Leaping Arches - Preparation

I have been working on getting ready to make the leaping arches 2 weekends from now. I got the idea to make them last year at Florida's Mini-PLUS Convention. It was a day where a buch of us christmas light geeks got together and showed off our stuff and different techniques of making our lights.

I would like to thank Lauderdale Christmas for a great tutorial on how to do make some leaping arches.

Here are a few steps of what I have done to get ready to make my leaping arches:

1. Get a new Workbench from work (for Free). They were throwing them away because they got new ones.
   
2. Take apart the Old Workbench. Here is the Top. It will Get cut up into 4 Equal Pieces for shelving.
   
3. Using the Legs of the Old Workbench Make Arch Spinning Jigs and Shelf to hold the Drill that will be doing the spinning. (By the way Pardon the Green floor That is from Last year, Remember the MiniTree Incident)
        

Then you look at the LEDs you bought and find out there are two of these 3" x 1.5" x 1" boxes inline with the Strings. Considering they will be wrapped around a 3/4" Pipe. They will be sticking out in all sorts of wierd Ways. So I figured I have to find out what is in there and see if I can make it smaller.

Here is the Box:

Here is the Box on drugs... Opps, I mean After I attacked it with a dremel

Here is a close Up of the Circuit Board. It is Sort of ingenous, but I don't LIke it. At least from a control Aspect.

So last year on the Mini Trees, I Was wonding why they faded out and still lit up for a while when I turned them "Off". Well now I know the answer. I analized the Circuit. It's Schematic is shown below. The Main Compents:

1. 3x - 2.2K 1 Watt resistors ... In Parrelel That Equals Approx. 733 Ohms
2. A General Purpose Rectifier Diode 1N4007. Rated at 1000V. I think that is enough... don't you.
3. a 10uF 160V Capacitor

So I had been wondering why they needed the Diode... At first... Since the LEDs will only allow current one way... Then I thought about it. The are using an Electrolytic Capacitor... They don't like reverse voltages. If there is no Diode, the Cap Blows up... Ah Ha. So i also noticed in the construcion that they reversed the hot and the Neutral from each Segment on the string. This allows one side of the string to conduct on the positive swing, and the other side to conduct on the negative swing of the AC line. This allows them to have a constant RMS current draw.

But still I don't want such a big Frakin' Box Sticking out of my Leaping Arches. My solution, one big resistor... Yeah the lights will have a small 60hz Flicker, No one will notice since They will already be flashing.

Here is the size comparison of the Resistor to the box

Here is the Ugly Test Circuit with the Box removed and a resistor in Place, The String worked just fine. You might Notice the Resistor is only a 680 Ohm. As a note the final Mod will look a lot nicer than this.

There will be more Arch Discussion Later.

See you soon.

Robogeek