Re: LED Christmas Tree Lights

I got the inverter to work I used a 14 volt DeWalt Battery Pack from my
cordless drill. I have a 100 led string plugged into it and Im going
to see how long it will last
Thanks

rickj@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Thanks for the reply
I would like to use the inverter but like I said the battery that I
have I guess is not large enough. I dont really want to carry around a
car battery
How do I get the inverter to run on a small battery
Thanks
Rick
Michael Black wrote:
(rickj@xxxxxxxxxxxx) writes:
Hi guys I purchased one of those invertors for the car that will run up
to 60 watts I tried hooking it up to a 12 volt battery from one of
those indoor emergency lights its rated at 6 a\hr. It would not start
up I guess I need something with a little more current. I have tried
in the past to wire the led lights in parallel but didn't have any luck
the first leds would light up but the others would not. I want to be
able to wrap my daughter up in a string of 100 so she can walk around
outside. Does anyone have any suggestions other then a long extension
cord?
Thanks Rick

You're going about it all wrong.

Get the raw LEDs, wire them up, and then connect it to a reasonable
sized battery. SHe can carry the whole thing around and the inverter
(and it's associated inefficiency) goes away.

The LEDs in the Christmas lights are no different from any old LED,
they need a couple of volts. But in order to run them off 120VAC, they
have to wire them so they can run off the higher voltage, which means
either putting them in series, or big dropping resistors (I don't
know how they do it). So in order to run those off a batter, you
need the inverter to step up the voltage, and then the LEDs in effect
step them down.

Making your own string of LEDs means you can wire them in parallel
(or at least in small substrings of only a few in series so they only
need 12v or so), and then run them off the battery directly.

You could even get fancy, and have some sort of sequencer to light
the LEDs in a sequence of some kind.

Michael

.

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