christmas lights

[electrondady1]

last year i wired a bunch of led christmas lights to my vawt and they worked!

i wired one color in parallel with each other, one way, and another color  in parallel with each other, the other way.

so they would flash in alternate colors when hooked to the raw ac output of my little vawts

it looked great but when it got super windy the leds would burn out

the most i had of matching colors was 8 of each.

this year i want to get a cool light show happening.

but i don't want them to burn out.

i have two strings of matching lights.

they don't flash  when plugged into the wall outlet.

i want them to not only flash and not burn out,

it would be really cool if i could wire them so that more lights would begin to light up as my frequency / speed /voltage increased.

how could i make that happen.?

[wooferhound]

I really like the alternate color flashing idea using the direct AC power, but I can't think of a way to regulate the AC power without an inverter.

But I have been working with this current limiter circuit that uses 2 parts and it works great. It really doesn't care about the voltage that you feed to it, all it wants to do is output a constant current. If the volts go too low it will turn off altogether.

http://www.reuk.co.uk/Using-The-LM317T-With-LED-Lighting.htm

of course you would need to rectify and filter the power before feeding it to the current limiter.

[ghurd]

Add a series resistor?

They will look pretty impressive at night with only 3ma, and should handle 20ma easy enough.

Step #2, Add a pair of fat 5W Zener and resistor in sort of a back to back crow bar arrangement.

Size the Zeners to conduct when the voltage is enough to get the LEDs to about 18ma.

"really cool if i could wire them so that more lights would begin to light up as my frequency / speed /voltage increased"

Piece of cake.

Make the next string with considerably more LEDs.

More accurately, more total forward voltage in the string of LEDs.

A string of 8 red and/or yellow LEDs will light at about 15V, because they light at about 2V each.

A string of 8 green, blue and/or white will light at about 24V, because they light at about 3V each.

It can be on another AC, or the other half of the same AC, or paralleled with the first string.

I would be inclined to do a parallel configuration.

Hopefully it would not be too difficult to get the 2nd set to light before the Zener on the 1st set starts dumping power.

That would be 4 strings of lights on an AC output.

Could even jump it up to 6 strings on an AC output.

Make sense?

I could sketch it out if it would help.

G-

[electrondady1]

yes! please sketch away gurd

right from the point were the fat 5 from planet zenar play the crowbar.

woof thanks to your reply and link

 i have come to understand it's the increaseing amperage that kills the lights.

so if i can tie in successively larger segments of lights perhaps i can keep ahead of the amperage.

[ghurd]

Shoot me an email with the general operating voltage in low wind and high,

and the intended LED string parameters (quantity, color & mix of colors per string, etc).

"perhaps i can keep ahead of the amperage"

Yup.

Zenarians are always perceived as being overweight because of how we Earthlings perceive density.

G-

[hiker]

electro........

 i made a minniemill a few years back--2 pole-2hd mags..[small motor]

i just used one big fat restistor on the output-only two wires out..

then ran all of the l.e.d.s  in parele...

works great--no burn outs even in high winds...

its been mounted on top of my shop ever sence

 http://www.fieldlines.com/images/scimages/1236/minnie_motor_mill