Where to buy LED fairy lights - Low Voltage?

[coopz05]

Hey guys,


New to LOR, but not new to xmas lights in general. Yet have no idea about AC vs DC stuff.


Before LOR, I have some eBay bought 240v fairy and rope lights, but as Im going to go with LOR this year, I am going no doubt going to be converted into using DC LOR after I attend the mini in a fortnight.


I now need to know where to purchase bulk LED fairy lights.


Everyone is telling me to stay away from 240v for safety reasons, which is great advice, so I need to know where I can buy low voltage DC lights of;


50m strings x 4
100m strings x 7
and 20m Light ropes x2 or 3
at comparable prices to eBay ($31 delivered for 100m)


Even if someone on here makes them ready for DC, I would be open to purchasing already set to go.


Someone put me onto www.mysolarled.com


Has anyone bought from here before and would they recommend it? I don't mind buying from china, if someone else here has had no issues with them, but I just want my display to be safe.


Are there any suppliers who use this site that might be able to help me out?


I am looking at an order in the vacinity of $400-$500. I would like them in my hand within a fortnight if possible so that I can take them to the mini to really get my head around what I need to do to convert to DC.


what does everyone else do.


I should preface buying saying, I dont have the time to wait for Big W to bring theirs out this xmas, because I need afew months to build my frames etc. But I am willing to purchase anyones second hand Big W's if they have any. looking for Cool White & Blue only.


Any help here would be appreciated.

 

[kane]

Are there any suppliers who use this site that might be able to help me out?

I haven't seen any LED suppliers on the forum - the main vendors you see on here are those that produce controllers. Most people go direct to the source in China for LEDs..

I wouldn't rush into purchasing too much until after the mini - you might find that you'd prefer to go down the path of smart strings (pixels), especially after seeing what you can do with them!

Before LOR, I have some eBay bought 240v fairy and rope lights, but as Im going to go with LOR this year, I am going no doubt going to be converted into using DC LOR after I attend the mini in a fortnight.

If you haven't already purchased LOR controllers, don't rule out other controllers, which will give you much more bang for your buck. And these days, you can actually use LOR software with other hardware.

Everyone is telling me to stay away from 240v for safety reasons, which is great advice, so I need to know where I can buy low voltage DC lights of;

50m strings x 4
100m strings x 7
and 20m Light ropes x2 or 3
at comparable prices to eBay ($31 delivered for 100m)

Someone put me onto www.mysolarled.com

Has anyone bought from here before and would they recommend it? I don't mind buying from china, if someone else here has had no issues with them, but I just want my display to be safe.

I purchased around 90 strings (14,000 leds) from mysolarled in 2011 - do a quick search of this forum for mysolarled and you'll get a bit of feedback. Overall, I was very happy - made to my exact requirements (I asked for 27v), with waterproof connectors already hooked up. No failures on arrival or in the two years I've used them, and good communication from Kelly @ mysolarled


All of my strings were either 10m or 20m long, spaced at 100mm (so 10m had 100 led), and worked out at approx $0.06 per LED plus shipping. So a rough calculation of your requirements (based on 100m spacing) would be around 9000 led, so approx $540, plus shipping..


One thing I'd check though, is that a 100m string could have issues with voltage drop over that distance - the LEDs at the end of the string could be very dim...


Rope is something I've never had, so can't comment on it- Ryan is a bit of a rope expert so you can ask him about it at the SA mini!

 

[David_AVD]

50m and 100m would be a pain to work with in my opinion. Much better to have shorter strings that can be connected together if required. It's a lot easier to swap out a faulty 10m string than a 100m one!

 

[coopz05]

Thanks Kane.


Maybe I'll wait, and might go with RGB after the mini.


Whats the price rough difference?


Also, when you say "waterproof connectors already hooked up", forgive my ignorance, but are they connectors to the power cord, or are they connectors like the BIG W strings, where you can attach multiple 20m strings together?


If I go DC, will I even have power plugs at the end? or does DC just get hard wired into the board channels?