This is a very strange found on eBay It's 24 volt. LED for student and it's got the construction that you'd normally expect of this of outdoor fistoon. but you can't physically unscrew the lamps. You can unscrew the covers off the lamps, but all that exposes is the filament inside and a connector.

And interestingly, this listing said that it would come with a spare lamp and it showed the interior of that, but it didn't actually come with that. Let's brighten this image up a bit. So the power supply is a standard Christmas Lighting 24 volt in this case, a 6 watt power supply. and if you look inside each Globe The construction is this little connector in here.

Oh, I've just snapped that? Well, that's one less. That means I've got to hack this from there, doesn't it? That's not a great thing, is it? But there's the connector in here. and then you've got the matching connector here. and they've basically crimped in a couple of wires, one going to each end of the filament here.

and once you've plugged it in well, uh, assuming you don't break it like I've just done, you, then screw the cover back on. I Can see these being broken quite commonly by the people trying to fix them if the filaments feel it. makes me wonder if in the listing the reason they said that. you know it comes with one of these, but there wasn't one.

I Wonder if they've taken them out for use as spares to send out customers. But anyway, now comes the challenge. Let's make a replacement, uh, element for The Insider here out of discrete LEDs One moment please. Job done.

let's try it out. So I made a spiral of straw hat LEDs Warm White Straw Hat LEDs and I found it initially when I was doing some experiments with voltage and current that with eight LEDs in series as there are in these filaments, the current was quite High through these LEDs it was about 30 milliamps by adding a 100 ohm resistor. in series it can go anywhere in a series that dropped the current down to 15 milliamps and when you plug it into the holder making sure I get the polarity right because I've marked the polarity in it. It just gives us sort of cluster of points of light that when you screw the cover over the top making sure I don't short this together in the process, then you screw the cover over the top or I'm going to shorten them out in the process and I see for all ends dramatically.

I'll tell you what: I'm going to unplug this before I before I nuke the LEDs that'll be a good idea so I shall smush these in, screw this down, pair it back up again and there is an improvised alternative to the filament where it's just random Points of Light inside there, it doesn't look too bad I Have to say so that's just using standard what they call Straw Hat LEDs the warm white ones. Uh, just eight in the series with a 100 ohm resistor. It's a balance. the current a bit.

Yeah, that looks pretty good actually. It's helped with the fact that you get more Reflections from inside here in this globe. Uh, but these are interesting lights. however.

I really think that once you've bought them, you're well, that's you. You've got them and you're probably not going to be able to get replacement? Uh LEDs I'll poke this gingerly because I don't want to break another. Although I could just make another of these. This also gives you the opportunity if you end up making Replacements that you could use other colors, noting that you'll probably have to adjust that resistor to match if say, for instance, if you used red, LEDs you might have to use a higher value resistor to match up to the 24 volts that this air connector has ever.

That is it. Uh, interesting string of lights, but probably completely unserviceable, but hackable and that's really quite good in its own way.