Which LED'S work best

[Ralph A]

I bought some LED's after Christmas last year and the do not fade or blink. Also, some LED's the leans or colored cover if you will, does not come off. Making it hard to impossible to use on homemade wood projects.

After some research I believe I'm looking for what is called "Full Wave" LED's? Is that correct. Also, I need to buy some where I can remove the lens cover to place it through my wood cutouts. Any ideas on which LED's to Buy M-5, C-6, C-7 Help Please!!



Ralph

[Guest wbottomley]

Ralph, sounds like you need to purchase some M5's.

They should work in your cutouts.

[Ralph A]

Okay, I'll check that out. Thanks for the advice. Ralph

[Ponddude]

In order to get your LED's to work with LOR, you will need a good quality LED, which has a rectifier in them. The difference between the full wave and half wave LED's are simply going to be their brightness. Half wave are not nearly as bright as the full wave, and seem to have a flicker which can bother some peoples eyes....mine included. Full wave LED's are much brighter and don't bother the eyes as much. Also, replaceable c-9 and c-7 LED's do not dim. They only go on and off. In most cases, using them with LOR will cut their life drastically. I purchase all my LED's from Travis at LED Holiday Lighting. He was great to work with and all his products are awesome. I just received all my pre-order stuff from him last week and it all work great with LOR.

www.ledholidaylighting.com

[zman]

M5's in cut out is going to be difficult but can work. The M5 bulbs are thinner than the socket as opposed to a screw in. You want to stay away from the screw in for the time being in LED. They do not last long if you ramp and fade them. They burn out quickly.

You do want full wave. They look best, however, even some of the more recent half wave are better than in years past. Do you homework on them. Order samples etc...

There are several LED vendors out there. LED Holiday Lighting, Creative Displays, Action Lighting, Reinders, etc... again, check into it. They all sell reputable products and I have used LEDs from each of the above.

[Richard Hamilton]

Ponddude wrote:

I purchase all my LED's from Travis at LED Holiday Lighting. He was great to work with and all his products are awesome. I just received all my pre-order stuff from him last week and it all work great with LOR.

http://www.ledholidaylighting.com

We also ordered several hundred LED strings from Travis, and I agree that the LEDs are really good quality and well sealed. He's got a good manufacturer. There were no failures out of the box. Also, this guy is the most responsive vendor I ever met. Sometimes I think he doesn't eat or sleep.

Having said the above, we are having some minor issues that I have not yet resolved. Symptoms point to Triac fading issues. About 4% of the lights we put in the trees are showing the old problem of flickering at low brightness settings, and not fading off/on correctly even when trying them on different LOR channels and units. I haven't tried snubbers on them yet, but my guess is it will solve the problem.

I had hoped not to need any snubbers in the display and Travis mentioned that these lights should absolutely be guaranteed to work with LOR. With that statement in mind, I am taking another guess that there might be an occasional defect in the full wave rectification on a string of lights.

Example, we have 8 multi-colored strings plugged end-to-end. The whole series flickers at low intensity. I'm thinking that if any one of the rectifiers in any one of the strings has failed or was manufactured incorrectly, the whole series will show flickering. On another series of red leds there is a similar problem. I'm going to build a few snubbers and send them back to Texas for testing.

[Richard Hamilton]

Just coming back to post added information about my above comments. Our solution to flickering lights was to add snubbers to some channels. The client was not happy about that because it was extra work and supposedly these lights were guaranteed to not need snubbers, yet we had to add them to 15 of the 240 channels. That's not a bad ratio I guess, yet we expected not to need any. In summary, it appears that even some full-wave rectified strings need snubbers for a reason that is not fully clear until we take down the lights and experiment in January.

[Dennis Cherry]

Richard Hamilton wrote:

Just coming back to post added information about my above comments. Our solution to flickering lights was to add snubbers to some channels. The client was not happy about that because it was extra work and supposedly these lights were guaranteed to not need snubbers, yet we had to add them to 15 of the 240 channels. That's not a bad ratio I guess, yet we expected not to need any. In summary, it appears that even some full-wave rectified strings need snubbers for a reason that is not fully clear until we take down the lights and experiment in January.

The reason for the snubbers is not the LED fault, its because the traics are not turning off reliably.

I put snubbers on all LED strings that I thought would need drastic revisions in the sequences to make them work right, the snubbers (33K 2w to 47K 1w) fixed this well enough that no modification to the sequences was needed. I am using the 47K 1w for my snubbers.

I am using both full and 1/2 wave LED's and they look good. no flicker issues on the 1/2 wave either.

[Richard Hamilton]

Dennis Cherry wrote:

Richard Hamilton wrote:

Just coming back to post added information about my above comments. Our solution to flickering lights was to add snubbers to some channels. The client was not happy about that because it was extra work and supposedly these lights were guaranteed to not need snubbers, yet we had to add them to 15 of the 240 channels. That's not a bad ratio I guess, yet we expected not to need any. In summary, it appears that even some full-wave rectified strings need snubbers for a reason that is not fully clear until we take down the lights and experiment in January.

The reason for the snubbers is not the LED fault, its because the traics are not turning off reliably.

I put snubbers on all LED strings that I thought would need drastic revisions in the sequences to make them work right, the snubbers (33K 2w to 47K 1w) fixed this well enough that no modification to the sequences was needed. I am using the 47K 1w for my snubbers.

I am using both full and 1/2 wave LED's and they look good. no flicker issues on the 1/2 wave either.

Hi Dennis, yup, I am well aware that the triacs are the reason for the appearance. I was just surprised to need them since in theory the triacs should be seeing a constant load as the full-wave LEDs are conducting on both halfs of the AC cycle. And further, if I recall correctly from my emails, Travis was sure there would be no problems with the LEDs. By the way, you only need a 1/2 watt resistor for 33K Ohm. Those fit in tighter spaces like the clamshell plugs.

[Dennis Cherry]

Richard Hamilton wrote:

Dennis Cherry wrote:

Richard Hamilton wrote:

Just coming back to post added information about my above comments. Our solution to flickering lights was to add snubbers to some channels. The client was not happy about that because it was extra work and supposedly these lights were guaranteed to not need snubbers, yet we had to add them to 15 of the 240 channels. That's not a bad ratio I guess, yet we expected not to need any. In summary, it appears that even some full-wave rectified strings need snubbers for a reason that is not fully clear until we take down the lights and experiment in January.

The reason for the snubbers is not the LED fault, its because the traics are not turning off reliably.

I put snubbers on all LED strings that I thought would need drastic revisions in the sequences to make them work right, the snubbers (33K 2w to 47K 1w) fixed this well enough that no modification to the sequences was needed. I am using the 47K 1w for my snubbers.

I am using both full and 1/2 wave LED's and they look good. no flicker issues on the 1/2 wave either.

Hi Dennis, yup, I am well aware that the triacs are the reason for the appearance. I was just surprised to need them since in theory the triacs should be seeing a constant load as the full-wave LEDs are conducting on both halfs of the AC cycle. And further, if I recall correctly from my emails, Travis was sure there would be no problems with the LEDs. By the way, you only need a 1/2 watt resistor for 33K Ohm. Those fit in tighter spaces like the clamshell plugs.

Calculations show it a 0.437 watts, too close for a 1/2 watt resistor. It was recommend to use a 2 watt so the resistor does not get real hot for a 33K.

Metal film is the best and the smallest, carbon film is second.

Do not use Carbon Composition.

[Richard Hamilton]

Dennis Cherry wrote:

Calculations show it a 0.437 watts, too close for a 1/2 watt resistor. It was recommend to use a 2 watt so the resistor does not get real hot for a 33K.

Metal film is the best and the smallest, carbon film is second.

Do not use Carbon Composition.

Yup, a larger wattage resistor always gives more margin. I just couldn't fit anything bigger than 1/2 Watt in my shells. I figure 1/2 Watt is still safe enough since there is still at least 12% safety margin from the rated value, and the fact that the average wattage is going to be much lower during a show due to varying voltages. During shows, I never keep anything fully bright anyway to save energy and that is the only time when the resistor would be at max wattage dissipation anyway.

Dennis, just out of curiosity, why not carbon comp? (aside from accuracy)

[Bryan]

GE brand works great for me!! And you can buy them at your local Lowes They Fad, Shimmer, Shake and Dance

I bought some Home Depot brand ones but they are not full wave, but I made them work when I plugged a 85 watt floodLight into them.

[Dennis Cherry]

Richard Hamilton wrote:

Dennis Cherry wrote:

Calculations show it a 0.437 watts, too close for a 1/2 watt resistor. It was recommend to use a 2 watt so the resistor does not get real hot for a 33K.

Metal film is the best and the smallest, carbon film is second.

Do not use Carbon Composition.

Yup, a larger wattage resistor always gives more margin. I just couldn't fit anything bigger than 1/2 Watt in my shells. I figure 1/2 Watt is still safe enough since there is still at least 12% safety margin from the rated value, and the fact that the average wattage is going to be much lower during a show due to varying voltages. During shows, I never keep anything fully bright anyway to save energy and that is the only time when the resistor would be at max wattage dissipation anyway.

Dennis, just out of curiosity, why not carbon comp? (aside from accuracy)

Accuracy, larger and noisy . Can give you grief in some circuits so best to not consider them as the carbon film are better, price is slightly higher. Metal films are the smallest per watt but higher in price. I can get a 1 watt carbon film inside a male SPT-2 vampire plug just fine. Just offset it to one side between the two contact points.

[Madhatter]

how do you tell the difference between full and half wave led's ?
I#m still trying to find out if I can split my led strings up into halfs or quarters. They're ac so apparently have a rectifier in the controller.

[Madhatter]

how do you tell the difference between full and half wave led's ?
I#m still trying to find out if I can split my led strings up into halfs or quarters. They're ac so apparently have a rectifier in the controller.

[ledlighting]

Because of some of the flickering people have encountered we have made up 100's of these snubbers and are free to anyone who has purchased from us. We have found if you are using 8 strands or less on a channel that you may encounter some flickering and that too sometime depends on the color white being the most noticeable. The easiest solution we have found is to plug the snubber into the the back of strand that either connects to the LOR unit or the one closest to the LOR unit connected to the extension cord.

So again if anyone has bought from us this year and need some of these please feel free to email me and I will send you some.

Thanks!

Travis Fremming
http://www.ledholidaylighting.com

[dotyb]

The thing about LED’s that the wife and I do not like is that they are to bright, intense colors, electronic feeling to them. They do not have that warm Christmas feeling. Maybe we have not seen the right ones or do they make some that are more warmer to the eyes?

[dotyb]

Oops I know you can lower the power going to them. I got a set to play with but still not pulled to the LED side...

[Richard Hamilton]

dotyb wrote:

The thing about LED’s that the wife and I do not like is that they are to bright, intense colors, electronic feeling to them. They do not have that warm Christmas feeling. Maybe we have not seen the right ones or do they make some that are more warmer to the eyes?

That is an interesting comment. I know what you mean. All I can say is that of the visitors that come to my house and see the outside display, they love the color and few of them can determine for sure if they are LED or not. For our indoor Christmas tree, we prefer to use incandescant lights that give more of the "warm" look that you are talking about (tungston filaments that generate more light in the low red spectrum).

An up, power savings are HUGE.... less than 20% of the energy consumed by incandescant.

[Madhatter]

Makes note not to buy from ledholiday lighting...ignores questions.
You'd have to be pretty poor sighted to not tell the difference between incandecent and led. They are a lot brighter, sharper, flickery, was pointing out to someone last night which ones in town are led and which ones are incandescents. Even the warm light led's you can tell, not as much but you can.