Holiday lighting technology
In the second stage, some of the blue or violet-blue is absorbed by a phosphor, which fluoresces yellow, imitating the broad spectrum of colors which the eye perceives as "white".
Since they are constructed from solid state materials and have no metallic filaments to burn out or break, LEDs are much less susceptible to breakage from impact or rough handling.
[2][citation needed] Although LEDs are long-life devices, older or lower-quality strands of LED-based holiday lights can suffer from early failure.
[citation needed] Most LED-based holiday lights use copper wire which connects to the plated, copper-alloy leads of the LEDs.
Having dissimilar metals in contact can result in galvanic corrosion inside of the lamps' sockets, causing them to stop working.
[citation needed] Many mini sets use standard 3 mm dome-shaped LEDs, and have a plastic cover over them to provide refraction, which is an important step in diffusing the unidirectional light they cast.
[citation needed] In the modern age, LEDs have emerged with RGB technology to allow Christmas lights to display a possible range of around 4.6 billion colors.
One alternative is the use of RGBW technology which also adds the ability for lights to allow display a range of whites from warmer to cooler.
RGB technology allows for far more animation then standard electronic light controls including the ability to smoothly fade through different colors.
They apparently find the diode's durable plastic construction useful for this, while its low power consumption means a minimal chance of electrical shocks to discourage them.
Animal experts have suggested leaving edible hard nuts on the ground around lighting fixtures to distract the rodents with food that can serve the same dental needs.
[citation needed] Their main feature is a sealed glass tube with a colored bubbling liquid inside, created by the heat from the incandescent light.
Laser projector systems became a prominent phenomenon in 2015; the devices are typically installed on a stake in front of a house, projecting colored dots resembling stars.
Star Shower saw a considerably high demand, with stores quickly running out of stock, and reports of the devices being stolen right out of front yards; The New York Times compared the phenomenon to those of Teletubbies and Cabbage Patch Kids toys.
[6][7] While the popularity of Star Shower and its imitators have been credited to their ease of use, laser projectors have received mixed reception from professional holiday lighting designers; one called them the "lazy way" to decorate a house, and another argued that "there's nothing more aesthetically pleasing and magical than a fully decorated house and landscape."
Sparkleballs are handmade globes made from threading holiday lights into a sphere built of plastic cups.
Usually spotted individually on front porches at Christmas, the residents of North Yale Avenue in Fullerton, California have made a holiday tradition of hanging 450 sparkleballs from the trees lining their street.
The shunt closes the circuit across the bad filament, restoring continuity, which allows the rest of the string to remain lit.
[9] Other miniature types include globe-shaped "pearl" and smaller "button" lights, which are often painted in translucent or pearlescent colors.
Many bargain brands have dome-shaped LEDs which focus the light so that it's sharply visible when viewed head-on, but almost invisible from a perpendicular direction.
The body is cylindrical with a concave conical depression, instead of a dome-shaped lens at the tip, to cause wider distribution of light.
This number is convenient for stars, which have a total of ten points (five outward and five inward), and often have another light in the middle, occasionally on both sides.
[10] An electronic holiday light controller usually has a diode bridge followed by a resistor-based voltage divider, a filter capacitor and a fixed-program microcontroller.
[11] The designs all use mid-range PIC microcontrollers, are generally modular in units of eight channels (dimmable circuits), and use medium-speed, daisy-chainable, one-direction serial communications for input.
As this technology is used less for displays, other software such as xLights is used to control individually addressed LEDs, commonly referred to as "pixels".
In addition to the lights, many displays incorporate an FM transmitter (personal device), allowing the synchronized music to be sent directly into families' vehicles.
control technology being developed in Ottawa, Canada that enables multiple homes to link up over the Internet in-real time.
[13] In this way, anyone online can "plug in" to this network and at their discretion, working independently or synchronized, engage their holiday light display on a global level.
The use of Wifi or Bluetooth allows the use of a smartphone app to change the color of the lights or produce different effects as well as to program animations to music or other sounds.
[citation needed] An episode of the Discovery Channel television show MythBusters covered the possible fire danger from holiday lights.
