LED Christmas Lights at Wal-Mart

[PhotonWrangler]

I figure it should be possible to make one that is no bigger than a standard travel adapter, and bill it as "double the brightness/flickerfixer" for LED lights.

I've been toying with that idea, having built a smallish one once, but I'm a little worried about the potential liability of a 120vDC converter that could wind up in the hands of someone who doesn't understand the potential danger.

 

[James S]

would an external box/adaptor/powersupply really be any more dangerous as far as thats concerned than say one of those lamp dimmer boxes? They come with the dimmer on the cord and a regular plug and socket. The label says, incandescent lamps only. If you plug the TV into one and it burns out they don't blame the dimmer, they blame the user

The lights really do look good on a DC supply. even without the cap, a full wave bridge rectifier reduces the visible flicker by quite a bit. Why can't these companies put an extra 40 cents worth of parts into the plug and just add that, then the bulb count would be correct for the DC output/duty cycle and everything would be great. Seems that future high quality strands probably will do this. The cheap flickery ones will be quite obvious by comparison.

 

[PhotonWrangler]

The problem is less about burning out appliances as it's about someone getting zapped by high voltage DC. It's much harder to let go of a live wire when it's DC because the current flow keeps the muscles contracted in a particular direction. AC gives an individual a better chance of being able to let go.

 

[ledBelly]

I see one site that sells this type of light set, and they state you connect up to 125 SETS in series with their "commercial power adapter"!
(see http://www.christmaslightsetc.com/categorydetail.asp?CategoryID=736)

Given that each of their sets contains 25 LEDs, we're talking about 3,125 lights from a single outlet!

I'm interested in creating lighting using large arrays of LEDs, in series-parallel circuits, but this sounds amazing/unlikely! Have any of you successfully connected several sets of your LED Christmas lights in series? And what can this magical "commercial power adapter" be?