christmas lights

[stew]

Just watched the vide presentation of this litekeeper device. You remove a lamp from the set and plug the socket into the device and then snap the trigger several times til the defective shunt or shunts start to work. They apparently do this with some kind of piezio hi voltage device which breaks thru the oxide that may have built up on the shunt thereby reactivating it. Then the lamp or lamps that have burned out filimaents can be seen and replaced. Sounds like a device I need!! At 29.95 plus shipping I would probably only neeed to fix say 20 or 30 sets to pay for it. lol I just need one to get rid of the frustration of junking some thing that seems so easy to fix!!

 

[stew]

all the big box stores had these but were sold out of them. The price now on the market is 19.95 and Wal Mart and Fred Meyer also carry them. Picked one up at local Wal Mart. This is the coolest device Ive ever used! Doesnt take much to get me goin! The dang thing works like magic. You just make certain that the strand has all its lamps intact and none missing or broken and plug remove a lamp and plug the socket into the device and snap the trigger sometimes only once and sometime several times and voila!! The darn things lite right up with the exception of any burned out lamps including of course the burned out one that also had the nonconducting shunt. This hi voltage breaks down the oxide and restablishes the shunt circuit and there ya go. I had a pile of nonworking strands that had accumulated over a couple years that got put in a box and did not get trashed for some reason(christamas lite hoarder i guess). must have been 15 or 20 strands. Now my neighbors are gonna have to go out and buy more lamps cause its gonna be A Chevy Chase Christmas at the Stewart house this year. lololol

 

[kwired]

Now, that brings up kind of a question in my feeble mind.

I think you and two skins are both correct. So with the circuit open, but with the series resistance of yourself and the remaining lamps, just what is the voltage to which you are exposed? Its line voltage when it's open , but it's something else when you touch it....

and what kind of current would likely be available?

That would depend. current to the other side of socket will be limited to about the normal current of the string with the difference being how much resistance drops across your finger. Current that flows through you to ground is going to depend on how many lamps are in series before you become a part of the circuit plus what your resistance is.

Most of the time it will likely be enough to trip a 4-6 mA GFCI