Geo,
Because of you I now have ONE of those Big Lots snow flakes and I want more!! My store had ONE but it WAS 50% off and an AWESOME deal at $10!! Must find MORE!!
Wow! Another warm and fuzzy comment
. Thanx! I didn't know I would be starting a trend here, but it is a good feeling that as small as my show is, that it does get recognition. However, credit for discovering that the snowflakes can be wired on a light control system does go to that fellow in the video I posted. I just took his findings a step further in coming up with a nice harness connection to hook it all up to a Renard controller.
I rewired one of my snowflakes tonight. On the pod that the dial and circuit board sits in there are five small screws that, after you dig out the silicone they sealed it with you can unscrew then pry the box open. You can then see which wire is common and the three channels, along with the power going to the board. I took the common and soldered three pigtails for the three channels. I had three cut off plugs that I used for each channel. I wired each identically as the the common is tied together. I plugged them in and two worked and one blew a fuse. I realized I plugged one in opposite from the other two. Bad move. I suggest using polarized plugs to prevent accidental plug in the wrong way. After putting a new fuse in all are working great. 1 snowflake down, 3 to go. Hopefully I can find 1 or 2 more snowflakes at another store.
Glad that things worked out for you in the end. I understand wanting to use fused plugs as I totally forgone this step. I would like to eventually put a small inline fuse with the neutral line. Since the currents are so low, the fuse could be probably a 1 amp fuse or less. The main this that I would like to have protection from a failure if any of the other hots would short out someplace. In your situation with using dedicated plugs YOU MUST use polarized plugs due to the common neutral, otherwise you will get what you experienced. This is also another reason why I chose to go with a Molex system as I can make/break all the connections at once. Mainly I did the Molex connections so there is no way I could mix the channels up. I sat down long and thought about what I wanted and I figured out that for any given multi-channel ornament that I would use, it will have one of these Molex plugs on it. This also opened up the door for me to create future REN controllers in a lower channel format for smaller ornaments. For something larger such as a Mega Tree I could build a dedicated REN16(24)SS that has no or very few Edison plugs but has mostly multiconductor cable on Molex connectors. This year was kind of a trial run experiment of this system having a REN24SS in which my outputs are split. I have 12 clipped extension cord wires for the first 12 channels, the next 2 sets of 3 channels I have on a 4 Pin Molex and the last 6 channels are on a 9 Pin (of which 8 pins are used) Molex.
Anyway, I hope that information is helpful, but I think whatever system you end up using, as long as you cannot make the mistake of crossing neutrals, then you should be good.
Since these are all LEDs, is it possible to run these directly via DC? Thinking a ren48lsd board because I got a bunch of these snowflakes.
I imagine they would, but I'm an electronics newbie...guessing I would need to know voltage of LEDs and current draw, then calculate resistors..?
Yeeessss and No. 'Yes' in that LEDs conduct current one way and as long as you find the forward bias you could run the LEDs off DC. The nice thing is that if you are using a well filtered DC supply, you can eliminate the flicker associated with using LEDs on an AC circuit. 'No' in that the LEDs are usually wired in a circuit that requires 120volts. This is a voltage that the REN48LSD cannot handle. In the case of the snowflakes, you would have to get the voltage down to what the transistors/pcb components can handle, then once having found that voltage, you would have to rewire the entire snowflake to accomodate that. More then likely you would need current limiting resistors. The plus of doing this is that you would have a safer lower voltage system with low to no flickering...the downside is that it is quite a bit of work to do. IMHO you are much better off sticking with the AC 120v on a standard REN controller.
Now, IF you are prepared for a massive undertaking, then you might want to pay attention to this:
The only way I could see going DC / lower voltage on these snowflakes is if you want to break them down into even further channels. Theoretically you could go 18 channels with 5 bulbs on each channel, per snowflake using a 20 volt system. This is a massive undertaking but if you are up for it AND are good with electrical wiring, then drop me a PM and we could discuss it further there.
Geo