain.asp?plid=39&cat=1

I don't have a link for anyone, but the other day I saw LED Christmas lights at Target as well. 3 different styles, bare LED, small traditional popular pointed bulb style, and a slightly smaller version of the night light style bulb. These were Philips brand, and they had a nice display where you could push a button and a string of about 6 or 8 would light up. They appeared just as bright as regular Christmas lights. Each string had 60 multi-colored LED's for around $12. I was tempted, but I decided to hold off for now.

I aa heading to target this weekend. Will look for them. Wouldnt mind a set or two. One for myself. Nothing like taking off my glasses and looking at the blur of colors. I hope they have some that blink or strobe. COOL!!!!!

Let's not talk about Christmas already...

cobb, the sets at Target were all steady burn, not blinking, but I suppose you could get one of those little plug adapters that makes the whole set (not individual bulbs) blink on and off at the same time. The whole set was rated at something like 4.8 watts, compared to 48 watts for the incandescents! What a difference, and no heat problems, supposedly.

Lowe's has an awesome selection of LED lights this year. I'm replacing all of my Target LED lights from last year (very un-even red, green yellow) with sets from Lowe's. These are MUCH improved over the sets I got from Target a year or so ago. They seem to be very similar (if not identical) to some of the ones that Target has, but Lowe's has a better selection of bulb sizes & colors. I'm grabbing some of the all-white sets for lighting up equipment panels. Lowe's does have some of the crappy red/green/yellow sets, but they can keep 'em. I'll pony up the extra $3 for the better quality (and brighter) LEDs. I'll probably also be there on Dec26 buying up any remaining LED sets.. CPF'ers in W. Florida beware.

Thanks for the tip, TPA. Gonna check my local Lowe's next time.

Are these the same Philips lights that Target picked up this year? I tried the "try me" button on the Philips multicolor displayt at Target and while they seem to be the same size as the Foreverbrights, they seemed considerably brighter than the FBs. Of course they might have been running the "try me" power supply a little hot, and I'm sure they were running it on DC because there was NO strobing or flickering. A DC supply contributes to greater apparent brightness because of the 100% "on" duty cycle.

I bought led's at Target last year, I think they are the white/blue icicle looking one's, they looked ready cool outside on our small spruce tree.

The generic Target brand of 2 or 3 years ago were horrible. The set I bought actually burned out in the first few minutes due to defective parts and the replacement wasn't much better. Dim, cheap, and just overall unsatisfying. I just picked up a set of 60 blue and a set of 60 white phillips ones from the store here yesterday for $11.99.

Yes the store display is quite bright as it's running on batteries. The lights do flicker quite noticeably when running on AC. I'm going to experiment with a little rectifier and capacitor solution later on today and see if I can't smooth out the AC a bit going into them.

A strand of 60 white LED's pulls less than 5 watts.

PS: the lowes here has no LED lights of any kind, I was in there a week or so ago and made it a point to go through the christmas section that they were putting together So perhaps they are in the local market decision list still.

I'll be headed for Wallgreens later today and will look for Christmas lights then, but I think they still have Halloween stuff in the "seasonal" aisle.

I'm going to experiment with a little rectifier and capacitor solution later on today and see if I can't smooth out the AC a bit going into them.

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Course, I drop in on radio shack as I'm returning my rented tuxedo and they have exactly 1 capacitor in the drawer thing. So... are they phasing out the hobbyist section of the store entirely? I dont mind ordering stuff, but I was hoping to pick up something to experiment with in the short term. oh well...

(The need for a rented tuxedo is not relevant to this story, only that returning it had me walking past the radio shack in question)

When I worked in the seasonal department one year at a hard ware store, we got a shipment in of christmas lights, and one kind looked exactly like LED's, but when I looked closer, they were just regular bulbs, in the shape of a LED.:thumbsdow

I'm hoping that because of the lower wattage, we will be able to hook more than 3-4 strands together with out blowing any fuses. That should make it a lot easier to put them up.

The rectifier trick works well in ironing out the flicker. Use a full-wave bridge rectifier and you might not even need the capacitor.

PhotonWrangler: Just for kicks since the caps I ordered haven't arrived yet I wired 2 sets of them up to a little tiny rectifier that I had lying around and the results are quite striking! The flicker isn't completely gone, but it's much reduced and the lights appear brighter because the duty cycle is higher. I hope I'm not increasing the voltage too much by putting them on pulsed DC rather than a nice sign wave.

James S said:

PhotonWrangler: Just for kicks since the caps I ordered haven't arrived yet I wired 2 sets of them up to a little tiny rectifier that I had lying around and the results are quite striking! The flicker isn't completely gone, but it's much reduced and the lights appear brighter because the duty cycle is higher. I hope I'm not increasing the voltage too much by putting them on pulsed DC rather than a nice sign wave.

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Good point, but ultimately the peak voltage is still the same; with a bridge rectifier, the negative excursion of the cycle is simply flipped into the positive area, so the duty cycle is being doubled (so there's a little more heat) while the frequency is effectively being doubled from 60hz to 120hz.

Not really a concern since it is so low, but you have doubled the energy consumption as well right? Not that going from 4.8 watts to 9.6 watts is going to break the bank with the electric bill.

not2bright said:

Not really a concern since it is so low, but you have doubled the energy consumption as well right? Not that going from 4.8 watts to 9.6 watts is going to break the bank with the electric bill.

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Well, the lamps are now on for the full ac cycle instead of half of it, but at any one instant it's the same amount of current draw. Ultimately it increases the spin on the wattmeter in the basement because it looks to the power company as if you've had the same string of lights turned on for twice as long.

They have the Noma brand LEDS at my Wal-Mart.

My Costco is selling the Forever Brights they had last year plus a new set.

I think Doit Best hardware stores were selling Forever Brights in multicolor and white last year. There's a Doit Best close by in Chino that I know of but I've never been to that store before. Maybe I'll have to check it out.

edit: I look on Doit Best's website and they have them again this year in both white and color

They are not listed yet on Lowe's site

Re: Radio Shack and finding parts..


I used to own a Radio Shack dealership. Yes they have been phasing out small parts for years... the stuff just doesn't make enough profit per square foot as cell phones and dish TV, etc....

A good and common place to get used bridge rectifiers, diodes, and capacitors is out of an old PC power supply.... you can yank the big aluminum heatsink out as well and mount a LM317 adjustable voltage regulator on it plus add a couple other parts for a cheap and effective 1.5 amp variable DC power supply to use for experimenting on LED's and Luxeons.

Well, I was at Wallgreens yesterday and today, and they have not yet set out the Christmas lights - they still have Halloween decorations and other such horse puckey out.

So it looks like I'll have to wait until at least early-November before I might have any joy in that department. :sick2: :green: :sick2: