Specter Posted November 8, 2008 Share Posted November 8, 2008 Hey guys-I am about to go replace all my incandescent lights with Home Depot's 'Home Accent' LED lights. Can someone tell me how well they work with LOR?Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Hamilton Posted November 9, 2008 Share Posted November 9, 2008 Specter wrote: Hey guys-I am about to go replace all my incandescent lights with Home Depot's 'Home Accent' LED lights. Can someone tell me how well they work with LOR?Thanks!I am not a fan of the Home Depot lights. Some that I bought last year barely lasted through the season. They are not sealed well. Water corroded the internal contacts and many bulbs stopped working. Also, I had to use snubbers on them to get them to fade smoothly. I don't know about this year's version of that brand, but I'm willing to bet they have not changed much. Maybe other people had better luck with them than I did. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Specter Posted November 9, 2008 Author Share Posted November 9, 2008 huh. I'm not too worried about water, I live in AZ, no snow, and rarely rains. I'm sure, over time, it'll become an issue tho. The fading DOES concern me tho. I need them to fade properly. Maybe I'll buy them and return them if they don't work... I wonder if the Sam's Club brand does the same thing? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Specter Posted November 9, 2008 Author Share Posted November 9, 2008 Which brand do you recommend then? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Hamilton Posted November 9, 2008 Share Posted November 9, 2008 Specter wrote: Which brand do you recommend then?The Sam's club one's do seem to fade better without need of snubbers, but I only have a few of them. Most of the ones I have come from Travis at LedHolidayLighting, but it seems that he might be out of stock for the year. We bought almost 800 strings of his lights. As a sample run, I tested 75 strings and all worked perfectly. (full-wave lights). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Specter Posted November 9, 2008 Author Share Posted November 9, 2008 Yeah, I've been looking at his, will probably order his C6's from him. However, I need nearly 200 strings of minis, and man, that just gets REALLY expensive. With Home Depot's sale they have going on this weekend, $4 for a 70ct string is hard to pass up. I'm VERY tempted to give it a shot. I just don't want to waste money, know what I mean?Your thoughts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Hamilton Posted November 9, 2008 Share Posted November 9, 2008 Specter wrote: Yeah, I've been looking at his, will probably order his C6's from him. However, I need nearly 200 strings of minis, and man, that just gets REALLY expensive. With Home Depot's sale they have going on this weekend, $4 for a 70ct string is hard to pass up. I'm VERY tempted to give it a shot. I just don't want to waste money, know what I mean?Your thoughts?I think you answered the question.... It seems with you being out there in Arizona, you will certainly have better luck than I did. We will usually get at least 8 days of rain from Thanksgiving until New Year. $4 is really hard to beat. Let's see what others have to say about their experience with the HD strings. I still think about the problem with not fading smoothly and I don't know if they remedied that problem from last year or not. Maybe you should get'em and test a few in your house to see how well they fade. HD is usually pretty good about allowing returns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Specter Posted November 9, 2008 Author Share Posted November 9, 2008 ok- just got back from buying a bunch of them. I got the Green and Blue C3's. I can return them since I have the receipts. I'll throw them on my LOR real quick and check them out... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Specter Posted November 9, 2008 Author Share Posted November 9, 2008 ok, here's my report...I have a set of Green and a set of Blue C3's from Home Depot, Home Accent Lighting brand. Just got them in Nov 2008 (in case someone comes across this thread later).Right out of the box, the green has 2 dead bulbs on the string. I haven't messed with them to see if they're loose, I just know they don't turn on. Color is vibrant- shoot, they're LEDs...Fading up- they both fade very quickly. They're smooth on the fade up until about the 90-95% mark, then there's a slight 'pulse' in both strings. Once the pulse is done, then they continue to finish to the 100% fade up point. Other than that, it's fairly smooth. I'm watching them all bundled up together, so it's noticeable. However, if they're spread out in a display, I doubt they'd be as obvious.Now, the fade down... they fade down twice as slow as the fade up- even tho it's the same time length in the sequence editor (5 sec). As they fade out, there's 3-4 pulses in there on both colors. Some not as strong as the others- almost looks like a 'vibrating' effect, if you will. Or- it reminds me of a fluorescent tube light being turned on and warming up, but in reverse. Again, it's obvious when they're all bunched together, but not sure how bad it would be if strung out in a display. Most of the time, we don't do a 5 second fade- it's usually much faster than that.When they're on, no pulses, no blinks, nothing- they look great! I WILL say that on the green string, some of the bulbs are slightly different in green color than the others. Plus- individual bulbs will sometimes 'pulse' during the fade up/down, independently from the rest of the string. Those same bulbs don't appear as bright- and also demonstrate the fluorescent tube light warming up effect occasionally.They include 2 extra bulbs and a small fuse in each box- which means you can switch out bulbs on these strings! Construction seems to be the same as all the other strings- incandescent and whatnot, but I'm not looking real close or super analyzing them either.That's my report. I'm not THRILLED with them by any means, and MIGHT be taking them back if I buy a better quality to replace them. HOWEVER- for $3.99 for a 50ct string, I REALLY can't complain about them!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Hamilton Posted November 9, 2008 Share Posted November 9, 2008 Yea, that is about what I expected. I had trouble on the fades. If you want to keep them and the flicker bothers you during fading, then you are going to need to use a snubber on each channel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dale W Posted November 9, 2008 Share Posted November 9, 2008 The good news about HD lights, is that you can take them back without a problem as long as you have a receipt for a refund. Without a receipt, they give you a HD card.If you take them back at the end of the season without a receipt, they will give you the lowest recorded sale price (marked down) they have. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Specter Posted November 9, 2008 Author Share Posted November 9, 2008 Just bought some white and blue 5mm flat-top cylinder LEDs from Sam's Club. They appear to be slightly brighter compared to the C3's- however, I am willing to be that they're the exact same brightness, it's just that the plastic globe on the C3's spread out the light a little bit and makes it SEEM dimmer. You get more surface area with the c3's tho- so it's a matter of preference.Testing them on my LOR sequence- they fade up/down MUCH faster than the C3's from HD. However, the flickering/vibrating was MUCH less obvious. In fact, I would say there was 60% less flicker. Now, I'm open that it's because there are 90 bulbs on the string compared to the 60ct from HD's LEDs. The extra 30 bulbs may help to 'reduce' the flicker somewhat.Overall, for about <$1 more, the Sam's Club LEDs seem to be a better quality product. No bulbs were dead, and overall seem to be more stable after watching them on my LOR tests. I think I'll return my HD ones and go buy out Sam's Club... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mnkyboy Posted November 9, 2008 Share Posted November 9, 2008 Dale W wrote: The good news about HD lights, is that you can take them back without a problem as long as you have a receipt for a refund. Without a receipt, they give you a HD card.If you take them back at the end of the season without a receipt, they will give you the lowest recorded sale price (marked down) they have.I took back almost all of the white HD lights I bought back on 12/17/07 Friday Night cause they looked like crap... The reds and greens I got are fine. just the clear/whites. Some looked yellowish, some where bright white, but within the same strings!!!The only whites I have left are on my bells, but those were the only 4 matched strings I had out of 30 strings of whites!!And yes they gave me a full refund on what i paid for them, on a home depot giftcard of course which is fine... I did pick up 9 strings of those Sylvania "jewel tops" clears to outline my yard with...Now with that said... I ordered quite a bit from Travis at ledholidaylighting and those definately have a wow factor on their brilliance...( for my fan and megatree). Yes they are a few bucks more, but you do get what you pay for, along with superb Customer service!The rest of my LEDS are from Either Target or Biglots....With my entire system finally up and running, I am very please with their performance..I will post a video soon! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Hamilton Posted November 10, 2008 Share Posted November 10, 2008 Specter wrote: Testing them on my LOR sequence- they fade up/down MUCH faster than the C3's from HD. However, the flickering/vibrating was MUCH less obvious.Can you explain that one a little more? You control the rate of fade, so I am not sure what you mean. Are you saying it is more linear? And I assume you don't mean vibrate as in making sound or moving.I have a need for a few more strings at the neighbors house, and he as a Sam's card. Could you give a little more detail on those strings... like length, cost? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Specter Posted November 10, 2008 Author Share Posted November 10, 2008 Yes, vibrating as in tiny pulses in the brightness levels of the lights- NOT sound or anything else.Length- not sure- you can look online. They are 2 strings of 90 count tho- so $15.48 for 2 strings...Yes, I created an LOR routine with a 5 sec ramp up, 5 sec on time, 5 sec dim to off. These fade up to 100% and down to 0% MUCH faster than the others... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redsea300 Posted November 12, 2008 Share Posted November 12, 2008 What is a snubber. I have a huge amount of strings from home depot. I bought last year. I was just getting into LOR so i figured I would buy lights that were on sale I paid 3.00 a box last year. I bought aprox 500 strands. Cleaned out 3 home depot in prep for this year. I have also bought more this year from there. This years seem better than last year from testing. I also bought some from Animated lighting (these are on my mini trees) I like these better. I am going to start buying any new ones in full wave for next year. Thais is my first year with LEDS and also LOR. The Last 10 years I have only had a huge Static display. This has been a very busy year. Thanks for the info. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Hamilton Posted November 12, 2008 Share Posted November 12, 2008 We are talking about a "Terminator". "Snubber" is another name. This is simply a resistive device, a resistor or bulb, that puts a small constant load on the channels so that Triacs and SCRs will work properly with LED that have flickering issues.Here are some links that explain more. You can type "snubber" into the LOR search box if you want more links and information.http://lightorama.mywowbb.com/view_topic.php?id=17226&forum_id=76&highlight=snubberhttp://lightorama.mywowbb.com/view_topic.php?id=17368&forum_id=76&highlight=snubberhttp://magiclightshow.com/bb/index.php?topic=41.0 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Hamilton Posted November 12, 2008 Share Posted November 12, 2008 Oooops, sorry for the double posting. I just deleted this one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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