X-mas tree LED lights

Oh, how I like to play with little lights. I haven't changed a bit since I was a small boy. This small simple project was an answer to the problems related with christmas tree lights: they're alway tangled up, and once you have a few bulbs blown up, the string burns up in a few days. Another aspect is safety. With three cats and a playful dog, I never felt comfortable putting 230 volts AC on a christmas tree. So I thought to myself: let's make chistmas lights that don't tangle up, last forever, and operate on safely insulated low voltage. In other words: LEDs in separate small strings on a mains adapter. My girlfriend, who's the christmas tree freak in our house, decided that, no matter what, the lights have to be white. White LEDs it is. 48 of them.

The tree anno 2005:
Christmas tree with white LEDs

Here's the schematic:

In 2007 I replaced the 48 white LEDs with 96 red ones. I mean, white LEDs are so 2006, you know?



© Joris van den Heuvel, Fuzzcraft.com