LED characteristics: current consumption, voltage, power and light output. How much electricity does Russia consume on New Year's Eve? Street garlands - a holiday for everyone

Is it possible to imagine the New Year without a garland on the Christmas tree? No you can not. Beautiful flashing lights will give you the feeling of a fairy tale and create a cozy festive atmosphere anywhere. Today we will tell you how to choose them correctly.

Light source

The light source is the fundamental difference by which you should choose a garland. Those decorations that we remember from childhood are based on mini and micro lamps. They are very beautiful and inexpensive, but they do not last long and are extremely energy-consuming.

Now LED or LED garlands are entering the market. They are not much more expensive and have tangible advantages:

• service life from 20 to 100 thousand hours;
• durability - LEDs are more difficult to damage;
• brightness, pleasing to the eye;
• safety - they hardly heat up;
• efficiency - consume much less electricity;
• moisture resistance - you can safely decorate the house or trees outside.

Wire type

Modern garlands have three types of wires: rubber, silicone and PVC.

Rubber and silicone are very durable, moisture-resistant and weather-resistant. Therefore, if you want to decorate your country courtyard, choose them - they will withstand frosts down to minus fifty.

Garlands with PVC wire are perfect for an apartment - in other respects they are in no way inferior to rubber and silicone ones.

Design

We can talk about the design of garlands for hours. Nowadays you can find light bulbs of all colors, sizes and shapes. And, of course, they decorate not only Christmas trees. For example, curtain garlands are produced specifically for windows.

What you should pay attention to

Length

Let's reveal a secret: the garland should be three times the height of your tree. In this case, for every meter of the tree there should be 300 light bulbs or 100 LEDs.

The wire

More precisely, the length of the wire to connect to the network. If you choose a garland for an apartment, focus on 1.5 meters, if for the street - 10 meters.

Wire color

The point is that the wire should not stand out too much from the general background. Choose a garland for Christmas trees with a dark green wire, for trees outside - black, for indoor decoration or Christmas trees of unusual colors - transparent.

New Year's holidays come unexpectedly as always and bring with them a lot of pleasant troubles. It's time to think about gifts, first of all for children, set the table for adults, choose good music and be sure to put up a Christmas tree, which you can decorate so that the guests have fun and comfort. And the first thing to be hung on the tree is, of course, Christmas tree garlands. All other toys, as a rule, are hung after the garlands. Next we will talk about the design of a wide variety of different New Year's garlands - old and modern.

In ancient times, when there was no electricity and the New Year was already celebrated, special New Year's candles were lit on the tree. Such decoration was very fire hazardous. But these times have already passed, everyone began to use electric garlands.

These were ordinary small light bulbs from a flashlight or from the backlight of a dial in a radio, connected in series. Garlands from such light bulbs were made mainly by enthusiasts with their own hands. They just picked up a soldering iron, who, of course, knew how to use it, took the wire and light bulbs, and after a while the New Year's garland was already hanging on the tree.

Somewhat later, New Year's garlands began to be produced industrially. Small-sized lamp sockets of various designs and colored lampshades of various shapes were used. Sometimes the lampshades were made transparent, and the lamps themselves were painted.

Flashing lights and blinkers

But it’s somehow sad to calmly look at the glowing New Year’s garland; you want your soul to turn around. Apparently, this is facilitated by some kind of blinking of the garland. In general, a flashing garland attracts with its beauty, and even with the expectation of some miracle or surprise. If there are several garlands, then it is possible to get various lighting effects, for example, running fire, running shadow, running twos and threes, as well as many other interesting effects.

Once upon a time, such designs were developed by radio amateurs; these schemes were published in amateur radio magazines, usually in the November issues. But these magazines, in conditions of socialist mismanagement, arrived almost a whole month late, so for the New Year it was only possible to make last year’s flasher.

Microcircuits with a low degree of integration were used as the element base, primarily K155 and K561 and their varieties. As examples, we can cite a diagram from the magazine “Radio” No. 11, 2002.

The basis of the circuit is a DD2 counter of type K561IE16, which controls four LED garlands through switches on the DD3 chip and transistors VT4...VT7. The most interesting thing is that the UMS8-01 music synthesizer microcircuit is used as a master oscillator. Such microcircuits were once used for voicing children's toys and musical calls: they simply played the melodies recorded in them.

So, in this circuit, the output audio signal is also used to clock the counter. One can only guess what the pictures generated by the LEDs will look like against the background of this sound. Naturally, music also sounds through the speaker.

In the magazine “Radio” No. 11, 1995, a diagram was published called “Automatic smooth control of a garland” by A. Chumakov. The circuit provides alternate smooth ignition and extinguishing of the garland at a speed set by the control unit. The device diagram is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Scheme of the automatic garland smooth control

If you look closely, the circuit represents a triac power regulator made on a two-base transistor KT117A. Only the charging rate of the capacitor is changed not manually using a variable resistor, but by switching individual resistors using a counter - decoder K561IE8. For comparison, Figure 2 shows a diagram of a phase power regulator using a dual-base transistor KT117.

Figure 2.

Microcontroller control of New Year's garland

As designs on microcontrollers appeared in amateur radio creativity, Christmas tree flashers, or as they are respectfully called “light effect machines,” also began to be developed. The most exotic design was published in the magazine “Radio” No. 11, 2012, p. 37 under the title “Cell phone controls Christmas tree garland”, author A. Pakhomov.

The design was based on a board from a faulty Chinese garland. The author writes that he was attracted by the originality of the output stage, controlled directly from the MK. He recalls those flashers that were built on K155 series microcircuits, powerful KU202 thyristors (there were simply no others), and in general, you could put a Christmas tree on such a flasher.

But here it was enough to change the controller on the faulty board, write a program with lighting effects and add some kind of control panel. This remote control became an old Siemens C60 phone that was lying around idle. The AT89C51 microcontroller was used as a controller. What came out of this is shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Microcontroller circuit for controlling a New Year's garland (click on the picture to enlarge)

Although this controller is already outdated and discontinued, it is one of the best developments from Intel, later produced by Atmel. Designs on this MK never freeze, they do not require a watchdog timer. The command system is so good that it still remains unchanged, despite the appearance of new models of the MSC-51 family.

Simple LED flasher

Just above the article by A. Pakhomov in the same magazine “Radio” No. 11, 2012, an article by I. Nechaev “From CFL parts. LED flasher for a New Year's toy." The circuit is made on a three-color LED and three symmetrical DB-3 dinistors “extracted” from faulty boards.

Figure 4. Scheme of a simple LED New Year's garland

Each channel of a three-color LED is controlled by its own relaxation oscillator assembled on a DB-3. Let's consider the operation of the circuit using the example of one channel, for example red.

Capacitor C1 through resistor R3 is charged from rectifier R1, VD1 to the breakdown voltage of dinistor VS1 (32V). As soon as the dinistor opens, capacitor C1 is discharged through the red element of the three-color LED, resistor R4, and dinistor VS1. Then the cycle repeats.

The red, green and blue elements of a three-color LED have their own generators and operate independently of each other. At the same time, the frequency of each generator is different from the other, so flashes occur with different periods. The structure is placed in a transparent case and can be used, for example, as a Christmas tree topper. If you add a white HL2 LED to the circuit, then color flashes will occur on a white background.

It would be possible to give many more descriptions of the designs of domestic radio amateurs, old or new, bad or good, but all of them were made in almost single copies. Modern stores are completely littered with electronics made in China. Even New Year’s garlands and those Chinese ones, besides, they don’t cost anything now. Let's see what's hidden inside.

Chinese New Year garland controller

Outwardly everything looks very simple. A small plastic box with one button, into which a power cord with a plug goes in, and four garlands come out. When plugged into the socket, the garlands immediately begin to show all the lighting effects one by one. There are 8 of these effects in total, as indicated by the inscriptions under the button. At the touch of a button you can simply switch directly to the desired light pattern.

If you open the box, then everything inside is also quite simple, as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5.

Here you can see all the details. The microcontroller, as always, is made in the form of a drop of black compound, next to it is a control button, a single diode and three output thyristors.

There is also room on the board for a fourth thyristor, and if you solder it, you get one more additional channel. In the controller, this channel is usually also stitched. Our Chinese friends just saved on one thyristor. Those who have ever opened such control units claim that in some boxes there are only two thyristors sealed. The economy must be economical! Ours, still a Soviet slogan.

Despite such small sizes, PCR406 thyristors have a reverse voltage of 400V and a forward current of 0.8A. If we assume that the load consumes only 25% of the maximum current, then at a voltage of 220V you can switch a power of 220 * 0.2 = 44 (W).

Figure 6 shows a printed circuit diagram, from which you can draw a circuit diagram, which has been done several times. Here you can look at the holes for the fourth thyristor, the one on which you saved.

Figure 6.

Savings also apply to the diode bridge: instead of four diodes, only one is used on this board. And everything else corresponds to the diagram shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7.

The mains voltage is rectified by the diode bridge VD1...VD4 and supplied through the quenching resistor R1 to pin 10 of the microcontroller. To smooth out the ripples of the rectified voltage, an electrolytic capacitor C1 is also connected here. The current consumption of the microcontroller is quite insignificant, so in the future, instead of a bridge of four diodes, the Chinese decided to make do with one.

A small note about increasing the reliability of the entire circuit as a whole. If you solder a zener diode with a stabilization voltage of 9...12V in parallel to capacitor C1, then the likelihood of microcontroller failure or simply thyristor explosions will decrease significantly.

Resistor R7, connected to pin 1 of the microcontroller directly from the network cable, deserves special attention. This is done to synchronize with the network in order to carry out phase control of power. This is exactly what works when the garland lamps smoothly light up or go out.

On the right side of the microcontroller there are thyristor control outputs and a control button, which was described above. The thyristors are turned on at the moment when a high level appears at the corresponding output of the MK, then the corresponding garland lights up.

Sometimes New Year's Eve requires high-power garlands, from several hundred watts and above. In this case, the considered circuit can be used as a “brain”; it is enough to simply supplement it with powerful triac switches. How to do this is shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8. Diagram of a high-power New Year's garland (click on the picture to enlarge)

Here you should pay attention to the fact that the MK is powered from a separate source galvanically isolated from the network.

LED garlands

They use the same controller with one button, the same thyristors, only instead of light bulbs, the garlands are made up of LEDs of three or four colors. Each garland contains at least 20 LEDs with current-limiting resistors.

Moreover, the design of such a garland is simply a Chinese mystery: in the first half of the garland a resistor is soldered to each LED, and the remaining ten pieces are simply connected in series. Again, saving ten resistors at once.

This design can apparently be explained by production technology. For example, on one line the first half is assembled, which is with resistors, and on the other line without resistors. Then all that remains is to connect the two halves into one whole. But this is just a guess.

We can only hope that everything is fine with you, at least with the New Year's garlands. Therefore, decorate the Christmas tree, set the festive table, invite guests, and celebrate the New Year. Happy New Year, comrades, friends, gentlemen! This is what you like best.

Before the winter holidays, eye-catching decorations—electric garlands—appear in our windows, shop windows, and even on the trees in front of our houses.

A huge number of models fall under this general name:

• duralight

• curtains

• mesh

• cliplight

• Beltlight

Traditional Christmas tree garlands made from light bulbs are very capricious devices. And they often shine with a yellowish tint, which makes the lighting a little dim.

Therefore, recent years have brought many innovations to these products. However, they may still be the most dangerous Christmas decoration to put on your tree.

Here are the two main dangers:

To prevent it, due to the heating of the bulbs, do not buy ordinary garlands with a power of more than 65W.

And even more so, do not put them in various kinds of glass bottles and similar containers, no matter how beautiful it looks.

• electric shock

How can you protect yourself and your children from all this? How to choose a garland so that the Christmas tree lights up, but does not “catch fire”. Use the five rules.

Fork and garland length

The fork should be made of high-quality material, not flimsy and not change its traditional shape due to some New Year's design features.

Otherwise, it will fail very quickly, and the wire will definitely break off inside or at the very exit from it. A broken, exposed wire may even become live at the moment when you pull the garland out of the outlet.

Regarding the optimal size, in order to avoid long calculations, experts advise taking a classic garland, the length of which will be 3 times the height of the tree.

In this case, you will satisfy all your design fantasies and there will definitely be no dark areas left. In this case, the wire itself for connecting to the outlet (the one without light bulbs) must be:

• at least 1.5 m for home use

• about 10m for street

By the way, when the parameter “total length” or “size” is indicated on the package, this also includes the length of the power cord (without light bulbs).

Therefore, be careful in this matter and look for the length parameter of the working part.

Otherwise, there may be much fewer flashlights in the backlight than you expected.

Also remember that many Christmas tree garlands can be extended through special adapters.

But shortening them is prohibited. This is especially true for LED models, since they are strictly designed for a certain current consumption.

Light bulbs

The bulbs should be held very tightly and not wobble.

If the wires and connections to the lamps are very flimsy and soft, then with careless movement, at the moment of unraveling the garland or its suspension, you can easily tear them out of their seats.

Power supply controller

This box should be opened only with the use of additional tools - a screwdriver, a knife, which are used to pry off special latches.

Otherwise, your curious child will definitely want to find out what is hidden inside. It is advisable to initially check the soldering of wires in the power supply, even when purchasing the product in a store.

Almost half of all reasons why Christmas tree lights don't work are related to poor contact of the wiring in the power supplies.

If you are going to use the garland outdoors, then it must be of a special design with a protection level of at least IP44. The packaging must bear the inscription “external use”.

The wire diameter of such products is at least 3.3 mm, and the cross-section of the copper core is at least 0.5 mm2.

First of all, tightness must be ensured specifically for the power supply. The luminous elements can be absolutely identical.

But the box must be insulated on all sides, often even tightly sealed.

A high-quality garland should not emit foreign odors. Especially the smell of cheap rubber.

Imagine what will happen in your apartment when such a product heats up. Do not believe sellers who claim that the smell will fade and go away in a couple of hours.

In addition to the unpleasant odors, this will also affect your health, since you and your children will breathe these vapors of harmful substances around the clock.

For outdoor lighting, do not buy garlands with PVC plastic wires. In cold weather, such a wire will become stiff and, in fact, your garland will turn into a disposable product.

Choose models with wires made of rubber or silicone. Rubber and rubber garlands must be designated with the Latin letters “G” or “R”. And if there is an additional layer of insulation, then “N”.

They feel great even at temperatures below -40 degrees.

Package

Be sure to read all labels on the packaging. Many garlands are simply not meant to be placed on a tree. It can be written in different languages ​​- " not for the Christmas tree", or something similar.

Many people are surprised by this: how is it a Christmas tree garland and not for the Christmas tree? The fact is that this model is not certified.

Accordingly, it does not pass fire safety standards and the manufacturer does not have the right to recommend and indicate that its garland can be hung on a Christmas tree or trees in the yard.

If the product is certified, then look for a link to the corresponding GOST. It must be indicated on the nameplate or packaging.

When purchasing, always check the completeness of the product according to the list on the package. Sometimes there are spare light bulbs or separate interchangeable elements inside.

If the number of lamps in the backlight is 18 or more, the number of spare lamps must be at least 3.

You need to turn on and check the functionality of all modes of the garland in the store. Well, when you bring it into the house from the cold, do not rush to immediately plug it into an outlet, let the decoration warm up.

Advantages and differences

Modern models are increasingly made from LED elements rather than small incandescent light bulbs. They have a number of advantages:

• longer service life - up to 100,000 hours

For garlands on ordinary light bulbs, the service life may not exceed 100 hours of continuous operation.

• resistance to periodic surges and surges in voltage

• safety

LED bulbs do not heat up, so the chances of a fire or short circuit are unlikely.

• efficiency

You will have to pay much less for electricity.

• strength

Mechanically, LEDs are much more difficult to break or crush.

Types of LED garlands

Here is a list of the main types of garlands for illuminating apartments, houses, offices, shops, etc.

• threads

They are the simplest and most common. They look like a twisted cord along which LEDs are suspended.

These models are the most universal. They can decorate both Christmas trees and entire houses and buildings, with any structures in the yard.

• mesh garland

It looks like squares or diamonds, at the extreme points of which light bulbs are mounted. Applicable for flat surfaces - walls, ceilings.

• light curtains

Most often found on windows. They consist of one wire, from which many other wires “studded” with LEDs go down. Each such wire has a length of 2 m or more.

• icicles

Something like curtains. However, the vertical wires in them have different lengths. In addition, they are shorter - no more than 0.5 m. Light bulbs are often shaped like icicles.

• fringe

There is also a main wire, on which many miniature LEDs are strung.

• duralight

This is already a full-fledged backlight, like LED strips with a voltage of 220V. LEDs are soldered inside under the transparent shell.

At the same time, duralight is very flexible, sealed and moisture resistant. Therefore, its main application is outdoor lighting.

• Beltlight

This decoration is more likely to refer to professional lighting. It is used when lighting very large structures - bridges, squares, buildings.

Not long ago the New Year came, and as it usually happens, I thought about New Year's decorations at the last moment. After running around the nearby stores, I realized that it was unlikely to be possible to buy a normal LED garland for reasonable money. We celebrated the New Year with the remnants of our former luxury.
And so, on the January holidays, I went to websites to look for a garland, after half an hour of browsing, BIC was selected, where the specified garland and many other useful small things were ordered. The order was divided into two parcels and sent on January 9. I received both parcels by mail on February 29, March 1, although November would have suited me :).
The total length of the garland is 10 meters; I specially counted the number of LEDs - there are exactly 100 of them. LEDs are transparent, the wire that connects them is transparent and soft. The plug is ordinary, suitable for both Soviet sockets and new “euro” sockets.


LEDs in four colors: red, green, yellow, blue. The garland has 8 operating modes:
1. All LEDs light up, and they all simultaneously change brightness from the “off” state to the “full brightness” state. The maximum power consumption in this mode is 8.0 W.
2. LEDs flash, LEDs of two colors light up at the same time.
3. All LEDs are constantly on. Power consumption 8.0 W.
4. All lamps flash at different frequencies (flowing effect). Power consumption 4.4 W.
5. LEDs of two colors light up at the same time, then one color goes out, and a new one lights up (the “stepping” effect). Power consumption 4.1-4.3 W.
6. One color flows into another. Only one color glows at full brightness at a time. Power consumption 2.2-2.6 W.
7. All programs alternate (“random”).
8. Everyone blinks quickly. Power consumption 2.6-4.1 W.


I understand that reading is one thing, but seeing it is another. Let's watch the video.