LED Christmas lights wirring

[B Ghostrider]

How are the LEDS wired . In Paarrel o in series. the reason I ask is
becaues I was wondering if I were to cut a few off the end would it
cause some grief(a blown fuse in the fuse box) or would the remaining
leds be a little brighter.

 

[BretCahill]

Don't blue and LEDs require 4.5 volts while red
and green require 3 v?

Bret Cahill

 

[Richard]

Don't blue and LEDs require 4.5 volts while red
and green require 3 v?

Bret Cahill

I've got a small battery operated set that is wired in parallel. It
uses 2 AA or a 3 V wall wart (not included). I got it at Walgreens
last year to trim my daughters dollhouse xmas tree. It has green,
yellow and red LEDs and using a crude bench supply I get it to fire as
low as 1.7 V (barely) bright at 3V brighter at 4.2 V brightest at 5.5
V.

I have no specs on these so I can't guarantee how long they'll last at
5.5V.
I've heard some of these are wired series and AC so just converting to
DC would make them brighter. I'd just take one and play with it to see
how bright you can get it.

I have played with some of these low voltage LEDs from China that
wouldn't take more than 2.5 V. Weird but I blew 3 of them before I
figured it out.

Richard

 

[Don Klipstein]

How are the LEDS wired . In Paarrel o in series. the reason I ask is
becaues I was wondering if I were to cut a few off the end would it
cause some grief(a blown fuse in the fuse box) or would the remaining
leds be a little brighter.

They are in series, although longer strings may have series subsets
connected in parallel with each other.

I would not modify them. I have seen one model of the "Forever Bright"
brand (last year) that had especially severe flicker even for that brand,
and only a small percentage of each AC cycle had instantaneous voltage
exceeding the voltage drop of the LEDs. The current would increase
greatly if just a few LEDs were replaced by a short.

- Don Klipstein ([email protected])