Cutting LED Candy Canes

AntinOz

Apprentice elf
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Dec 23, 2011
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Lyndhurst
I have a string of 5 LED candy canes, each with about 8 - 10 LED's in them (from memory). These are running at 24V off one side of my DC48. Now the silly question part, how can I tell if I can cut these and run each candy cane separately?
 

Christmas on Clarafield

Full time elf
Joined
Nov 9, 2011
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395
Location
Melbourne
Check to see if there is a resistor on the first LED in the each candy cane and you should be able to just cut the wires in between each one.
I had a set of 6 candy canes from Christmas Kingdom that I have done just that with but each cane had 20 Leds (10 on 2 channels).
 

AAH

I love blinky lights :)
Community project designer
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Dec 27, 2010
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Eaglehawk
Almost the simplest method is to check the number of wires that loop out of 1 candy cane and go to the next. If there are only 2 wires that loop from 1 candy cane to the next then I'd say that it's 99.9% certain that there's the 24v on theses 2 wires and that there are dropper resistors in the canes somewhere.
 

AntinOz

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Dec 23, 2011
Messages
50
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Lyndhurst
Thanks. The whole string only has two wires, so yes there are only two wires coming out of each candy cane.
 

Ck

New elf
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Dec 15, 2012
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5
Qucik question.... for those that purchase items from us at christmas kingdom
why go to all the trouble of cutting controllers and hacking etc when it is a lot less hassle just to ask me to bring the product in the way you want it?
 

AAH

I love blinky lights :)
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Eaglehawk
Welcome to ACL CK
A majority of us Aussies just use what we find available on the shelves at Christmas Kingdom, Big W, Bunnings etc and adapt to our needs. In most cases we are using pretty low volumes of decorations and for those of us with computer controlled displays it looks nicer being able to control 1 element at a time. Time constraints probably also limit whether you could bring stuff in on demand for us. Being in Bendigo myself I've never had a chance to visit your store but i imagine that it's not open till Xmas is approaching and by the time us blinky nuts see something in your store it's probably getting too late in the year to get stuff shipped out and have it ready for a December 1 switch on.
 

Ck

New elf
Joined
Dec 15, 2012
Messages
5
Hi Ahh

Our stores open form June onwards, however email is open 24/7. All I am suggesting is with a little planning you could save a bucket load of hassles, as I have stated to someone earlier if I don’t have to store, handle, sort, etc the product and it helps the members on this forum they can pretty much buy the items at cost. If on the other hand I have to place the product in store, you can appreciate that there is a heap of overhead charges, expenses and profit that has to be added to the purchase price. My post was only a suggestion in an attempt to help out people on here that are purchasing substandard product simply because it’s cheap. Not all LED, are made equal.

I understand that most people leave things to the last minute, myself included however, with a bit of planning there is a way to purchase quality product at a cheap price. It is not a big issue for our supplier to supply product to spec even if it is only 1 or 2 pieces . I guess what I am saying is that there is an alternative . Just a thought

Art
 

Christmas on Clarafield

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Nov 9, 2011
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Hi Art
Most of my stuff that I have from you I bought about two years ago before I got into the animation side of christmas lights and hence as my requirements changed I just took what I had and adapted to my current needs. Now that you have the offer out there, it may be interesting to have a look at the prices for a few things.
 

AntinOz

Apprentice elf
Joined
Dec 23, 2011
Messages
50
Location
Lyndhurst
Nice hijack Art. I will definitely look at my options for next year. This question was more about cutting up some static lights that I already had lying around. Next year will be planned, this year just kind of happened.
 
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