Anyone have "flashaholic" decorations?

[tron3]

While I am sure I could get plenty of lights from my father for decorating, I am wondering has anyone "upped the ante" with their holiday decorations?

Anyone get a fiber optic tree, or led light strings, replace lights with led, or even those GE spiral bulbs to save engergy.

I want to slowly build up to those kinds of decorations. I'm sure I could yield a 50% energy savings or more with such holiday lights.

What did you buy? Any links to anything cool? How about some pics.

I don't want to exclude anyone so, I will wish you all a happy holidays.

[:)>]

I bought a ton of Phillips LED's last year to replace incandescant lights because I was fed up with replacing bulbs or finding problems every year. They are great looking and...

Well they are supposed to be long lasting. I am sure that they are, but about 30 freakin percent of the strands that I purchased last year were dead or partially dead this year

I don't know what I pay for electricity ever so I don't know if I am saving money with the LED's or if it is enough to make a difference. They are more expensive than the regular lights so some of the savings will be offset with the higher up front costs.

One thing about the LED strands that I have found so far is that they are limited to about 180 lights in a series (3 x 60 light strands). That is kind of a problem if you want to light up a ton of lights.

I don't want to exclude anyone who might be celebrating Christmas with their Christmas lights so...

Merry Christmas

-Goatee

[DreamScape]

Hi Tron,

Check this link out HERE

[Flying Turtle]

The other day I hung my Derringer on the tree in blink mode. That drew a frown from my wife. I took it down, but really should stick it back up when no one's watching.

Geoff

[TORCH_BOY]

We have LED Xmas tree lights on the tree

[jtr1962]

Here's a few of the outside of where I live:

Overview from the right side of the house:


Overview looking towards the front door:


Close up of the front door (these are all LED lights except on the very far right):


Large tree to the right of the door:


Smaller tree:


Close up of smaller tree:


The shrubs to the right in the first picture and the very large tree have incandescents (600 lights in all). Everything else (450 lights total) is LED. The 100 light LED strings draw about 3.5 to 4 watts compared to 40 for the incandescent so there is substantial power savings with no loss in brightness. In fact, except for amber the LEDs are brighter (and the ambers brighten up quite a bit as temperatures drop).

Sorry about the horrid orange glow. That's coming from the sodium vapor streetlight located about 30 feet from the house. Hopefully they'll replace that abysmal thing with LED in a few years.

[The_LED_Museum]

My sister and I decorated the tree this year with approximately 33% incandescent (hers) and 67% LED (mine) light sets.
The front porch and back patio are also decorated with a mixture of LED and incandescent light sets.


Our Christmas tree.


Our front porch; the LED lights are on the horizontal railing toward the bottom of this photograph.
They were later moved to a similar position on the back patio.


The blue "snowflakes" are LED-based.

[jrmcferren]

I bought an LED set last year to try it out. It was a cheap set at Lowes and has replaceable lamps. I think each LED has its own resistor. The only issue is that they are half wave. To find out if your set is half wave If your set has replaceable lamps put the one in backwards (not a blue or white one!) (may not be able to). If the set lights at reduced intensity the set is half wave, if the set is out there may be an open or the set is half wave. If putting the light in properly set the intensity to the proper color then the set is half wave.