LED Tea Light modification

[deplanche]

I have a bunch of the battery powered LED tea lights that I have been using for a few years now for both Christmas and Halloween.  The batteries are all starting to die and need replaced.  The cost for those little CR2032 batteries can add up quickly for the 20 or so lights that I have, so I was wondering if I could modify those to be run of a DC power source, like a PC power supply, since I seem to have a few extra of those right now.  It looks like it would be a simple modification.  I think I would need a resistor in there, but not sure what size, since I don't know anything about the LED itself (except that it's amber-ish and flickers).  Any sugguestions?  Or has anyone tried this and I am just not finding it on here?

Thanks,

Jon

[JerryPlak]

The LED calculator
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this is on my project list.

[wjgiles50]

The CR2032 is a 3volt battery.  I think I would hook one of them up to the 5 volt output of a power supply and see if it works.  Worst case is a little smoke.  You can also find a 3 volt regulator to power from the 5 volts pretty cheap.  Are you going to run them as a string or do you want to wire to each individual one from the power supply?

[JerryPlak]

Part of my project on this is to use some type of Optocoupler wear the flicker LED control the Optocoupler then drive the Triacs.

I am looking to make a 1 & 4 channel controller have not made my mind up if this controller output will be AC or DC.

[deplanche]

I'd like to run more than 1 off the power supply, so sort of like a string.  But running them in parallel or in series will complicate things, won't it?  Any suggestions which would be better, or maybe easier?

[wjgiles50]

I think running them in a string parallel would be easy.  Grab an old piece of incan string and cut it at each light and solder it back together to make parallel connetions at each light would give you 4 to 6 inch spacing depending on the tea lights.  Worst case you could get a 2'C' cell battery box and power it from that.  I would think that would last a lot longer than the CR2032s and you can switch them all on and off in one place or use a relay and drive from lynx.

[dmaccole]

More than you ever wanted to know about running tea lights with a Malibu transformer/timer:

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\dmc