Battery Powered LED Christmas Lights

Christmas lights are good for more than just decorating your tree. You could make a sparkleball with them. But what if you want to hang it from your ceiling? You would have to plug the lights into an outlet and I don't know about you but I don't have outlets in my ceiling. So why not make them battery powered?
I've only tried this with one type of Christmas lights so if you try it with other types and it doesn't work... Well then that sucks.
Anyway this is really simple and won't take long at all. Maybe like ten minutes tops if you include searching through drawers for stuff like batteries and cleaning up a broken lightbulb.

Step 1 Stuff

There aren't many things you need for this. Just a set of LED Christmas lights, two AA batteries, and a battery case that you can connect to the Christmas lights. A pair of scissors might help too, as well as duct tape or heat shrink tubing.

Comments

[sujun0205]

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[albhednomad]

Just would like drop a thanx off. this really helps with the little project I'm doing. I'm going to the midnight premier of Tron: Legacy and wanted to get in the mood with a lighted vest. well....partially lighted. I'm a big heartless fan and almost all my stuff has the symbol. so I'm making a light up heartless insignia on the back of my lucky/favorite vest. this will surely help. so, again, thanx.

[walklands]

Thanks for the instructable. Hope your still about, noticed I'm 2 years out of date!

Never thought of using a mains powered pre made string. Any chance this would work on a set bought in the UK? What about resisters to protect the Leds?

Thanks

[Sunbanks]

I really have no idea if it would work with lights bought in the UK. It's sometimes kind of a hit and miss when you're choosing the lights.

[enchantedweakness]

I got the lights, I got the battery pack, I got the batteries. Then I tried to wire them together and it got hot, really hot, and nothing happened. I tried 2 AA, 3 AA, and even a D... I'm at a loss. Any suggestions?

[BlacktigerO]

Hello sun banks
I have one question for you about the battery ran Xmas lights. I was wondering if it would work with rc rechargeable batteries...? I was going to use http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3999878 to be exact.

Thanks for your time.

[Barrettkg]

Is there any way to do this with regular "old timey" Christmas lights?

[Sunbanks]

I'm not sure, I was going to try it once but then I didn't

[grampafish]

i did that and found out that they dont work ;-(

[Sunbanks]

:( What kind of Christmas lights did you use?

[grampafish]

i used Noma led lights with c6 bulbs

[olddawg]

You're probably in the same boat I'm in. They're High intensity LED's. They need more wattage. Step up to 3-AA's. I'm using a C3 and it took the 3-AA's to get it running (experimenting with 1 LED).

[grampafish]

thanks. they are wired in series.

[olddawg]

Update for you; It may not be just power causing the problem, I'm running on 2-AA's now. The problem for me is the wiring. I can only run multiple LED's if wired in parallel.

[mrskimmyl]

Thanks so much for this! Battery operated Christmas light strands cost 3 times as much as regular strands!

[Sunbanks]

Wow, I never know they were so much!

[blahlazer]

I tried this and it didn't work for me. I bought the same kind of lights shown except it was the multi-colored ones. I cut off the female end of the lights and tried to power it, but this was a no go. I plugged in the male connector to a wall socket and it still worked. After removing the male end, I tried to power the lights with two C batteries but this did not work, so I tried 4 and then 6 C batteries, still nothing. Since that didn't work I removed a battery out of one of my APC power units and tried to power the lights with it, but that didn't work either. I figured there might be too many lights, so I cut them and half and tried again, nothing. After failing so many times, I test a few of the LEDs individually and they still worked. Any suggestions?

[Sunbanks]

I'm not sure what the problem would be, I used the multicolored ones for this also. I don't think the problem would be that you cut the female end off the lights because when I read your comment I cut the end off my string of lights and they still worked.

[gmjhowe]

nice work sunny! works a treat!

[Sunbanks]

Thanks! :D

[olddawg]

I've done a post to see if anyone has done something like this. Nice to see you have. Question for you; I assume this is a typical 110v string light, so powering them with 2-AA seems way under powered. I didn't see that you re-wired the lights to match voltage.... Aren't they dim? I'm about to try this with my 12v system, but I'm going to wire the lights to match voltage. After seeing this, I may just try hooking them up 'as is' first and see how bright they are.

[Sunbanks]

Surprisingly they aren't dim. I was afraid they would be but then when I did this they weren't.

[olddawg]

Biggest question is (and I should have asked this before): How long did it last? The follow up is: What size LED? I just bought a string of 50 C3's and by my math would only run an hour..... Real curious as to the time and size of the LED's. I just put up 3 strings of Icicles on my garage drawing (what I figure to be) 1.5 watts from my 12v system and am really interested as to what you're doing here.

[Sunbanks]

They've been on tonight for over two hours and haven't died or really dimmed as far as I can tell. Size of the LED's like mm? They're 5mm I guess...

[Sunbanks]

Actually by now I've had them on for about 5 hours and they're still working

[olddawg]

You have something pretty good going here. I'm still trying to figure out what these C3's really need for power. Best I can tell it's a 5mm incased in a cute dome. I'll let you know when I finally succeed over here. I think I'm just working with low wattage so far....

[olddawg]

Got it! I have High Intensity LED's. Mine take 4.5v to run! You must have Low intensity LED's explaining why they're working on 2 AA's. I knew it had to be something simple.... Now to see how I can run at a time.

[olddawg]

Another update... I love Sunday mornings, I have time to mess around with this stuff! The problem was not power. I am now running on 2-AA's. The real question is; Are your lights wired parallel or series? Easiest way to tel is; unplug one, if the remaining lights stay on, you're wired parallel. I can only run multiples if I wire them in parallel! These C3 LED's are polarity specific and I'm guessing this has everything to do with it.

[Sunbanks]

They're wired in parallel

[gmjhowe]

Your welcome, as always

[Plasmana]

This is odd... Lights that works on 120 volts can also work with 3 volts? Then will a ordinary light bulb work?

[olddawg]

Yes, if you could find a 3v 33amp battery.... By theory anyway...
Don't think of it as voltage, think of wattage.

A 100 watt light bulb at 120vac uses .8 amps (give or take).
That same bulb run on my 12vdc system uses 8 amps (again give or take).

My 50 string of LED's uses 4.8 watts to run on 120vac.
4.8 watts / 4.5 vdc ( what I need to run them) = 1amp (give or take)
3-AA's wired to 4.5 vdc only has 1.5 to 2 amps available.
The string should only last 1 hour.

As I understand it to be.... I'm still learning here..

[Sunbanks]

These work on 120 volts?

[Plasmana]

The lights you are using, are they LED's?

[Sunbanks]

Yeah

[Plasmana]

Ahh, everything makes sense to me now... Thanks for telling me!

[sunsetheart]

where do i get a battery case from?....what do you mean by battery case? thanks/

[Sunbanks]

Well like a battery holder that there are in some electronic toys. Some of them are like a box but others are just like metal.

[GorillazMiko]

N1C3 J0B M8!!!!11one +5/5 stars.

[Sunbanks]

Lol thanks :D