Just got some of my LEDs from Travis. And that is the same construction as mine. And yes, I was wondering if that was just a splice point or what. I dont have a desire to destroy a string to find out just how the string is wired so I have no idea. Are both wires from the LEDs on one side of resistor? So, this leaves me with the question, what is the large wire wart near the male plug? Is that just a choke, and these strings are not true FW?
This is one of the strings from Travis. It happened to be the first out of the box, and it was defective. The last half of the string flickered weakly. I was worried, but the other 18 strings seem to be working. I needed a 50-bulb string anyway, so I just removed the defective half of the string and used the first half for my star.
The wire from the nearest LED is connected to one side of the resistor, and the other side is soldered to the other wire that passes entirely through the bump. It's actually one piece of wire with enough insulation removed so it can be soldered to the resistor.
The bump on the male end is a full wave bridge rectifier. I didn't destroy that part since it's still working, but I was able to deduce what it is by putting a voltmeter on the female end, which reads about 140 VDC when the string is plugged in. The other bumps seem to all be the same 620Ω resistor, deduced by the fact that each one reaches about the same temperature when plugged in.
The lights themselves are connected as 25 pairs in series. Each pair is connected in parallel. You can see this as each pair of LEDs has two wires connecting the pair. This configuration is patented. It allows one light to fail open while keeping the other lights lit by having twice the current flow through the working LED in the pair.
I was wondering how they were going to get 120VAC out at the female socket. It just was not adding up. And I just had not taken the time to put my DVM at the socket. Well that tells me that I do not want to plug in anything that is rated for 120VAC at the end of the string. And thanks for analyzing the circuit path through the string.
Max-Paul wrote: Well that tells me that I do not want to plug in anything that is rated for 120VAC at the end of the string.
If you plug a half-wave LED string into that socket, it will be brighter and become a full-wave string. I did that last year with no problems.
Steven -- You seem to know a lot about a lot on this site --- I am 100% LED lights ... 37,000 of them this year --- most purchased from 1000Bulbs.Com .... every year it seems that some of my channels either (1) Flicker or (2) this year's new challenge --- some of the exact same lights on different channels are much 'dimmer' than others.
These channels even go to the same LOR1602W controller --- 20% fade up and down just to give an ambient look, altho I plan to increase that number --- but its very frustrating to have the same style of light[s] on different channels to the same controller and the results are much lower intensity.
I plan to add either an low-watt incandescent bulb to the flicker channels, but not sure about the dim lights.
And of course there is also that one string of blue C6 lights in the middle of 5 strings that flickers while the other 4 strings don't .....
