The difference in price and construction between home and professional Christmas lights is huge. But when you see the difference in the construction you realise that there's a lot more work in making the professional ones, and the materials add a lot of expense and weight too.
These are the strings of lights often used on city centre trees, either wrapped round the branches of ordinary trees or strung seasonally on big Christmas trees.
They're also used on the aluminium panels mounted on the sides of lamp posts, either on their own or with rope light outlines, some festoon for brighter points of light or strobes for sparkle and sometimes shoved through industrial grade fire and weather retardant tinsel.
Stuff like this tends to have a rough life, with extreme weather exposure and frequent installation and removal by people who often don't treat them too well and cram them into vans and storage spaces. Cheap home grade lights would be destroyed quickly in a similar application.
The lights are usually available in white, black or green rubber, with black being a preferred choice. The use of a high voltage DC bus allows a lot to be run end to end, but you have to be careful to ensure that the sealing o-rings are in place in the connectors. Lesser installers will often lose the o-rings when they are essential in avoiding plug and socket failure. If possible keep a bag of spare o-rings if you do a lot of work with stuff like this.
In the UK the mains voltage stuff shouldn't be used at ground level where kids can touch it. But certain types of company who use casual labour with dubious electrical credentials will use it because it's cheap. The same companies may use the wrong types of protection or quite often none at all "because it keeps tripping".
It's important to note that if these lights are wrapped round the branches of trees for year-round decoration, they have to be maintained. That involves checking their condition, making sure they're still loose and if necessary, repositioning them onto the tree to prevent bark and light damage as it grows. If just ignored, as often happens with city councils, the trees will literally grow through the lights, forming bark around them and potentially breaking them and exposing live connections.
It's not unusual to see trees with a tiny section left lit, if any, and exposed live wires in amongst the branches. The live wires may not be obvious if the tree is unlit. Never assume the power is actually off.
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:-
http://www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm
This also keeps the channel independent of YouTube's advertising algorithms allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty.
These are the strings of lights often used on city centre trees, either wrapped round the branches of ordinary trees or strung seasonally on big Christmas trees.
They're also used on the aluminium panels mounted on the sides of lamp posts, either on their own or with rope light outlines, some festoon for brighter points of light or strobes for sparkle and sometimes shoved through industrial grade fire and weather retardant tinsel.
Stuff like this tends to have a rough life, with extreme weather exposure and frequent installation and removal by people who often don't treat them too well and cram them into vans and storage spaces. Cheap home grade lights would be destroyed quickly in a similar application.
The lights are usually available in white, black or green rubber, with black being a preferred choice. The use of a high voltage DC bus allows a lot to be run end to end, but you have to be careful to ensure that the sealing o-rings are in place in the connectors. Lesser installers will often lose the o-rings when they are essential in avoiding plug and socket failure. If possible keep a bag of spare o-rings if you do a lot of work with stuff like this.
In the UK the mains voltage stuff shouldn't be used at ground level where kids can touch it. But certain types of company who use casual labour with dubious electrical credentials will use it because it's cheap. The same companies may use the wrong types of protection or quite often none at all "because it keeps tripping".
It's important to note that if these lights are wrapped round the branches of trees for year-round decoration, they have to be maintained. That involves checking their condition, making sure they're still loose and if necessary, repositioning them onto the tree to prevent bark and light damage as it grows. If just ignored, as often happens with city councils, the trees will literally grow through the lights, forming bark around them and potentially breaking them and exposing live connections.
It's not unusual to see trees with a tiny section left lit, if any, and exposed live wires in amongst the branches. The live wires may not be obvious if the tree is unlit. Never assume the power is actually off.
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:-
http://www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm
This also keeps the channel independent of YouTube's advertising algorithms allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty.
I have a set of those industrial ones
Could you help answer a question? I bought some vine led lights off Amazon, it came with a 2 prong circular Dongguan Rico brand plug and a tiny black LED converter/driver box to go into my American style outlet. The voltage says 100-240v 50/60Hz .2A input, and output is 31V 193mA 6W. I’m not sure the voltage that my American outlet has but it was plugged into an extension cord that I’ve used for 2 years with no problems. The lights stopped working after 2 weeks. The driver/converter box still works with a different brand of string lights with nearly the same input/output so I know the driver still works but the lights on the vine don’t light up. Can I do or buy anything to fix it? Or did the bulbs short out or it’s a fuse issue? It was probably cheap and it says on the black box it’s made in China, which I’m sure they weren’t doing their due diligence to handle American outlets and it overloaded. If you could let me know a way to fix it that would be great, I love the vine lights and they were a pain to put on the wall!
Where could i buy the good lights clive
I miss real chasing lights i cant stand these new modern kind and i also have the dangerous chinese sets the wife wont get rid of them 😤
I have a string if leds wired directly to 5v they seem to be in seires but the last few get dull why would this happen should i just bin them
Sir, where to buy old style Christmas lights, incandescent bulbs with pointed ends 🤔?
Does this two-pole screw connector have a name/standard?
You love to hear yourself talk….. but thank you for the Video After forwarding to your schematic
It was helpful
My stupid ass stepped on the wire upon hanging them and ripped them apart
Ok ok thanks for the advice …so i cant bypass the rectifier?
Ok so i have a side hustle where I supply and fit these lights… So my client who has a good horticulture program she had going on at her house wanted us to sort of bury these lights underground and just leaving the bulbs out… we did it … sealed everything with cement…. tested it … t went well …. then later on there was a heavy rain 🌧… the part that you labeled as the rectifier got burnt (when it rained , it was exposed)… so the lights dimmed .. and some were off completely… now i donnoe if it was because of the rain , the reason why it got damaged… or there is a short circuit in our connection.. which I doubt since t was working before … so my question to you is
1 can we by-pass the rectifier? And if we can, can u help us how? Because before and after the rectifier the cable goes from being a 2-cable to a 3 cable …
2 is t ok to you a 3 pin plug (originally it has a 2 pin plug)? And if so which fuse rating do i use?