The author also talks about the LightKeeper, a $15-35 device (depending on whether it's the "pro" version) that helps quickly locate burned out bulbs in instances when the entire string is dark. If you've ever spent a half hour methodically removing and replacing each bulb in turn, you can probably understand why this excites us—even though by buying it you've sort of ruined the whole "saving money" aspect of this endeavor. But hey, you still get to be a handyman.
"Christmas Lights and How to Fix Them" [Cyphersbyritter via Make]
(Photo: Scurzuzu)
That's one thing i love about living in an apartment. None of this light strand nonsense. All I have to do is wrap my door up all pretty-like, slap on a huge bow, and 15 minutes later, I'm the epitome of the holiday spirit. A bigger baby Jesus than ODB.
]]>I curse the day prelit trees were invented. I needed to get a new tree this year and it was almost impossible to find an atificial tree that WASNT prelit. I HATE those things. Youre stuck with those crappy mini lights and you cant change the lights from year to year, plus they are the cheap crappy Chinese lights that only last 1 or 2 years
]]>I am actually much more old school than that. I use Edison bulbs on my tree. I actually collect Christmas lights from 1908 to about 1980. I refuse to use these new crappy mini lights and LED lights. Its getting much harder to find Edison Christmas bulbs but nothing comes close to the look of the nipple bulbs with carbon filaments glowing
]]>That's just plain false. If the string has an outlet on the end, that means the lights are wired in parallel across the length of the two conductors of the cord, and not in series.
If the lights were wired in series (that's the pesky type that if one bulb goes out or is taken out, the rest of the string goes out too), then the current would flow through each of the the lamps, and there would be no outlet on the end since the lighting of the string depends on a continuous loop from the plug, through all the bulbs, and back to the plug again. An outlet on a string like that would interrupt the flow of current through the lights.
But if the lights are wired in parallel (that would be a string that lets you completely take out any bulb and not affect any of the others), then any current pulled through the string to the outlet on the other end just flows through the wires between the plug and the outlet, and not through the bulbs themselves. At that point it's the gauge of the connecting wire between the plug and the outlet that governs how much current you can safely draw through that string of lights.
]]>@balthisar: I don't think you have to hold any particular beliefs to find modern Christmases more than a little wasteful.
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