2011 Big W Lights Starting to Appear on Shelves

Mean Well make a 30V (adjustable from 27V to 33V) 240W unit. I'm not sure if there's a lower powered model that does the same voltage range.
 
Those Mean Well 30V power supplies are officially adjustable from 27V to 33V. I just measured one and it actually adjusted from 23.8V to 33.8V :)

Running the cool white Big W strings from 31V DC results in a current draw of 200mA for the whole 200 LEDs (both channels). That equates to 10mA LED current. You might be able to push them harder, but without knowing the LED specs, you might shorten their life.
 
Big W online is $9 for the 200 count starter packs, but multicolour only. I bought another 4 the other day and noticed today that they are even offering free freight on this item!
 
Newbie again.

From reading through this thread and the 2010 and 2009 Big W light threads, I'm getting more of an idea.

I've got a bunch of 2011 Big W lights and a lot of old ones from previous years.

Do the BigW 2011 LED strings need any extra resistors added when run off 30V DC?

What do you do with the LED string controllers power supplies that you chop off.?

For my older lights I'll need work out how many LEDs in the segment and work out the resistance value needed. Based on the threads already here for calculating resistors. Is that correct?

Aaron
 
Aaron, the 2010 and 2011 Big W LED strings can be run from 30V with no additional resistors.

I threw the controllers away but kept the plugpack for possible future projects.

Working out the resistors required for other strings can be fiddly as it's based on the LED colour and how many are in each series string.
 
Just did a quick (not very scientific) comparison between running the Big W LED strings from their original controller and plug pack versus a DC power supply.

The point where the DC power supply seemed to give the same brightness as the original setup was about 28 Volts. I was running them at 31V which is still below their max current, but it looks like you can run them at a lot lower voltage if you don't need them any brighter than "stock".
 
I found something interesting (annoying really) with the Big W strings when I went to test the pair that I had cable tied together (as a 4 channel string) to make sure they were all good before putting up.

I plugged one set in, then the other. All worked, but there was a noticeable difference in light output between them. They were identical cool white strings bought at the same time (Big W online).

I then tested all of the cool white strings @ 30V DC (both channel driven). The results:

107mA *
114mA
123mA
144mA
144mA
149mA *
164mA

* Of course, the two I tied together were 107mA and 149mA - Doh!

So, the moral of the story is to check all strings first if you're going to mix interleave them like I did.
 
I just bought 4 packs of the Big-W 200 LED icicle lights, does anybody know if they can be chopped into smaller sections?, I would like to end up with at least 8 segments total so i half woud be good. Tracing the wiring is making my brain hurt. I will be drving them with 30VDC.
Cheers Anthony.
 
David_AVD said:
You can cut them every 2 metres (20 LEDs) where it drops down to only 3 wires.
Click to expand...
and then they fit perfectly in candy canes
 
Hi everyone I just notice that the Big W online store has the 200 string led starter packs of multi colour, blue, red, warm white, cool white, and green on special for $15.00 saving $4.92, so I just order 6 more sets of multi colour and 3 of blue, red, green, warm white and cool white for next years displays as they are not posting out til the 16th Dec. Not sure how long the special is on for.
 
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