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Box store LED dimable lights


Stinkler26

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Newbie here! What big box store LED dimable lights do you use? Christmas light sales have already started!

Just curious on confirmed dimable brands so I can stock up for next year. I’ve mostly ran iridescent and would like to upgrade for consistency and performance  

Edit: I would love to pay the big money for online commercial, but very few places will ship to Hawaii. And bills...sigh.

Thanks in advance!

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I use both the GE and Sylvania with very little problem. A lot of other seemed to use the lights from Walmart with very little trouble. I've never tried it. There is some issue with flickering with some brands but if you had a snubber to the end of your string it should help.

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The most common one heard to avoid is the Martha Stewart brand.  Many reports that they catch fire when dimmed.

 

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We use mainly LEDs from WalMart, BigLots, HomeDepot, Lowes and where ever else they are on sale... We do have some of the 'professional' LEDs as well. They all work just fine with the LOR soft/hardware. Some do fade off at different rates but it's not that big of an issue.

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4 hours ago, Thebug said:

I use both the GE and Sylvania with very little problem. A lot of other seemed to use the lights from Walmart with very little trouble. I've never tried it. There is some issue with flickering with some brands but if you had a snubber to the end of your string it should help.

Point of clarification.  If by "flickering" you're referring to non-smooth fading, then yes, adding a snubber of some type will help smooth that effect. 

If you're referring to the flicker that drives people crazy in their peripheral vision with half-wave rectified lights, a snubber will have zero effect.  With or without a snubber those lights will still be half-wave, and will be turning on and off 60 times each second.

 

4 hours ago, Thebug said:

I made some of those years ago and they work great!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Typically the big-box store stuff has removable LEDs.  And being in Hawaii, we get lots of rain, at least where I'm at.  I remember the second season of LOR, I removed every LED and put dielectric grease in them.  The sun and rain washed it all away and I was still stuck with troubleshooting them daily.

I would highly recommend commercial-grade stuff.

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