low voltage dumb strings, where to buy?

marmalade

cats & pixels
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Dec 1, 2015
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newcastle
Have been trawling the internet for some simple fairy light type strings that aren't wired for those mulitfunction controllers Most of the ones I have bought are mfc at 200VDC.

These need some tol be used for fillers on the lawn and just throwing over random stuff, but controlled of course. Any that work at 30V without any reverse polarity trickery would be perfect!

Anyone found sources?

thanks :)
 

danv

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Dec 5, 2016
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Rockhampton
Bunnings had some last year. They are 30V strings and had multi function controllers but I removed them
 

David_AVD

Grandpa Elf
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Even the Bunnings white strings I examined last year were the polarity-swap type.

I've made a 2801 input DC board to control them (for my own use).

Hanson Electronics makes a DMX version. Can remember if he has a pixel input one.
 

diyer

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Sunbury
FYI, since contacting these Chinese manufacturers, they regularly send me their e-catalogues, a recent one is attached:

Hi Steve

How are you? Hope everything is going well with you,

Last year because the shipping cost is expensive, So we not cooperate on led string lights samples, Hope this year we can cooperate with you,
The attachment is the E-catalogue of our company products,please check,
Have any interested item, Please kindly inform us, We are happy to tell you more details.

Looking forward to hear from you soon,

Best Regards

Lucy ma
Sales manager
Whatsapp/Tel:+86 15813196273

https://deasonlighting.en.alibaba.com/productgrouplist-802275104/LED_Curtain_Light.html?spm=a2700.8304367.0.0.mFlYQx
 

Attachments

  • Holiday Lights E-catalogue of Zhongshan Shining Lighting CO.,.pdf
    2.4 MB · Views: 13

danv

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Even the Bunnings white strings I examined last year were the polarity-swap type.

I've made a 2801 input DC board to control them (for my own use).

Hanson Electronics makes a DMX version. Can remember if he has a pixel input one.

The colour units I found were but they did have a range last year of "simple" white and blue strings. I had to actually open boxes and look as the staff on at the time werent sure.
 

David_AVD

Grandpa Elf
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All of the 2-wire strings (and some other stuff like rope lights) I've seen at Bunnings use the polarity swap method.

Even some of the solar strings (Arlec for example) have been this way for 2 years now.
 

diyer

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Another option would be to convert battery powered strings? You can get 10M LED strings from eBay sellers http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/10-500-L...-Decor-/311692680465?var=&hash=item489254dd11

These strings use LEDs in parallel so you can easily change the length, the battery box has 3 AA batteries, an internal resistor drops the voltage to 3.3V (from memory) I used a small buck converter to drop from 24V to 3.3V I have used the red and white strings around candy canes
 

David_AVD

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I've done the same thing with the battery operated sets of 10 and 20 string lights (or motifs and the like), mainly for Halloween.

If you're not dimming them, a $1 buck converter is easy, efficient and covers a wide input voltage range.

If you do need to dim them and want the voltage conversion contained to the string, resistors are the way to go. Much less efficient and only good for a fixed input voltage of course.
 

danv

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Joined
Dec 5, 2016
Messages
220
Location
Rockhampton
All of the 2-wire strings (and some other stuff like rope lights) I've seen at Bunnings use the polarity swap method.

Even some of the solar strings (Arlec for example) have been this way for 2 years now.

Yes 99% of them were that. I spent a good few hours there finding the few strings that weren't.
 
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