chrismtmas lights in Canada

Brado78

Senior member
Jan 26, 2015
293
4
81
Why are solid colored Christmas lights getting harder and harder to find in Canada? Are LED's eventually taking over?, and they will eventually disappear?
 

nakedfrog

No Lifer
Apr 3, 2001
58,055
12,245
136
I expect LEDs will pretty much completely replace incandescents. Is there a particular reason you're after the old-school ones?
 

lxskllr

No Lifer
Nov 30, 2004
57,364
7,516
126
LED isn't quite the same though. There's a richness with the incandescents LEDs don't have. Not sure it matters outside.
 
Nov 20, 2009
10,043
2,573
136
I think it is a problem with the color of LED to begin with. Even with colored plastic covers to mimic the old C19 style the color is just off.
 

local

Golden Member
Jun 28, 2011
1,850
511
136
Incandescents give a warm glow, LEDs give a cold light. Hate that Christmas lights are all cheapo LED now.
 

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
67,201
12,028
126
www.anyf.ca
I would love if they made proper decent quality Christmas lights. I would pay $50-$100 per 25' strand if I knew they were good quality and were UV resistent and had life time replaceable parts (Ex: not a fly by night thing where they stop making them after a few years). The Noma "Santa Lights" C9s from Canadian Tire were great for that, because they were so standard and they made them for so long. But with LEDs most of them are built in bulbs and use crap quality LED modules and not one set is the same from the other and they have different ones each year. Also they don't rectify/filter them so lot of them flicker at 60hz. It's hit and miss and you don't know until you plug them in. Some times they have displays in the store but it's harder to tell in the store because with them all lit next to each other the flicker is everywhere. I wonder if some people get seizures in that aisle lol.

If they used proper high lumen LED modules and higher quality plastics, and designed them so that they are sized for 170VDC and would be fully rectified and filtered they would be way better and brighter. But everything is built down to a price now days, pisses me off.

What I'd like to see is fully addressable RGB ones that provide signal wires that would use a simple open source protocol. Make the bulbs changeable too in case they go bad. Yeah that's never gonna happen... but wishful thinking. The closest thing is to get RGB strips. I'd like to play with those some day.

One of these days I need to look into what it would take to make my own. I would design them so they can be permanently installed on the house. Maybe doable with 3D printing and the right type of filament.
 
May 11, 2008
19,303
1,130
126
I would love if they made proper decent quality Christmas lights. I would pay $50-$100 per 25' strand if I knew they were good quality and were UV resistent and had life time replaceable parts (Ex: not a fly by night thing where they stop making them after a few years). The Noma "Santa Lights" C9s from Canadian Tire were great for that, because they were so standard and they made them for so long. But with LEDs most of them are built in bulbs and use crap quality LED modules and not one set is the same from the other and they have different ones each year. Also they don't rectify/filter them so lot of them flicker at 60hz. It's hit and miss and you don't know until you plug them in. Some times they have displays in the store but it's harder to tell in the store because with them all lit next to each other the flicker is everywhere. I wonder if some people get seizures in that aisle lol.

If they used proper high lumen LED modules and higher quality plastics, and designed them so that they are sized for 170VDC and would be fully rectified and filtered they would be way better and brighter. But everything is built down to a price now days, pisses me off.

What I'd like to see is fully addressable RGB ones that provide signal wires that would use a simple open source protocol. Make the bulbs changeable too in case they go bad. Yeah that's never gonna happen... but wishful thinking. The closest thing is to get RGB strips. I'd like to play with those some day.

One of these days I need to look into what it would take to make my own. I would design them so they can be permanently installed on the house. Maybe doable with 3D printing and the right type of filament.

WS2812 leds from World semi are quite good. And have a standard serial communication protocol.
I guess if you look around on aliexpress or banggood, you might find even christmass lights bubl replacement with ws2812 leds in them.
http://www.world-semi.com/

WS2811 is only the 24bit rgb ic which needs a seperate rgb led.
https://tinkersphere.com/addressabl...fused-rgb-led-pixels-strand-of-50-ws2811.html
 
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Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
67,201
12,028
126
www.anyf.ca
WS2812 leds from World semi are quite good. And have a standard serial communication protocol.
I guess if you look around on aliexpress or banggood, you might find even christmass lights bubl replacement with ws2812 leds in them.
http://www.world-semi.com/

WS2811 is only the 24bit rgb ic which needs a seperate rgb led.
https://tinkersphere.com/addressabl...fused-rgb-led-pixels-strand-of-50-ws2811.html

Yeah that's probably the closest thing. Want to play around with those some time.
 

bfun_x1

Senior member
May 29, 2015
475
155
116
I used to hate LED Christmas lights. The original ones would shift towards blue when they were far away and they flickered in a way that'd bothered my eyes. The new ones are better but they still laser beam right into your eye balls. Nothing beat the soft glow of an incandescent bulb. I put C7 lights on the house last year but this year they tripled our electric rate between 5 and 9 PM so the C7s might stay in the box.
 

BoomerD

No Lifer
Feb 26, 2006
62,681
11,024
136
I generally prefer the look of the old-timey incandescents, but I love that I can string 50 sets od LED’s together instead of having to run several extension cords.
 

Brado78

Senior member
Jan 26, 2015
293
4
81
Nakedfrog I love the look of the old fashioned ones, I am a traditional kind of guy I guess. LED's just don't cut it for me right now..