You're now ready to strip the wires and join them.īefore you strip, consider these two challenges: I recommend using a twist tie to hold these wires together between the ninth and tenth lights. Then, twist the extension string around the LED wires of the first string and you'll be ready to strip the wires and splice the extension wires you just cut between LEDs eight and nine of the first string. If the two strings are lined up how you want to attach them, this eighth LED is where you want to cut the extension wire of the second string. So find the eighth LED in the first string. Anywhere along the red wire is the same, and anywhere along the black wire is the same. So this is why I made the splice between LEDs eight and nine: the circuit is the same here as if we connected right before the first LED or right at the base of the power supply. The wire coming out of the ninth LED is connecting the anode of the ninth LED to the cathode of the tenth. The positive wire will go into the ninth LED and the ground will bypass it. Just like the two coming out of the power supply, one is a positive 24 V supply and the other is ground. Once we get to the eighth LED, the diagram really starts to make sense. And the third wire is the positive wire that will bypass the first eight. One of the wires bypassing is the ground.
The wire going into the light is the wire that is connecting LEDs one and two in series. If you follow these to the second light, you'll see that one goes into the light and two bypass it. Then, when it reaches the first light it separates into three. The two extension wires are a positive and a ground. We'll call this length that comes before the lights the extension wires.
CHRISTMAS LIGHTS OUT HALF STRAND FULL
If you look at each full string, it starts with two wires coming out of the power supply.
It sounds a bit crazy until you look again at the diagram and compare it to the actual lights in real life. But we can actually reduce the amount of wires a bit by spicing between the eighth and ninth light. We could splice in near the power supply, or near the start of the lights. So we understand that we need to wire in the very beginning of the second string up-stream of any lights in the first string. In the diagram above, if you connect the black wire of the second string anywhere along the black wire in the first and the red wire in the second string anywhere along the red in the first, then they should work. I didn't test this, but I suspect if I had, the first eight LEDs would be lit up and then the next eight and the 16 after would all be dark because they'd each only get ~2 V.įortunately, the solution is simple: just connect the second string up-stream of any LEDs in the first so that you have FOUR sets of eight in parallel. This would split the voltage across eight LEDs before it reached the next full set.
CHRISTMAS LIGHTS OUT HALF STRAND SERIES
This is why we can't splice to the end of the string: if we did, the whole second string would be in series with eight LEDs. Instead, by using two mini-strings of eight, the power supply just needs to supply 24 V. If these were all in series, the total required voltage across the full string of 16 would be ~48 V. Each mini-string of eight is wired in series, and contains eight LEDs that are powered by ~3 V.
If we look at the circuit diagram, though, we can see why that's not possible.Įach string of 16 lights actually consists of two separate mini-strings of eight. My first thought was that I could just splice one string to the end of the second.
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