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I have seen in several different posts about led's not fading correctly if using animation. What brands do you suggest using,and is there a "trick" to fades with led's. I have a 10ft. animated tree now with 5,775 lights in blue,red,and green and plan to strip it after this season and install led's. Any info will be appreciated.
SPaschall wrote: I have seen in several different posts about led's not fading correctly if using animation. What brands do you suggest using,and is there a "trick" to fades with led's. I have a 10ft. animated tree now with 5,775 lights in blue,red,and green and plan to strip it after this season and install led's. Any info will be appreciated.
SPaschall
Hi - I held off on buying LED lights because when I tested a few years ago, the interface with animated fading was terrible. No fade then off, or fade for 1 second, get brighter, flicker, off, etc.
This year I did my research, and knew at a minimum I needed full-wave technology, and fused (strings) *not* replacement bulbs. I then went with user ratings and overall brightness. Best I found, and where I put *all* my money this year:
http://www.ledholidaylighting.com - Travis is the contact, and even though it is a big company and he was very busy, each time I emailed or called I was treated like my question or purchase was the most important thing to him. Whether it was a "I need one more string of white lights can you overnight it to me" or even questions about the technology in general.
So I'm 90% LED now - I use light-o-rama - and I have one entire show/sequence that is nothing but different fades (ok, one twinkle at the end). I have fades of 1/10th second, 1 second, 5 seconds, 15 second and 30 seconds all happening at once on trees/bushes in my yard, and am thrilled with the quality of fade. I don't give it a second thought now, the fades are identical to my older C9 glass bulbs that I used last year - side by side testing showed exactly the same fade rate and brightness, so I tossed the old C9's and went LED.
Wayne Kremer wrote: medman2000, for the C9's, how many LED's in each bulb and they are dimmable? I haven't seen too many C9 LED's that are dimmable. Thx!
For the fused strings, the diogens each had 3 LED per bulb - both in the C7 and in the C9. I actually ended up going with the C7 because they seemed a little more bright than the C9 when I compared those two head-to-head. But the C7 LED was darn close to the brightness to the glass C9 (and surpassed the glass C9 in terms of brilliance and "wow" factor).
They dim/fade and twinkle (Light-o-rama) perfect. The "shimmer" effect still looks like a strobe light so I don't use that effect.
The replaceable (or retrofit) C9 bulbs have 5 LEDs and were brighter, but that technology does not yet fade or dim so I skipped them for this year. I'm not sure if all of the retrofit C9's have 5 LED, but the diogen brand that ledholidaylighting.com sells do. I'm sure you've read all the other posts about the retrofit bulbs and possible rust/corrosion though haven't heard much about it with this year's technology.
SPaschall wrote: Thanks medman2000, thats the kind of info I wanted. I will definitely research them. Hopefully the prices are reasonable.
SPaschall
For many of us, price on LED can be a bit harder to swallow. Last year I was running mostly glass C9 and some minis/ropelight. It totalled about 185 amps from my subpanel in my garage.
This year, since I wanted to upgrade the number of lights, I was going to have to hire an electrician to come out and change my service again - for my home in my area that was going to be several thousand dollars again. Plus many of my glass C9 bulbs had broken in the wind or little neighbor kids breaking them, so I had to replace a good 25% of those bulbs. Instead, I just put up the money to switch to LED (never told my wife the final cost!) and am just thrilled. *everyone* who has commented on my display this year has mentioned how much more brilliant (color wise) it is compared to last year. I went with the commercial grade strings - can plug in something like 150 strings into one adapter, cool.
And, I am running 18 of my 20 LOR boxes with all of the LED strings off of *one* 15 amp outlet. I have some ropelight stuff taking up another 15 amps or so on the other 2 boxes, but WOW did that feel good to use the one outlet for the entire LED part of the display (288 channels of LOR animation running LED in my yard on less than 15 amps!).
I'd suggest going higher quality and buy fewer than shaving a dollar off per string at Target or Lowes or something and regretting it later.
