Now I see why some of them had three wires. Finally! Should buy one and try investigating it in person long ago, instead of leaving it to blind guesses. Thank you for another clean explanation.
We use a similar strategy in hot water heating systems to balance pressure drop in piping; The top diagram would be called a "direct return" and the bottom diagram would be a "reverse return." Reverse return uses more piping but is easier to balance across many terminals and performs better when some terminals block or bypass flow.
100% off topic here, but your comment reminded me of our disaster of a hot water circulation system for instant hot water that was installed when we built our house...the plumber ran the PEX through the foundation uninsulated and our hot water heater never turned off due to all the heat being lost in the foundation. We had to just unplug the pump and now it's a longer wait for hot water than ever lol!
@@MrV1NC3N7V3G4 there's models now that only pump when they sense a faucet turned on or by push button, they only run until they sense the hot water at inlet. they're generally mounted under sink and pull from the hot pushing back down the cold pipe. there may be other wireless control systems now that will work with standard recirc setups, who knows.
@@MrV1NC3N7V3G4 ooof! Always sleeve penetrations through concrete! What you can do to remedy this is a strategy called "demand recirculation." A small pump is put near the bathroom or wherever the hot water will be needed. Before you use the faucet/shower, press a button to activate the pump (some installs connect it to run with the light switch). The pump moves the water from the hot supply pipe back *into* the cold supply pipe, so the cold water is flowing backwards for a few seconds. Once the pump detects that the hot water has finally arrived it shuts off. The cold water may be a little warm for a bit, but the hot water is available right away and nothing goes down the drain. You can buy these systems as a kit that installs under the sink and uses the sink's hot and cold water taps, just need a GFCI outlet for power.
I've been curious about the third wire in those long LED strings. Such a simple an effective way to ensure consistent brightness for all the LEDs. Great video!
Thanks! I wasn't sure how to fix my light string (and I live in a semiremote part of Peru and can't just throw my old lights away and get a new set!). You explanation of what the wire were for made it easy to just remove the bad bulb and solder the resultant loose wires together and now it works again!
Very informative, The Asda lights I belive are made with the LEDs wire compleate then they run that into the plastic cover machine that form the tube around the lights as its extruded.
Merry Christmas Clive. Glad your feeling well enough to make a video. I recently saw some very small LED lights on a pre-lit tree at a local store. The LEDs were the size of a small grain of rice, very nice.
I was somewhat inspired by you this year to make my own string of LED lights, I used colour changing LEDs each with a 180 ohm resistor and twisted together some 7/0.2 wire to wire them all in paralell. I 3D printed a little seperator so the LED wires wouldn't short when you heat-shrinked over the connections and resistor, then 3D printed some christmassy shapes that I glued over the LEDs to make them interesting. I was going to use your LED covers you put on a video ages ago, but in the end spent some time in OpenSCAD designing Christmas trees, parcels, snowmen and Christmas Sloths (long story!) instead. I only made 24 lights in the string but may well extend them for next year, although I only have a small room :D
Hail BigClive, Santas most useful elf - Merry Christmas and looking forward to many more wonderful and informative videos in 2022 - Thank you for all your hard work, it really is appreciated and valued.
7:18 To find a broken wire in that type of LED lights, you can use a "non contact voltage detector" , those react to the "switching noise" of that 12V powersupply. Within 1cm distance, you find the place where it is broken.
I just repaired a 2 wire set with 7 modes that had been cut by a lawnmower. I measured 28V AC on a multimeter. I found that most unusual for an LED string. But there was no DC component whatsoever. I was running low on time, so I didn't take the time to put it on an O-scope. It was a super simple repair. I soldered the wires back together and coated them with an ample amount of dielectric grease. Then 2 layers of heat shrink. 1 for each wire with the grease squeezed inside, and then another over the two together to strengthen the repair point.
I will now attempt to sort the 12 leds on our hedge that aint-a-working.Thankyou for your videos sir.May they long continue .Greetings of the Season to you and your family.
Inspired by one of your videos, I bought several battery Santa silhouettes, cut off the battery holders and attached a number of them to USB plugs in parallel via dropper resistors, now happily running off mains phone chargers.
I've got a set similar to the diagram at 8:00, but every second LED is reverse polarity. The little controller board has different modes which changes the polarity of the voltage at different rates. If the Hz is fast it looks like they're all on, if it's slow, the light appears to 'walk' down the string.
Get well soon Clive. I was going to ask, are you still involved with the Christmas lights at George square in Glasgow? - It's been, oh my, a dozen odd years since I've been in Glasgow in the season, but whenever I watch your videos in the wintertime I get just a wee bit nostalgic for my old home.
@@bigclivedotcom most Christmas lights in our town centre are what I call blue, others call it cool white, bring back the old 25w festoons please, at least they are better than overly bright blue LED's.
@@rickthescrewballpeacekeepe7387 I also prefer the look of incandescents, it's what we had when I was a kid and the only led lights were the relatively softly glowing green and red ones we had on a tree that used to hang in the front door window, pretty sure the tree was made by Pifco. Right now I'm looking at our tree which in a first for many years is artificial and not the cheaper, needle dropping but beautiful smelling Norway Spruce. It does however feature two new old stock sets of the spiky shaded multicolured fairy lights I managed to get hold of about 5 years ago so that makes me feel at least a little bit nostalgic still!
@@skylined5534 covet thy old school fairy lights. Especially if they have petal shades. I'm keeping a stash and spare bulbs. One day they will highly sought after...nothing is worth more money than nostalgia....just look at the prices of 80s 2 stroke bikes !!!
Clever 3-wire arrangement! If you put a ~10-ohm resistor as the "bridge" that you draw at 5:57 - this should be ok - better than just jumpering. I can imagine that most people don't carry a stock of 10ohm resistors and a soldering iron and a shrink-sleeve at X'mas, though...
@@jlpicard001 My guesstimate was based on eyeballing the gauge of wire that is snipped, and the length that needs to be bridged. However, a rough calculation goes like this: The USB-voltage is ~ 5V; The white-LED forward-drop is 3V. This leaves 2V across the "resistor". --> The round-trip-wire-resistance must then be 8 Ohm. BigCliveDotCom cuts the string halfway in the middle. The new string has half as many LEDs, so presumably needs only 125 mA in the new situation (for the same brightness of each LED). In the new situation, the remaining resistance is also halved - so 4 Ohm instead of 8. The forward-drop of the LEDs is still the same - 3V and USB_PB still delivers 5V. The new desired resistance is 2V/125mA --> 16Ohm (whereas the wire provides only 4) --> Add ~ 12 Ohm. :: 10 is almost 12 ;) especially with all other simplifying assumptions.. Hope this helps :)
I wonder if the tube is extruded around the LEDs afterwards? If the melting point of the LED wire insulation is higher than the plastic being extruded around them it would be possible to make infinite lengths. (regarding an earlier comment) I don't think they'd spend time threading a wire through the tube then pulling in LED strings, that would be very inefficient...
My first thought was forced air. Your method makes the most sense as it would seem to be the easiest. I would imagine such extruder setups are the proverbial dime-a-dozen. The cooling would need to be near instantaneous what for to mitigate collapse. Cheers. Thinking always cheers me up.
@@GregorydavidMck The easiest way? is to pull them, using a lube. Though, the lighting string seems delicate, and so I think the tubing is probably extruded around the lights too. In principle, I don't see why it couldn't be some kind of thermally processed clear heat shrinking tubing... or the tubing being created around the string by using flat plastic strips that are seam welded (using ultra-sonic welding?) The Chinese do have extrusion machine that might do the extrusion process for the lights. I've seen pictures and specs on them.
@@willthecat3861 Well, using a tube, you have to create that tube too. So it might well be cheaper to do the extrusion of the tube just around the circuit.
@@elvinhaak But then you'd need to have an extra feeding mechanism that adds the LED string as the tube is extruded, meaning you'd need specialised extruders. It's probably something much simpler, like some exploited underage children shoving a nylon filament like fishing line all the way through sections of commercially available tubing that they then tie to the LED string and pull in.
Thanks Big Clive. If you've got the lurgy the hope you get well soon. If it's others then I hope they get well soon! I have to say LED Xmas lights are a godsend!
Funny you should say about pets nibbling the lights! We've got some lovely turquoise Eveready LEDs in the front window and when I turned them on I was treated to a hardly on but mild flickering! Turns out the one of far too many cats we have (my bet is on either Saoirse, Aerial or Toulouse, one of them is batting one of those noisy bell filled plastic balls around the kitchen as I type this). Found out the end of the string had been savaged. These are the triple wire type. You'd be horrified as to how I 'fixed' them though, bared wire, twisted together and pre glue lined heatshrink to finish of, what a bodger😂 they do work now though! Not sure if you'll get chance to upload again before Christmas so just to say thanks for all the stellar content this year, it's always a good day when it's a Big Clive upload day! Merry Christmas Clive! 🎅🌲 Edit: I only just clocked you'd caught covid, really sorry to hear that. Get well soon, wishing you a speedy recovery!
Thank you Clive for all your dedication. You even replied to me about a set of 12U LED BC lamps, which I wished to use off of a USB power bank. I eventually made them into a vanity mirror for my girlfriend. From one sparky in Ireland to another, thank you. Your work is a gem. Happy Christmas and keep up the good work
If you had no other option than to cut up a 3 wire set you could estimate the resistance of the part you had to cut off and insert a resistor with a close value to keep the total current at a safe value to keep from burning up the remaining LEDs.
For the less experienced among us: be sure to pay attention to the power dissipation and select the resistor(s) accordingly. A blazing hot resistor among nice and flammable christmas decorations is a nasty fire hazard. Derate the resistor too, as the power rating is for typical open air application on a PCB and not tucked away in some heat shrink tubing.
or just include a regulator for the lower voltage. mostly a simple LM7803 with a set-resistor for the voltage will do a fine job (and yes, it will get pretty warm if you took too much of the string off). If you just use a pot for the voltage-setting, you can slowly change the voltage up to the light you like or a bit less to have the remaining lights work longer.
We have a set of lights where there are 600 LEDs and they are colour changing. Each lamp can be ether warm white or a primary colour or both which gives a lovely pastel effect. You can also select fade from colour to white and back. They have 3 wires but as I can see strobing I suspect uses AC to select between white or primary colour. I tried shortening them with the result of only seeing the blue LED's light dimly. I reconnected the wires and hid the the 300 extra LED's under the sofa.
Nah, he's actually advocated safe practises frequently over the years. ua-cam.com/video/iPDcUGwfxak/v-deo.html This is nothing new. He does the dangerous bits, so we don't have to, or is that a different channel‽
The third wire setup is also useful for LED tape on long, unbroken runs, as it too has voltage drop problems, but add in a third wire to balance it out, and it sorts out that issue nicely... :) Also hope you're okay with regards to the lurgy, Amy Macdonald had to cancel her gig at the Hydro in Glasgow last week because of it (and the cockwomble was of the government's inability to handle it!), was rather upsetting to see her in tears over it... :(
I’ve never seen it in strings, but most tape lights are sections of 4 LEDs in series, then the sections are in parallel. For long runs you can feed power from the middle or have a power supply at each end, also giving redundancy. Or for a price run a heavy gauge wire alongside and feed the power at several points. Edit: I’m referring to 12v dc tape lights.
A question regarding this: I've been hesitant to start a project that involved ~10m long 5V LED strips (the individually adressable type, which sadly don't exist in 12V versions) because of the uneven brightness issue. I figured that feeding both ends would help this at least enough at those lengths, but would need to use two separate PSUs, one per end, and was not sure if that is a good idea. I would use the same types from the same brand, but were still unsure if this couldn't lead to some sort of issue. Is this a reasonable thing to do? (Running thick cables alongside would not be an option for this project, so also no feed in between.)
My best guess for how the ropelight could be made is that the light string would be blown through it with compressed air. It's also possible that the tube is extruded around it and the light string is fed through a hollow mandrel. I don't think they're feeding it through by hand. That'd be too fiddly I think.
Hello, Clive. Seven days on from this video, I hope you're feeling much better. From what I've been seeing, the Omicron strain has been running riot in the UK, Scotland being very hard hit. Get well soon. Cheers.👍
@@bigclivedotcom probably omicron. If reproduces a staggering 7000 times faster than delta in the bronchus meaning you'll spaff out tons more particles, but it's come at the expense of much reduced lethality and doesn't penetrate lung alveoli as much. It's exactly what you'd want from a mutation.
It's likely they are using a type of "Heat Shrink" in the rope lights. Also the three wires also acts as a redundancy so if one bulb goes out the rest stay on. Unlike the two wire lights where if one bulb goes out they all go out. At least with incandescent lights. Not sure if the same rules apply with LEDs.
I ran into a problem with an Old Brooks process batch controller. If it hadn't been for this channel I might not had been as confident in my diagnosis in my troubleshooting and repairing of it. It had a bad 470uf filter on the power supply.
Hi Clive! A year or two back I watched one of your vids and was inspired to go to Poundland and buy Christmas lights. I bought a string of 50 coloured lights of the two-wire variety and have used them since to drape about my living room at the apposite time of year. They take 3 AA batteries and have two modes, flashing and continuous with an off position, and very fetching they are with their intense colours. The first time I used them (continuous mode) they turned themselves off after a few hours (I thought the batteries had gone flat) but, after fiddling with the switch, came on again, only to go off again hours later. It's apparent that they're meant to do this but there's nothing to indicate so on the box. Tonight, having noticed them come on at 10:18, I was coincidentally awake at 04:18 when they turned themselves off. Six hours fazackerly! How's it done? Happy New Year.
One of the problems with C5 LED (cone style) Christmas lights here... squirrels bite the colored plastic bulbs off and bury them in the garden. They are very destructive, and the entire string is trashed because the wires will be bitten in half in many random places and 10 or more random bulbs will be bitten out of the string, and found weeks or months later scattered throughout the yard. I thought this was a bizarre situation until I read about it online and this is a problem lots of people experience (at least here in North America).
I seem to remember the AC powered DC string I have being a set of series strings in parallel. One of the wires got chopped off by a closing window and I think it only went dark from one or two LEDs in front of the cut. Now I might have it mixed up in my head from all the hours spent shifting bulbs around in the old incandescent one to eliminate the broken ones from last year - that one for sure had them in series sections.
Probably only your channel provide a good explanation with diagram. Thanks for that Sir. If I may ask, my tumbler LED have 100 led's but half of them are dim and the half is bright. I already change the input main cable and try to replace the driver but have no luck. Do you have any suggestion to fix this? thanks in advanced
I've acquired a number of light sets this year that appear to be simple 2-wire or 3-wire construction like these, but they have a button on the PSU that selects from 8 patterns of flashing/fading. The LEDs appear to be divided into two groups, alternating along the length of the string. All the LEDs in each group light together at the same intensity, but each group is clearly being controlled independently. But they are not *wired* separately - the same two wires go into each LED no matter which group it's in. So it cant be using separate circuits. Could it be using a simple data signal riding atop the power line? Or is it using some sort of PWM trickery where each LED responds only to alternate peaks? Or something else?
Is there a way of disabling the flashing/fading patterns so they are permanently on without having to press the button to cycle through the options? Some sets have a memory that remembers whatever the set was programmed for before it was switched off. But most of mine don't, and they're a real pain! With your genius, Clive, i'm sure you can show us how to intercept the circuitry to lock them permanently on continuously.
@@johnwardley7747 Thinking back I'm 99% sure Clive did a memory feature hack on the lights you mention but hopefully the man himself can confirm that 🙂
Hi Clive, I've always fixed my lights, mainly because I don't like the throw away society but also because I'm tight! I've never had problems before. Today I was fixing some multi colour cluster lights. Got them all working but had an issue with a RED LED. If I replaced it with a RED LED the other green or white LEDS in the string stopped work (depending on polarity of the LED). I tried a GREEN LED and they all work! I then tried a YELLOW & ORANGE LED and they behaved the same as the RED! I ended up sticking a PINK LED in & that worked!! I'm guessing something in the spec of those colours? Forward voltage perhaps?
Most modern strings use phosphor based LEDs for a uniform voltage. So the use of a traditional red LED will clamp the voltage too low for the others in parallel.
@@bigclivedotcom Thanks. I'll drop the supplier a line & see if they have that type. I just purchased 5mm of every colour! BTW, do you know of a supplier for the exact type used in most strings? I could only find a top hat version rather than the concave end as used from the factory.....
@@hoojchoons2258 ive been searching the internet for hours now trying to find the same thing, cant even get a google picture of one, just diagrams of how they work. Manufacturers must be sourcing them from area 51
The gadget called "led keeper" works well for mains sets (at least in 120v land). It injects current and bites into the wire with a sharp point to let you "binary search" for the bad LED. No affiliation with them besides happy customer, their incandescent "light keeper" tool is also swell. Keep an eye out for them in after holiday clearance if you're curious but not presently in need. Turns out my main problem in my particular variety of outdoor set is with mainly the blue LEDs failing by a lead breaking off. The plastic caps break off the yellow/orange ones preferentially but they almost never fail, even when accidentally left up all year 😅
Getting those copper wire LED stings into some of tube is a pain. After many attempts using different methods, I managed to suck a thin bit of cotton trough a one meter tube. Then tried pulling them trough, the cotton snapped. Then I did it again and first pulled a thicker cotton trough, then the LEDs. Took about a month of trying things dumping them in a box for a while out of frustration.
So you could cut the last set into four (assuming you could find the correct place where the sections of parallel LEDs begin/end), add a resistor, and makes yourself four shorter sets that could be run from USB/5v? Cool video, as always.
how did they get the string of lights inside the outer layer? there are many possibilities. it might have been a big fat outer layer that was heated to plasticity then pulled to length which shrunk it down with the led string inside it. it might have just been done like shrink tubing. all these clever ideas make modern living exciting.
I have several 100 light LED 3-wire strings. I have found several UA-cam videos showing how to shorten a string but I have just the opposite situation. I need to lengthen the string by 4 additional lights to one of the strings. Is there a way splice in a short section to add 4 more lights to a 100-light string?
You say “that would be hoarding lights” like it’s a bad thing. Those are indeed some very attractive LEDs, and are very hoardable. Hoard away Clive, hoard away.
I repaired one of these strings with solder and masking tape which got ripped into 3 pieces by getting hooked on a car. Unfortunately I didn't find the third section until many months later though so now I use it with a battery. I also repaired one of those all parallel strings which got some LEDs crushed, also by a car. Also I think those parallels-series strings are driven at constant current not constant voltage.
Damn you B’Clive I’m going to have to drive all the way across town tomorrow because there’s only on Asda hereabouts and it’s not on this side of town. 😠
Oh, gee! For a moment I thought Big Clive was going to save me this Christmas. My broken Christmas lights are all high voltage. Oh, well! Maybe next time...
I have one of the original versions (with bulbs in it). Horrible: it uses 100 Watts to light about 3 meter. I replaced it with an LED version, how ever it is not as bright (by far). But it does to the fading, chasing and other flashing animations, I love those!
The Chinese origin one I have has all LED chips powered in parallell with a third wire for serial communication going through all of them. That one works as a long shift register. When you send the color values to the first chip, it sends its old ones to the next and so on. If you want to change just one of them, you have to refresh the whole length. I don't remember if the chips waits for the comms line to go quiet before applying the change, so as not light up briefly from the values the are just passing through on such a refresh.
Clive, I have a set of Lumineo 720 LED Lights Twinkle Multicolour - Type 497507. After 2 years outdoors, maybe 3 sections, short lengths, have "gone out" and I can't quite grasp why! Any insights? Thank you . Mike.
If they are low voltage then it's common to wire 10 parallel sections in series. Sometimes when an LED fails it goes short circuit and shunts the other LEDs in that parallel section. But you'd normally lose quite a lot of LEDs when that happens.
Ah night owl like me 😁, at this current moment in time I'm actually distracting myself as I have chest pains and I am waiting for my medication to kick in hope you're OK mate
Not related.. but maybe. I have about 16 LED lights in the barn.They were installed as a power saver by our power company and an unusual design being in the conventional bulb form but divided into 3 segments. After 5 years operation the two pairs, the rest are in long strings, have decided to interfere with each other, alternately on and off. Replacing one of a pair with a conventional bulb sorts it. What are your thoughts on the issue?
Now I see why some of them had three wires. Finally! Should buy one and try investigating it in person long ago, instead of leaving it to blind guesses.
Thank you for another clean explanation.
We use a similar strategy in hot water heating systems to balance pressure drop in piping; The top diagram would be called a "direct return" and the bottom diagram would be a "reverse return." Reverse return uses more piping but is easier to balance across many terminals and performs better when some terminals block or bypass flow.
100% off topic here, but your comment reminded me of our disaster of a hot water circulation system for instant hot water that was installed when we built our house...the plumber ran the PEX through the foundation uninsulated and our hot water heater never turned off due to all the heat being lost in the foundation. We had to just unplug the pump and now it's a longer wait for hot water than ever lol!
@@MrV1NC3N7V3G4 there's models now that only pump when they sense a faucet turned on or by push button, they only run until they sense the hot water at inlet.
they're generally mounted under sink and pull from the hot pushing back down the cold pipe. there may be other wireless control systems now that will work with standard recirc setups, who knows.
@@MrV1NC3N7V3G4 ooof! Always sleeve penetrations through concrete!
What you can do to remedy this is a strategy called "demand recirculation." A small pump is put near the bathroom or wherever the hot water will be needed. Before you use the faucet/shower, press a button to activate the pump (some installs connect it to run with the light switch).
The pump moves the water from the hot supply pipe back *into* the cold supply pipe, so the cold water is flowing backwards for a few seconds. Once the pump detects that the hot water has finally arrived it shuts off. The cold water may be a little warm for a bit, but the hot water is available right away and nothing goes down the drain.
You can buy these systems as a kit that installs under the sink and uses the sink's hot and cold water taps, just need a GFCI outlet for power.
I've been curious about the third wire in those long LED strings. Such a simple an effective way to ensure consistent brightness for all the LEDs. Great video!
My thoughts are with you Clive. thank you for the videos and I hope you are back to 100 soon.
Thank you Clive for keeping us entertained...and teaching the needy...during your captivity :)
Thanks! I wasn't sure how to fix my light string (and I live in a semiremote part of Peru and can't just throw my old lights away and get a new set!). You explanation of what the wire were for made it easy to just remove the bad bulb and solder the resultant loose wires together and now it works again!
Tis the season for many LEDs! 😃 Hope you feel loads better soon Clive.
You can Never have too many LEDs
@@dcallan812 Wait till ya get a bill for $200,000,000. 🙃
@@brianm6337 lol
Very informative, The Asda lights I belive are made with the LEDs wire compleate then they run that into the plastic cover machine that form the tube around the lights as its extruded.
Merry Christmas Clive.
Glad your feeling well enough to make a video.
I recently saw some very small LED lights on a pre-lit tree at a local store. The LEDs were the size of a small grain of rice, very nice.
Hope you recover quickly Clive
Thank you so much. Just saved me binning a 55 quid set of 3 wire solar lights. Easy fix. And interesting as always wondered what the 3rd wire did.
I was somewhat inspired by you this year to make my own string of LED lights, I used colour changing LEDs each with a 180 ohm resistor and twisted together some 7/0.2 wire to wire them all in paralell. I 3D printed a little seperator so the LED wires wouldn't short when you heat-shrinked over the connections and resistor, then 3D printed some christmassy shapes that I glued over the LEDs to make them interesting. I was going to use your LED covers you put on a video ages ago, but in the end spent some time in OpenSCAD designing Christmas trees, parcels, snowmen and Christmas Sloths (long story!) instead. I only made 24 lights in the string but may well extend them for next year, although I only have a small room :D
I don't understand jackshit about what you're trying to explain to me, but I just love your voice in the background of whatever I am doing!
Hail BigClive, Santas most useful elf - Merry Christmas and looking forward to many more wonderful and informative videos in 2022 - Thank you for all your hard work, it really is appreciated and valued.
7:18 To find a broken wire in that type of LED lights, you can use a "non contact voltage detector" , those react to the "switching noise" of that 12V powersupply.
Within 1cm distance, you find the place where it is broken.
That sounds better than my usual method of 'Ow! Christ! That hurt!' voltage detection!
@@UnhingedHarry
Lol true! *"AgggOUCH!"*
@@skylined5534 , that's because your method is not "non contact" :-)
I just repaired a 2 wire set with 7 modes that had been cut by a lawnmower. I measured 28V AC on a multimeter. I found that most unusual for an LED string. But there was no DC component whatsoever. I was running low on time, so I didn't take the time to put it on an O-scope.
It was a super simple repair. I soldered the wires back together and coated them with an ample amount of dielectric grease. Then 2 layers of heat shrink. 1 for each wire with the grease squeezed inside, and then another over the two together to strengthen the repair point.
Thanks. Good job explaining low voltage light circuits.
I will now attempt to sort the 12 leds on our hedge that aint-a-working.Thankyou for your videos sir.May they long continue .Greetings of the Season to you and your family.
Inspired by one of your videos, I bought several battery Santa silhouettes, cut off the battery holders and attached a number of them to USB plugs in parallel via dropper resistors, now happily running off mains phone chargers.
I've got a set similar to the diagram at 8:00, but every second LED is reverse polarity. The little controller board has different modes which changes the polarity of the voltage at different rates. If the Hz is fast it looks like they're all on, if it's slow, the light appears to 'walk' down the string.
Thank you for the explanation of the constant resistance / current analogy!
Speedy recovery Clive!
I remember well fixing the old filament tree lights in the 70's with my dad. Testing each one with an AVO meter.
Merry Christmas to you sir from Wellington Somerset
Thanks Clive always wondered why some led stings have 3 wires . now I know , learn something new every day
get well soon
Feel better soon big guy Merry Christmas happy holidays to you and those that are here.
Get well soon Clive. I was going to ask, are you still involved with the Christmas lights at George square in Glasgow? - It's been, oh my, a dozen odd years since I've been in Glasgow in the season, but whenever I watch your videos in the wintertime I get just a wee bit nostalgic for my old home.
Thankfully not. It's all gone very flat, monochromatic and boring.
@@bigclivedotcom most Christmas lights in our town centre are what I call blue, others call it cool white, bring back the old 25w festoons please, at least they are better than overly bright blue LED's.
@@rickthescrewballpeacekeepe7387
I also prefer the look of incandescents, it's what we had when I was a kid and the only led lights were the relatively softly glowing green and red ones we had on a tree that used to hang in the front door window, pretty sure the tree was made by Pifco.
Right now I'm looking at our tree which in a first for many years is artificial and not the cheaper, needle dropping but beautiful smelling Norway Spruce. It does however feature two new old stock sets of the spiky shaded multicolured fairy lights I managed to get hold of about 5 years ago so that makes me feel at least a little bit nostalgic still!
@@skylined5534 covet thy old school fairy lights. Especially if they have petal shades. I'm keeping a stash and spare bulbs. One day they will highly sought after...nothing is worth more money than nostalgia....just look at the prices of 80s 2 stroke bikes !!!
Clever 3-wire arrangement!
If you put a ~10-ohm resistor as the "bridge" that you draw at 5:57 - this should be ok - better than just jumpering. I can imagine that most people don't carry a stock of 10ohm resistors and a soldering iron and a shrink-sleeve at X'mas, though...
How did you determine that 10 ohms was enough to compensate?
@@jlpicard001 My guesstimate was based on eyeballing the gauge of wire that is snipped, and the length that needs to be bridged. However, a rough calculation goes like this:
The USB-voltage is ~ 5V; The white-LED forward-drop is 3V. This leaves 2V across the "resistor". --> The round-trip-wire-resistance must then be 8 Ohm.
BigCliveDotCom cuts the string halfway in the middle. The new string has half as many LEDs, so presumably needs only 125 mA in the new situation (for the same brightness of each LED). In the new situation, the remaining resistance is also halved - so 4 Ohm instead of 8. The forward-drop of the LEDs is still the same - 3V and USB_PB still delivers 5V. The new desired resistance is 2V/125mA --> 16Ohm (whereas the wire provides only 4) --> Add ~ 12 Ohm. :: 10 is almost 12 ;) especially with all other simplifying assumptions.. Hope this helps :)
Glad you got over the bug quickly!
I wonder if the tube is extruded around the LEDs afterwards? If the melting point of the LED wire insulation is higher than the plastic being extruded around them it would be possible to make infinite lengths. (regarding an earlier comment) I don't think they'd spend time threading a wire through the tube then pulling in LED strings, that would be very inefficient...
My first thought was forced air. Your method makes the most sense as it would seem to be the easiest. I would imagine such extruder setups are the proverbial dime-a-dozen. The cooling would need to be near instantaneous what for to mitigate collapse. Cheers. Thinking always cheers me up.
@@GregorydavidMck The easiest way? is to pull them, using a lube. Though, the lighting string seems delicate, and so I think the tubing is probably extruded around the lights too. In principle, I don't see why it couldn't be some kind of thermally processed clear heat shrinking tubing... or the tubing being created around the string by using flat plastic strips that are seam welded (using ultra-sonic welding?) The Chinese do have extrusion machine that might do the extrusion process for the lights. I've seen pictures and specs on them.
@@willthecat3861 Well, using a tube, you have to create that tube too.
So it might well be cheaper to do the extrusion of the tube just around the circuit.
@@elvinhaak But then you'd need to have an extra feeding mechanism that adds the LED string as the tube is extruded, meaning you'd need specialised extruders. It's probably something much simpler, like some exploited underage children shoving a nylon filament like fishing line all the way through sections of commercially available tubing that they then tie to the LED string and pull in.
great work in difficult conditions. 👍
Thanks Big Clive. If you've got the lurgy the hope you get well soon. If it's others then I hope they get well soon!
I have to say LED Xmas lights are a godsend!
Funny you should say about pets nibbling the lights! We've got some lovely turquoise Eveready LEDs in the front window and when I turned them on I was treated to a hardly on but mild flickering! Turns out the one of far too many cats we have (my bet is on either Saoirse, Aerial or Toulouse, one of them is batting one of those noisy bell filled plastic balls around the kitchen as I type this).
Found out the end of the string had been savaged. These are the triple wire type. You'd be horrified as to how I 'fixed' them though, bared wire, twisted together and pre glue lined heatshrink to finish of, what a bodger😂 they do work now though!
Not sure if you'll get chance to upload again before Christmas so just to say thanks for all the stellar content this year, it's always a good day when it's a Big Clive upload day!
Merry Christmas Clive! 🎅🌲
Edit:
I only just clocked you'd caught covid, really sorry to hear that. Get well soon, wishing you a speedy recovery!
Thank you Clive for all your dedication. You even replied to me about a set of 12U LED BC lamps, which I wished to use off of a USB power bank. I eventually made them into a vanity mirror for my girlfriend. From one sparky in Ireland to another, thank you. Your work is a gem. Happy Christmas and keep up the good work
If you had no other option than to cut up a 3 wire set you could estimate the resistance of the part you had to cut off and insert a resistor with a close value to keep the total current at a safe value to keep from burning up the remaining LEDs.
You could add a packer resistor.
For the less experienced among us: be sure to pay attention to the power dissipation and select the resistor(s) accordingly. A blazing hot resistor among nice and flammable christmas decorations is a nasty fire hazard. Derate the resistor too, as the power rating is for typical open air application on a PCB and not tucked away in some heat shrink tubing.
or just include a regulator for the lower voltage.
mostly a simple LM7803 with a set-resistor for the voltage will do a fine job (and yes, it will get pretty warm if you took too much of the string off).
If you just use a pot for the voltage-setting, you can slowly change the voltage up to the light you like or a bit less to have the remaining lights work longer.
Thank you Clive, happy holidays
Be well Clive .
We do care .
Sorry to hear you have not been well Clive, Happy Shockmas and all the very best for the New Beer. Mike
We have a set of lights where there are 600 LEDs and they are colour changing. Each lamp can be ether warm white or a primary colour or both which gives a lovely pastel effect. You can also select fade from colour to white and back. They have 3 wires but as I can see strobing I suspect uses AC to select between white or primary colour. I tried shortening them with the result of only seeing the blue LED's light dimly. I reconnected the wires and hid the the 300 extra LED's under the sofa.
Big Clive advocating safety! The world has truly gone mad...
Nah, he's actually advocated safe practises frequently over the years. ua-cam.com/video/iPDcUGwfxak/v-deo.html This is nothing new.
He does the dangerous bits, so we don't have to, or is that a different channel‽
OMP! 3:18 , 6:26 . OM! 7:23 :)
Also, those pastel colours on the Asda lights are really nice. I like.
Christmas 🎄 will llook good with these lights
Happy christmas 🎄
The third wire setup is also useful for LED tape on long, unbroken runs, as it too has voltage drop problems, but add in a third wire to balance it out, and it sorts out that issue nicely... :)
Also hope you're okay with regards to the lurgy, Amy Macdonald had to cancel her gig at the Hydro in Glasgow last week because of it (and the cockwomble was of the government's inability to handle it!), was rather upsetting to see her in tears over it... :(
I have done this, feeding the power rails from opposite ends of the tape. It works nicely.
I’ve never seen it in strings, but most tape lights are sections of 4 LEDs in series, then the sections are in parallel. For long runs you can feed power from the middle or have a power supply at each end, also giving redundancy. Or for a price run a heavy gauge wire alongside and feed the power at several points.
Edit: I’m referring to 12v dc tape lights.
A question regarding this: I've been hesitant to start a project that involved ~10m long 5V LED strips (the individually adressable type, which sadly don't exist in 12V versions) because of the uneven brightness issue. I figured that feeding both ends would help this at least enough at those lengths, but would need to use two separate PSUs, one per end, and was not sure if that is a good idea. I would use the same types from the same brand, but were still unsure if this couldn't lead to some sort of issue. Is this a reasonable thing to do?
(Running thick cables alongside would not be an option for this project, so also no feed in between.)
@bigclive feel better soon!
Clive, please. If you want more of those lights, you should get more of those lights. Life is too short!
I added a set to an online order. Hopefully they still have them in stock.
My best guess for how the ropelight could be made is that the light string would be blown through it with compressed air. It's also possible that the tube is extruded around it and the light string is fed through a hollow mandrel. I don't think they're feeding it through by hand. That'd be too fiddly I think.
Awesome! NOW I understand the wiring on these things. Thank you!
Thanks from Texas Clive.
Hello, Clive. Seven days on from this video, I hope you're feeling much better. From what I've been seeing, the Omicron strain has been running riot in the UK, Scotland being very hard hit. Get well soon. Cheers.👍
I agree. Follow Drs orders and take care.
Yeah. Not sure which flavour I got, but it passed quickly and the lat flow test returned to normal.
@@bigclivedotcom probably omicron. If reproduces a staggering 7000 times faster than delta in the bronchus meaning you'll spaff out tons more particles, but it's come at the expense of much reduced lethality and doesn't penetrate lung alveoli as much. It's exactly what you'd want from a mutation.
Love me those holiday lights!!!
I really like that 400 multi-color set you have there.
How love it you could cover 120/240 LED strings. Seems like the first bulb is different than the rest of the section, some have fuses, etc...
It's likely they are using a type of "Heat Shrink" in the rope lights. Also the three wires also acts as a redundancy so if one bulb goes out the rest stay on. Unlike the two wire lights where if one bulb goes out they all go out. At least with incandescent lights. Not sure if the same rules apply with LEDs.
Great video as always. Take care Big Clive!
Happy Holidays to you. Will you be SodaStreaming any beverages for the festive season? ... Cheers ...
I may sodastream a beverage.
❄🌲❄🌲❄🌲❄👍 Merry Christmas and Happy Festive season!
Tip - if you your white lights are too boring you can colour in the bulbs with sharpie pens. More colours than your usual blue red green yellow too.
Thanks for all youtube clips brilliant although some gave me so much beard envy. Happy Christmas.
I ran into a problem with an Old Brooks process batch controller. If it hadn't been for this channel I might not had been as confident in my diagnosis in my troubleshooting and repairing of it. It had a bad 470uf filter on the power supply.
Get well soon Clive!
Hi Clive! A year or two back I watched one of your vids and was inspired to go to Poundland and buy Christmas lights. I bought a string of 50 coloured lights of the two-wire variety and have used them since to drape about my living room at the apposite time of year. They take 3 AA batteries and have two modes, flashing and continuous with an off position, and very fetching they are with their intense colours. The first time I used them (continuous mode) they turned themselves off after a few hours (I thought the batteries had gone flat) but, after fiddling with the switch, came on again, only to go off again hours later. It's apparent that they're meant to do this but there's nothing to indicate so on the box. Tonight, having noticed them come on at 10:18, I was coincidentally awake at 04:18 when they turned themselves off. Six hours fazackerly! How's it done? Happy New Year.
Many sets have the 6 hours on 18 hours off function. It can be annoying.
One of the problems with C5 LED (cone style) Christmas lights here... squirrels bite the colored plastic bulbs off and bury them in the garden. They are very destructive, and the entire string is trashed because the wires will be bitten in half in many random places and 10 or more random bulbs will be bitten out of the string, and found weeks or months later scattered throughout the yard. I thought this was a bizarre situation until I read about it online and this is a problem lots of people experience (at least here in North America).
is there a name for that double live feed , I've never seen it before ?
So what about fixing mains voltage lights that have a section that fail???
I seem to remember the AC powered DC string I have being a set of series strings in parallel. One of the wires got chopped off by a closing window and I think it only went dark from one or two LEDs in front of the cut. Now I might have it mixed up in my head from all the hours spent shifting bulbs around in the old incandescent one to eliminate the broken ones from last year - that one for sure had them in series sections.
The 32V sets tend to have ten parallel section in series. It is possible to knock out a section of one of those parallel circuits.
Good to see you're feeling well enough to make a video, at least.
That 3 wire business makes sense now ....cheers
👍
The LEDs I have similar to yours in plastic tubing have residue from water-based pulling lube.
Probably only your channel provide a good explanation with diagram. Thanks for that Sir. If I may ask, my tumbler LED have 100 led's but half of them are dim and the half is bright. I already change the input main cable and try to replace the driver but have no luck. Do you have any suggestion to fix this? thanks in advanced
Great video mate, I've got some warm white waterfall lights and for some reason yesterday I noticed that half the lights were dim? Any suggestions?
Maybe that tubing was shrunk slightly about the LED strand. A special heater could apply hot air locally or the strand is passed through an oven
I've acquired a number of light sets this year that appear to be simple 2-wire or 3-wire construction like these, but they have a button on the PSU that selects from 8 patterns of flashing/fading. The LEDs appear to be divided into two groups, alternating along the length of the string. All the LEDs in each group light together at the same intensity, but each group is clearly being controlled independently. But they are not *wired* separately - the same two wires go into each LED no matter which group it's in. So it cant be using separate circuits. Could it be using a simple data signal riding atop the power line? Or is it using some sort of PWM trickery where each LED responds only to alternate peaks? Or something else?
Could it be that alternate lights are wired the other way round and the polarity is being switched?
It's swapping polarity to alternate between LEDs.
@@bigclivedotcom I never would have thought of alternating polarity! That's why you have a UA-cam channel with 800,000+ subs... and I don't.
Is there a way of disabling the flashing/fading patterns so they are permanently on without having to press the button to cycle through the options? Some sets have a memory that remembers whatever the set was programmed for before it was switched off. But most of mine don't, and they're a real pain! With your genius, Clive, i'm sure you can show us how to intercept the circuitry to lock them permanently on continuously.
@@johnwardley7747
Thinking back I'm 99% sure Clive did a memory feature hack on the lights you mention but hopefully the man himself can confirm that 🙂
"No, I'm not hoarding Christmas lights! Give them back!"...
Even when you're in quarantine, you make great videos. :D
Hi Clive, I've always fixed my lights, mainly because I don't like the throw away society but also because I'm tight! I've never had problems before. Today I was fixing some multi colour cluster lights. Got them all working but had an issue with a RED LED. If I replaced it with a RED LED the other green or white LEDS in the string stopped work (depending on polarity of the LED). I tried a GREEN LED and they all work! I then tried a YELLOW & ORANGE LED and they behaved the same as the RED! I ended up sticking a PINK LED in & that worked!! I'm guessing something in the spec of those colours? Forward voltage perhaps?
Most modern strings use phosphor based LEDs for a uniform voltage. So the use of a traditional red LED will clamp the voltage too low for the others in parallel.
@@bigclivedotcom Thanks. I'll drop the supplier a line & see if they have that type. I just purchased 5mm of every colour! BTW, do you know of a supplier for the exact type used in most strings? I could only find a top hat version rather than the concave end as used from the factory.....
@@hoojchoons2258 ive been searching the internet for hours now trying to find the same thing, cant even get a google picture of one, just diagrams of how they work. Manufacturers must be sourcing them from area 51
The gadget called "led keeper" works well for mains sets (at least in 120v land). It injects current and bites into the wire with a sharp point to let you "binary search" for the bad LED. No affiliation with them besides happy customer, their incandescent "light keeper" tool is also swell. Keep an eye out for them in after holiday clearance if you're curious but not presently in need. Turns out my main problem in my particular variety of outdoor set is with mainly the blue LEDs failing by a lead breaking off. The plastic caps break off the yellow/orange ones preferentially but they almost never fail, even when accidentally left up all year 😅
I'm a bit wary of anything that damages insulation. They wouldn't be allowed to sell that here.
Getting those copper wire LED stings into some of tube is a pain.
After many attempts using different methods, I managed to suck a thin bit of cotton trough a one meter tube. Then tried pulling them trough, the cotton snapped.
Then I did it again and first pulled a thicker cotton trough, then the LEDs.
Took about a month of trying things dumping them in a box for a while out of frustration.
So you could cut the last set into four (assuming you could find the correct place where the sections of parallel LEDs begin/end), add a resistor, and makes yourself four shorter sets that could be run from USB/5v? Cool video, as always.
Yes you could.
how did they get the string of lights inside the outer layer? there are many possibilities. it might have been a big fat outer layer that was heated to plasticity then pulled to length which shrunk it down with the led string inside it. it might have just been done like shrink tubing. all these clever ideas make modern living exciting.
I have several 100 light LED 3-wire strings. I have found several UA-cam videos showing how to shorten a string but I have just the opposite situation. I need to lengthen the string by 4 additional lights to one of the strings. Is there a way splice in a short section to add 4 more lights to a 100-light string?
Hey clive happy holidays
You say “that would be hoarding lights” like it’s a bad thing. Those are indeed some very attractive LEDs, and are very hoardable. Hoard away Clive, hoard away.
I repaired one of these strings with solder and masking tape which got ripped into 3 pieces by getting hooked on a car. Unfortunately I didn't find the third section until many months later though so now I use it with a battery.
I also repaired one of those all parallel strings which got some LEDs crushed, also by a car.
Also I think those parallels-series strings are driven at constant current not constant voltage.
I wonder how many kilometers of various types of light strings Clive has in his hous
Damn you B’Clive I’m going to have to drive all the way across town tomorrow because there’s only on Asda hereabouts and it’s not on this side of town. 😠
Me too. I must have them! Trouble is, if the missus finds out then a shopping list will appear out of thin air.
Oh, gee! For a moment I thought Big Clive was going to save me this Christmas. My broken Christmas lights are all high voltage. Oh, well! Maybe next time...
Hope you are feeling better Clive
Yeah. I've never really felt too bad, but it's good to be past the worst.
Good morning Clive it's 1:40 am when I'm watching this haha
Merry xmas Clive
I've just bought the same rope light set from Aldi and it came with a remote control also has a timer cost me a 10er 😀
I have one of the original versions (with bulbs in it). Horrible: it uses 100 Watts to light about 3 meter. I replaced it with an LED version, how ever it is not as bright (by far). But it does to the fading, chasing and other flashing animations, I love those!
I realise it's not in the scope of this video, but what about addressable RGB LED strips?
They're a specialist subject of their own.
The Chinese origin one I have has all LED chips powered in parallell with a third wire for serial communication going through all of them. That one works as a long shift register. When you send the color values to the first chip, it sends its old ones to the next and so on. If you want to change just one of them, you have to refresh the whole length. I don't remember if the chips waits for the comms line to go quiet before applying the change, so as not light up briefly from the values the are just passing through on such a refresh.
Maybe they blow them in with compressed air, kind of like they do with wires in underground cable runs
Clive can u do the same video but with 240 volts Xmas lights 5 wire setup ect
Clive, I have a set of Lumineo 720 LED Lights Twinkle Multicolour - Type 497507. After 2 years outdoors, maybe 3 sections, short lengths, have "gone out" and I can't quite grasp why! Any insights? Thank you . Mike.
If they are low voltage then it's common to wire 10 parallel sections in series. Sometimes when an LED fails it goes short circuit and shunts the other LEDs in that parallel section. But you'd normally lose quite a lot of LEDs when that happens.
Ah night owl like me 😁, at this current moment in time I'm actually distracting myself as I have chest pains and I am waiting for my medication to kick in hope you're OK mate
Not related.. but maybe.
I have about 16 LED lights in the barn.They were installed as a power saver by our power company and an unusual design being in the conventional bulb form but divided into 3 segments. After 5 years operation the two pairs, the rest are in long strings, have decided to interfere with each other, alternately on and off. Replacing one of a pair with a conventional bulb sorts it. What are your thoughts on the issue?
Are they low voltage lamps running on an electronic power supply? If it's the older style halogen supply it may need a minimum load to work.
I'm here as ever like explaining computer Hard4Games and Vwestlife channels and yours.