Bargain boast.

Gramaisc

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
Gramaisc said:
A few weeks back, on a whim, I picked up a little LED string in Lidl, being sold off at 99c, complete with a pair of AA cells.

I've been running them on a pair of rechargeable AAs, as a test.

Apart from On and Off, there is a third switch setting that has them on for six hours, then off for eighteen and repeating daily, whilst the power source lasts - they are currently on the sixteenth cycle of that now, which is rather longer that I thought they might run on rechargeable AAs.

Today, I drilled a hole in a bottle and threaded them in, for a super-trendy light display.

View attachment 12021

The bottle was free (even when it was full) and so, for 99c and ten minutes work, I have this - and I still also have the 'real' batteries that came with it.

Fully prepared for next Christmas.
Click to expand...
Initially hoping to get a reliable week from this, I turned it on on January 17th. The week passed, then a fortnight, then a month - I resolved to see just how long it would go on for - tonight, the LEDs have finally dropped to a faint glimmer - almost five months.

I had begun to wonder if there was some hidden solar charging feature - this made me realise that I have a couple of defunct solar lamps that should be able to be cannibalised to actually create a permanently running set-up. The timer does drift forwards slowly, about half an hour over the five months, mostly in the last two, but that would actually be useful in the autumn.

Five months at 25% usage for 20 LEDs - say 5 weeks continuous usage - or 100 weeks running one LED - two years!
 
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