Wire Light LED Strand – 12 LEDs + Coin Cell Holder (Red, Green, Blue, Cool White & Warm White). Add sparkle to your project with these lovely silver wire LED strands. These strands are very interesting, they use two silver wires that are coated so they don’t short if they touch, then tiny 1000mcd LEDs are bonded onto the wires and coated with epoxy. The result is a very flexible silver wire with sparkly “fairy” lights that are much less visible than normal LEDs. They’re still just LEDs, but in a fun new form-factor! They’re even waterproof – you can dunk these or have them outdoors, just be sure to protect the battery holder.
Each strand comes with 12 LEDs, approximately 5cm/2 inches apart for a 2 foot long strand of wire. At one end of the magnet wire, a double stranded-core wire is soldered on and heat-shrinked to protect it. A 2 x CR2032 coin cell holder with on/off switch is on the other side. Of course, if you want you can just cut the coin cell holder off and solder on a 3xAAA battery holder or 3xAA battery holder. To solder to the magnet wire, scrape off the coating first.
Please note: There are no series resistor installed in the strand, if you want to use another supply you will need to calculate and solder in a resistor. The reason that two 3V coin cells can be used to drive LEDs with a forward voltage of about 3.2V is that coin cells have an internal resistance that makes up for the lack of a choke resistor. If you want to drive these via a 6V power supply, you’ll want to put in a 20-220 ohm (or larger) resistor in series to avoid burning out the LEDs. If you want to use a 4.5V power supply, use 10-100 ohms (or larger).
LED strand is 26 inches (660mm) long, LEDs are spaced 5cm/2″ apart
1000mcd brightness per LED, Forward voltage of 3.2-3.4V @ 20mA
Connecting wire is 8 inches (203mm) long
Battery holder is 2″ x 0.9″ x 0.22″ (51mm x 23mm x 5.6mm)
Weight without batteries: 6.44g
Weight with batteries: 12.44g
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