RGB lights on prelit trees? Make animated Christmas real

Electronics
#1

My prelit tree has a foot pedal that lets it change from white lights to multicolored. It’s on,y got one set of bulbs. Does this mean my tree already had rgb lights on it? I want to turn it into a programmable color change tree this year

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#2

It is hard to tell without looking at it, but I would guess yes.

There are LEDs which contain red, green and blue emitters. When power is applied, a simple built-in microchip cycles through the colors.

But yours has the ability to switch between white and colors, meaning it probably does not use two-lead integrated multicolor LEDs. Conceivably, they could have special LEDs which glow white with one polarity and multicolors when the polarity is swapped, but I have never heard of such units.

Does it appear to have two, three or four wires running from the pedal to the LEDs?

One other possibility. There are something called neopixels which have three wires: power, ground and a control line used to tell each LED what to do.

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#3

I suspect I may have the same tree, so I have a question for you. Does any individual bulb display more than two colors? Each bulb on mine toggles between white plus one other color; for instance white/green, white/red, etc. No bulb displays more than one non-white color.

I am lusting over this goodie below, but I have no clue whatsoever how to make it do its magic.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MSOT9LZ/ref=b2b_gw_d_simh_a1_1_p/190-3484920-3780507?ie=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B01MSOT9LZ&pd_rd_r=148N9NTYZVG2EJGA0CNZ&pd_rd_w=lwNYN&pd_rd_wg=EF2jV&pf_rd_i=b2b-desktop&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=148N9NTYZVG2EJGA0CNZ&pf_rd_t=ABGateway&refRID=148N9NTYZVG2EJGA0CNZ

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#4

White or one color LEDs on prelit trees are nearly always packages with one white, and one color LED in a single package, with a bunch of them strung up in series with a limit resistor. Changing the polarity applied determines if you get white, or multicolor. If a vendor paid for 2811 or 2812 LED modules, they would be showing them off with more than white/multi functions.

That said, no reason not to set up your own and install over the tree.

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#5

Here is a fairly good example of how to control the 2811/2812 products. This link uses strip as the example, but the format being a string of pixels doesn’t affect this at all.

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#6

@Bill I’ll drag it out and count wires to see…maybe bring a bulb up? I have some portable power banks I want to turn into portable hot wire foam cutters/light boxes so I’ll be putzing in elab. I think there’s only two wires going to the foot pedal.

Its the Black Friday Home Depot one from a few years ago. Possibly Martha Stewart? I dont mind if they aren’t individually addressable. Just making it my color of the day is fine lol