LED longevity question

[smjosephrn]

Well, I'm thinking about utilizing as many LEDs as my budget will allow this year. But I have hear that some LEDs do not play well with the ramping up and down done with controllers. Since the outlay will be great and I don't want to be replacing lights in the middle of the season... How do I know which LEDs will work with systems like LOR and which ones will not last long? Or has this problem been addressed by the manufacturers and is no longer a problem.

What particularly do I look for to ensure that I will be buying a good set of LEDs?

[Ponddude]

You buy from Travis at LED Holiday Lighting.

I will ONLY use the lights he sells. There are certainly other places on the internet, one of which is shipping the pre-sale lights out now. Unfortunately though you missed the majority of the pre-sales. Travis will have another one during the summer though.

Basically I only buy full wave lights. They are the brightest, last the longest and are also the most expensive. Visit Travis's site at www.ledholidaylighting.com and ask him questions if you have them. If is a pleasure to work with you and actually stands behind his products...which others unfortunately do not.

[beeiilll]

I would have to agree with Greg that Travis is great to work with and does whatever it takes to help you out and answer questions.

He is selling the Holiday Creations Brand of LEDs and they are an absolutely great set of LED strings. I purchased over 100 strings of them last year (my first year with animated displays as well as LEDs) and I only had 3 strings that had a problem. These were right from the start though and were replaced promptly by suppliers.

After running my display for the season (I am using LOR) I ended up with one string that had 1 LED go out, so I have to say that for me they worked as well as anyone could expect. I did a lot of dimming, fading, and twinkling with no problems.

I have found several suppliers that carry them and I do purchase from various places. I have also tried out some other brands of LEDs and I have not been as impressed or had the reliability of the Holiday Creations ones.

Also another really good dealer is Paul from Creative Displays ( http://www.creativedisplays.com ). He works with you and is great about any problems that may come up. He had an unfortunate year last year as he got his product from a supplier that didn't produce a very good product and it had a lot of problems. Paul however stood behind his goods and replaced anything that was bad. This year he has gone back to the supplier that produces the Holiday Creations brand, so hopefully there will be a good year for him and anyone who purchases them.

I can also recommend http://www.christmas-leds.com/Affiliate.aspx?id=3 as a source for LEDs, net lights, wireframes, and display items. I have purchased a few strings from Val and I have some display frames ordered for this year from them. I do like the color and apparent quality of there lights, even though I have not had a chance to run them out in a display yet. I will be using them this year to see how they perform, so time will tell. But I am impressed with Val and Greg from Suprtec as very honest and diligent folks who will help you and are a pleasure to work with. I like the deep, rich colors of their lights compared to even the Holiday Creation ones. The colors are very vibrant and really pop out at you.

I guess that one of the biggest problems with LEDs is that the old adage "you get what you pay for" can be very true. They are not cheap by any means, but a good quality set should last for a very long time. Study the various brands and dealers and ask questions, then see which you think will work for you.
It is difficult to get info from the dealers since everyone thinks that their product is the best (and that is why they sell the brand they do), but you should be able to find good quality strings out there.


Hope this helps you out.

Bill Ellick

[Steven]

smjosephrn wrote:

Well, I'm thinking about utilizing as many LEDs as my budget will allow this year. But I have hear that some LEDs do not play well with the ramping up and down done with controllers.

The only time you will run into problems with LEDs and ramping (and shimmering and intensities < 100%) is with retrofit LEDs. These are bulbs with a screw-in base that are meant to replace a 120-volt incandescent bulb. This includes C7 and C9 bulbs, as well as ones that screw into a standard light socket.

The technical reason why these have problems with dimming is that an LED runs at 2.5 to 3.6 volts (depending on the color), so if you put one in a 120-volt socket something needs to drop the voltage. The easiest way to do this is to use a capacitor, but the current that goes through a capacitor increases with the frequency of the voltage supplied. When a circuit is dimmed, it generates harmonics that are much higher in frequency than the 60Hz input. This increases the current through the LED, which makes it overheat, which destroys it.

In almost all LED strings with 25 or more bulbs, there will be no problem with dimming because the capacitor is not needed.

One thing to avoid with LED strings is removable bulbs. Being able to replace a bulb sounds like a good idea at first, but the problem is that the wires that come from LEDs are usually aluminum or steel, and the sockets are usually copper or brass. (A mini incandescent bulb has copper wires.) This connection between different metals, especially when the strings are outdoors where water can enter causes corrosion, which makes the connection go bad. So no matter where you buy your LEDs, get the non-replacable (sealed) bulbs.

[smjosephrn]

Thanks to everyone for your input. I guess I was laboring under a misconception on the LEDs. I wasn't thinking of using replacement bulbs, only complete strings so now I realize that shouldn't worry. I've been looking at the sites that were mentioned, since I will be doing a lot of the work off-season.

[Max-Paul]

Steven wrote:

One thing to avoid with LED strings is removable bulbs. Being able to replace a bulb sounds like a good idea at first, but the problem is that the wires that come from LEDs are usually aluminum or steel, and the sockets are usually copper or brass. (A mini incandescent bulb has copper wires.) This connection between different metals, especially when the strings are outdoors where water can enter causes corrosion, which makes the connection go bad. So no matter where you buy your LEDs, get the non-replacable (sealed) bulbs.

Well I suppose time will tell if I did a good job Steven. But let me back up for a min. I bought some of those 18" sprial trees on sale. But I want my display to be 100% LED. So I bought some colored LEDs off of ebay. Boy was I shocked to find that the leads are a thin nickel plating over mild steel leads.

So, I almost filled each socket with a NO-OX like grease to expell all of the air and hopefully leave no void to be filled with rain water.

Like I said earlier, this will be the first year for these trees to be used. Will see after Christmas if this worked or not. If it does, I will have no fears of buying strings with removeable bulbs. Provided I go and fill each socket with this grease. But by the text book, I would not fear these strings. Just got to take some preventive steps before putting them out for display.

Max

[-klb-]

Not all retrofit C7/C9 LEDs are unable to dim. The Minleon ones that LEDholidayLighting sells are quite good. Very well built product, and I not only used them in my show last year, but ran a bunch of them from the end of the show until daylight, with about 1/6 of them dimming or shimmering at any one time. I am really impressed with them.

I also really like the 1 piece LED strings that LEDholidayLighting sells. The

[stanward]

Steven wrote:

One thing to avoid with LED strings is removable bulbs. Being able to replace a bulb sounds like a good idea at first, but the problem is that the wires that come from LEDs are usually aluminum or steel, and the sockets are usually copper or brass. (A mini incandescent bulb has copper wires.) This connection between different metals, especially when the strings are outdoors where water can enter causes corrosion, which makes the connection go bad. So no matter where you buy your LEDs, get the non-replacable (sealed) bulbs.

I am having that rusting problem as we speak, and some of my strings have been out only 2 weeks!

How are the longevity of the "professional" LED light sets from the websites stated on the first page of this thread?

[JBullard]

I'm on my third year using LEDs from Paul at Creative Displays. No problems. Great product, great service, great vendor. I have purchased over 600 strings from Paul.

[stanward]

Thanks for your response. Do you happen to have the price sheet for the pre-order sale earlier this year?

Thanks,

Stanward



JBullard wrote:

I'm on my third year using LEDs from Paul at Creative Displays. No problems. Great product, great service, great vendor. I have purchased over 600 strings from Paul.

[JBullard]

Hmm, that preorder was last January or February. I might still have a copy in a file at my office, but not here at home.

[jimswinder]

I bought some LED Icicle lights from Travis, and I am not complaining about the quality, but I did have some problems with them dimming properly. I had 15 strings end to end, so did not think I had a load problem until someone mentioned in a post that having that many LED's end to end only multiplies the problem. Just added an incandescent light at the LOR plug and it fixed it.

[stanward]

Thanks! I just found my copy on my network drive.



JBullard wrote:

Hmm, that preorder was last January or February. I might still have a copy in a file at my office, but not here at home.

[iresq]

http://talk.planetchristmas.com/showthread.php?t=37709

2010 pre-order prices.