You'll notice in the photo above that SOME of the lamps to the left of the yellow tape are OK, and some are dark. Divide and conquer! My light string had four chunks. We simply want to break the big project down into smaller sections. You could use yarn, or a piece of ribbon, or anything at all. I use colored masking tape for this - you'll see yellow tape in the photo. The first thing, though, is to mark the boundaries between "chunks". We can take this new knowledge and create a scheme to find and replace all of the bad bulbs. :( The other bulbs in that chunk may be OK, or they could perhaps be shunted out. There is a gap in the line - like someone "dropped hands" - and now the power does not flow. (B) If -all- of the lights in a chunk are OFF, its very likely that -one- of the bulbs burned out, but its shunt did not work properly. All of those bulbs are still "holding hands", and electrical current passes all the way from the left end of the chunk to the right end. (A) If -any- of the lights in a chunk turn on, that means that all of the bulbs either are working happily, or else they burned out and their Magic Shunt worked properly. OK, so let's step back and review the big picture. (Meh.) And some chunks may have ALL of the lights off. (Happy happy!) Some chunks may have just a few lights burned out. When you take the set out of storage, some chunks may have ALL of the lights working fine. *pfft*! So! If you have a LARGE string of lights, it probably has several of these chunks. If you were to plug one of these little guys into 110 volts, or even 10 volts, it would burn out in an instant. A string of ten bulbs would operate properly at 25 volts, 40 bulbs would take 100v, and so on. When you string a bunch of 2.5v bulbs in "series", they share that voltage between them, like holding hands. (See the photo.) Each bulb is rated for a low voltage, 2.5 volts (AC) in this case. They are arranged (electrically) in "chunks" - some number of bulbs connected in series. (Just like the individual light fixtures in your house - each one is independent of all the others.) These little guys are different. That's because all of those bulbs were 110 volts, and wired in parallel. In the olden days of LARGE holiday lights, one bulb would burn out, and it would not affect its neighbors. Several voltages, and several choices of quantity. NEW INFO JANUARY 2022! Commentor "esbede" has found a source for replacement bulbs IN QUANTITY -, and specifically HERE. Alternatively, if you have several strings, you can scavenge the lights from one string and use them to fix several other strings. Maybe you saved the extras that came in the box last year, maybe you will need to go buy some new ones. In addition to the string of lights, you will probably need some replacement bulbs. The string of lights is plugged in at the top left corner of the photo, and loops around counterclockwise. Here I am using a table in the Hub area of TechShop Pittsburgh. The -very- first thing to do is to take your string of lights, and stretch it out on the floor or handy table. Don't pitch 'em, you can FIX them, and it's pretty simple, actually! Just follow this recipe - it's not frustrating - in fact it's very gratifying. 'Maybe Christmas,' he thought, 'doesn’t come from a store.So! Every year you take the box of holiday lights off the shelf, plug them in, and only half of them work. Merry Christmas! Here are some related subreddits or subreddits we think you may enjoy! Related Subreddits! Please resolve your shadowban with the admins before posting.Ħ) Posts or comments which violate Reddit rules, or are otherwise discriminatory toward religion/race/sex/gender/etc. Product links shared under other circumstances are allowed, but may be held for review by the AutoModerator.Ģ) Always credit any decoration setups to their original artists.ģ) Posts which exhibit political, offensive, or NSFW decorations will be removed.Ĥ) Users must have a minimum post karma of 100 and a minimum account age of 1 week to be eligible to post.ĥ) Posts or comments submitted by shadowbanned Redditors will be removed. Spam/advertisements/affiliate links will be removed. Welcome to /r/ChristmasLights! Here you can share your either your own Christmas light show or some you may have found in other places! Subreddit Rules:ġ) No sponsored posts or comments allowed.
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