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Where Have You Found LED Holiday Lights?
glassware asks: "Perhaps you know that LED holiday Lights last hundreds of times longer than regular lights. Perhaps you know that your local utility company recommends them for drastically lowering your electricity bill. But my real problem is, where can you find them? I've found lousy battery-operated LED lights in some department stores; but even in the best stores I give up after a half hour of searching, and so far I see only one vendor making them. Surely there must be alternatives. Where do you get your LED holiday lights?"
and so far I see only one vendor making them
Hmmm... I wonder who might have posted the question...
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
As taken from http://www.es.wapa.gov/pubs/files/2001_holiday_lig hts_fs_es.pdf:
http://www.foreverbright.com/
http://www.ccl-light.com/
Nope, ain't a lot out there.
I think many rope lights use LEDs. You should look into those.
I found mine in my neighbour's garden.
(I was too lazy to use Google and buy my own, so I stole them.)
root@aio:~# nmap -sX -iR -p1- # Ho, ho, ho! Merry Xmas, everyone!
Since I do not support countries which are de jure repressive regimes, forced infanticide, who long ignored an AIDS crisis, and who believe that their people are State property, I do not buy products made in China. Where can you get holiday lights made elsewhere?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
The Foreverbright site (linked from "holiday" in the intro) has a "Where to Buy" link offering a lengthy list of retailers. I haven't checked the shelves yet, but it seems you should look at those little hardware stores and drugstores rather than random department stores if you want to buy them in person.
I hate call waitin`~+~~~
NO CARRIER
Yes, he's saying he's only found one vendor that makes them,
BUT HE'S ASKING IF ANYONE KNOWS OF ANY OTHERS!!!
That's NOT advertising. Now if the article were a review of these Forever Lights, it would be a Slashvertisement. But he has pointed out the one vendor he's found, but is asking if anyone knows of other sources. (Some pages, such as the LED Museum, mention, "inferior" lights, but give no details on where to find such lights if you WANT LED lights with a transformer at the base.)
As to the Ask Google trolls - I've asked Google and 90% of the links are pages that happen to have LED, Christmas, and light on the same page but do NOT have any content related to LED Christmas lights. The only Google links that came up in my search that were actually relevant were the links posted at the beginning of the article.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Here's their page on LED xmas lights.
"Suggested Retail" is $11.95 per string. Case-lot discounts begin at 24 strings.
Just FYI, of course. I'm not trying to advertise here, just inform. Many electrical supply houses (where the real electricians buy stuff) are National Specialty Lighting dealers. You might try one of them.
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I have bought, tried, and returned many LED light sets. I have hunted at all the stores listed on the ForeverBright where-to-buy page. I have been searching regularly for three weeks now. I have seen the online ordering pages; but somehow I just don't feel comfortable buying mail order when there's only a few more weeks till Christmas, and seeing as how I'll probably have to return them anyway.
The aesthetics are certainly debatable, but I don't find the difference in appearance between to the two lighting technologies to be interesting enough to debate.
As for the cost difference: Lets actually run some numbers:
Let's assume a string of traditional lights consumes 100 watts and a string of LEDs consumes nothing. (I think you would agree that both of these assumptions are more than fair to the LEDs).
If we energize the lights 8 hours per day for 30 days during each "holiday season", that is 240 hours per year that the lights are in use.
If we assume an electricity cost of US$0.10/kwh(which is typical around here, but varies widely depending where you live), that is an annual electricity cost of US$0.024. Lets just go ahead and round this up to 3 cents.
Let's further assume that the LED lights would last forever, but the traditional lights need to be replaced each year at a cost of US$1.50. We now have a total annual cost for the traditional lights of US$1.53 compared to the one time cost of US$20 for the LED lights.
That means it will take the LEDs approx 13 years to reach the break-even point against the traditional lights.
And remember, I made all my assumptions in the favor of the LEDs. Real LEDs do consume some power and real traditional lights don't need to be replaced every year and real LED lights will not last forever (the LEDs themselves might, but the wiring, etc will deteriote due to exposure to sun, weather, etc). So, in reality the break-even point is probably much more than 13 years.
If you just crave the LEDs, then go ahead and buy them, but don't try to claim that you are saving money by doing it.
Hey, who else could go for some flapjacks right now?
You sissy. Real men mine the ore, extract the metals, and make their own wire. And then for the LEDs...
Better idea, go to Target and grab a few coils of their electroluminescent wire, in the car-pimping department.
...
Send me an RFQ. Spec the desired length, spacing, colors, diffuse or water-clear, and pattern. I will reply with a quote for manufacture. LED terminals protected with heatshrink tubing. Blue LEDs will cost approximately ten times more, a bipolar set with alternate LEDs blinking from red to green will be about twice cost of steady-glow or alternate-blink.
...
Not using lights at all further reduces the fire hazard. Not killing a tree and leaving it in your house to dry just about eliminates the fire hazard.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Forever Bright is really the only way to go.
They have a patent on the system they use that
doesn't require a transformer and can be strung
end to end. Here's the response I got from
sales@foreverbright.com
All of the retailers listed on our Website
carry our product line, but they did not stock
all locations. This left retail availability
very poor in some areas and many consumers
frustrated.
We're trying hard to convince them to stock all locations as consumer demand for our products
is very high. It often helps when consumers
tell retail store managers they're looking for
a particular product or brand. The managers
report the requests to corporate offices for
future inventory considerations.
Raley's Drugs stocked the Forever Bright line
in all of their locations and we believe they
may have stores in your area. American home
hardware may also be worth a try. Sorry, we
can't sell direct.
Thank you for taking the time to write us.
Happy holidays,
Dave at Forever Bright
...for this purpose.
Yes, he's saying he's only found one vendor that makes them, BUT HE'S ASKING IF ANYONE KNOWS OF ANY OTHERS!!!
I don't know of any others. And I can't imagine that, for the moment, there will be too many of them.
Listen, here's the problem. I love LEDs, but with current technology, they're not really appropriate for this application.
First off, let me state that, for Christmas lights, tungsten bulbs - especially parallel-wired with 120V bulbs - are a huge improvement over the previous tradition of candles in the Christmas tree. But they're still not a great idea:
An alternative would be gas discharge lamps, like those little flicker-flame neons. But they're not without their flaws:
LEDs are a great idea, since they run cool. They're commonly available in a bunch of colors, and with triple-die LEDs, the lights could literally be any color and could change on-the-fly. But there's a downside:
Sure, LEDs are cheap, but they're still an order of magnitude more expensive that the little miniature lights on those cheap Made In Bangladesh light strings. Most people won't pay the extra, will they? (If in doubt about whether consumers know or appreciate quality, consider again VHS versus Betamax, or Microsoft versus Apple.)
The transformer or switching supply would absolutely constitute a benefit to consumers, in that it would virtually eliminate the possibility of getting a shock off the string. But try to explain it to consumers: "Point the mouse at the little picture of a computer on your screen. Click twice quickly." "Stop it! You're being too technical!" Therefore, it would really only become an extra burden to manufacturers.
Dim. LEDs are a hell of a lot brighter than they were a few years ago, and while they throw out a lot of light, it's over a fairly small viewing angle (typically under 45 degrees). The net output is miniscule compared to a tungsten bulb. Most LEDs can't even be seen to be lit in direct sunlight - but even my miniature light set is clearly visibly on.
Viewing angle is small. Readily available high-intensity LEDs are generally meant for automotive taillight and traffic signalling duty. They usually only have a viewing angle of 12.5 degrees. Your tree will look pretty dark if each light is only visible for 12.5 degrees of a walkaround.
How could this be solved? Maybe clear LEDs with frosted housings in order to make the light diffuse over the entire surface of the LED? Good idea, but it's still not bright enough to be satisfactory for that purpose. Nor does the frosting, in practice, diffuse light as evenly as you would want.
My perspective? I love LEDs. They're my favorite modern electronic component. (Second is probably the MOSFET. Overall favorite is vacuum tubes.)
I've got a 1960s or early 1970s Sound A-5000 power amplifier (try doing a Google search for that! Anyone got any info on the amp, e-mail me) which blew its tungsten pilot light. The light was a GE #47 - 6V, 150mA pilot light. Consumes 0.9W off the amp's low voltage supply to light up a dim red indicator on the front panel.
So I took a traffic duty red LED that I had kicking around. Clusters of these are used to make brake lights and traffic lights. The LED is rated for 3,000MCD at 12.5 degrees with a forward voltage drop of 2.1V and a peak current of 30mA.
The resistor was calculated as follows: Vin-Vdrop = 6.3V - 2.1V = 4.2V. R = E/I = 4.2V/0.03A = 140 ohms. Next standard value is 150 ohms, and I used that. When I measured the current through the LED, it was (unsurprisingly) 28mA, 93% of the LED's rated maximum. The forward voltage drop was 2.1 volts. The LED is being driven harder than I would like, and it gets warm after a few minutes.
Even so, the dim red indicator on the front panel is still dim. Right on axis, it'll blind you, but from any other angle, the indicator is still too dim to be useful. Improvements were made by actually grinding down the end of the LED and using clear hot-melt glue to attach it to the back of the bezel, but it would still be unacceptably dim on a finished product. Certainly dimmer than the old GE #47 was, not even as bright as the panel LED on the front of my Viewsonic. And that's with a traffic duty LED, pushed hard.
In summary, naked LEDs are great when viewed on axis, used as indicators or when a fine shaft of light is required. But trying to diffuse them or expect behavior similar to an incandescent bulb is still pushing things... for the moment.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.