Wiring up LED Christmas lights ???

Hi there,

I've finally had enough of the old christmas light bulbs, they are forever going out and after you've changed about 8 or 10 bulbs for the geniune spares which cost 25p each they still just keep blowing bulbs (which is always on xmas morning and right at the back of the xmas tree) so you end up with no lights working at the end of xmas and have to throw them away and buy a new set for the following year.

Enough with the rant.

My question is can i change the bulbs for LED's as i've got loads of sets of lights but no bulbs. I've several sets of 100 static bulbs (2.4V 0.5W per bulb) could i change these for LED's of equivilent rating e.g. (Vf 1.9V, Vr 5.0, 10 mA typical).

I've done the maths and it will only cost about ￡5 per set to convert, and of course my time. Would this work and would i still nedd to use a fuse bulb to protect the set?

Any ideas? as i don't want to spend ￡100's next year buying all new LED sets.

(I've got over 3000 lights up this year

Good question. The problem you may find is that the light manufactures have changed the way the LEDs are seated in the string. If you can find LEDs that if the string with the same amps, watts and volts your very lucky. If your very handy and can find the right LEDs at your local hardware outlet. You could swap the bulbs from the plastic seat and replace them with the LEDs of different colours if your luck again. Usually LEDs are colour coded for differ ant watts and or applications.