# Christmas Lights



## ship (Dec 15, 2005)

Let's say you took all the lamps out of a 100w/120v Christmas light string and inserted them into the frame of a "Lite Bright" toy assembly. You than soldered circuits together by way of the lead in wires on each lamp so as to achieve series operation.

How many lamps per series circuit would you have? How many circuits of lamps would you have than? What wattage and voltage do these lamps operate under?

What's the total wattage of a 100 lamp string anyway? How many strings of 100 lamps is recommended to plug in to each other? If I have a tree with 12 strings of lamps, is it safe to plug them all together into the same add a plug plug/outlets or do I need to run Zip cord to how many strings of them? How many amps will these 12 strings eat up? How many zip cords are needed and what gauge of zip cord wire?

Were in getting back to the "Lite Brite" assembly, say I wanted to make it a "shunt" type system, how would I go about it assuming the lamps of each circuit are right next to each other? Would resistors in parallel work on each lamp? What size resistor if that would do? What if I wanted to do one shunt per circuit, what size of resistor would than be required? This given a resistor would work in parallel for a in series circuit and other circuits fed off this in series circuit now powered by a resistor as path of least resistance by way of being wired in parallel. 

How do blinker lights work in controlling one’s Christmas lights? Merry Lite Brite Christmas.

Have fun crawling under the tree to read the tags on your plugs. As a public service if nothing else others will recognize the important warning on the plugs or lights ow many strings can be powered off the same stacked plugs in it otherwise becoming a fire hazzard.


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## ricc0luke (Dec 15, 2005)

that depends... there are different types of the little christmas lights with various wattages...

and i believe it is notmally at most 3 strings... thats pretty much the standard amount for pluging in strings to one another...

and the blinker bulbs work using the principal that if you pull a bulb out the whole string goes out... thats why they don't work on the expensive strings that will work no matter what or the C-7 or C-9 strings...

ship... sorry... but this didn't get me to crawl under the chirstmas tree... but this does kinda show my obsession with christmas, or should i say 'holiday' lights.

and as far as the whole shunt thing... i have no clue what you are talking about. but the lite-bright idea is really niffty!


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## ship (Dec 16, 2005)

Blinker lamps - normally clear with a red tips to them when you install them into the string cause the string to flash on and off. Often when one attempts to recycle a old string, the blinker lamps would get mixed up with the replaced lamps and te string would start flashing. I believe that the more lamps you added to the string, the faster it would blink but don't quote me on that because that is something I have not had to worry about for years now.

A string with 100 lamps should have similar voltage of lamps within it no matter the brand, as opposed to a string with 50 lamps at a different voltage. Wattage might differ but it's doubtful. There is only so much wattage you can have in a lamp of this type.

Used to be that back in the days before "Made in China" was the rule for crap Christmas lights, that the higher quality Christmas lights would have "shunt lamps" in them.

A shunt lamp when in series has something in that allows the rest of the circuit to continue being lit even if one lamp burns out in the series string. Hard to find such light strings these days. Made it very easy to figure out what was the bad lamp if only one lamp went off.

You can still I believe find shunt type strings.


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