Xmas lights as LED Nights, broken somehow…

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Hello

so, at the end of last year, I brought a very long xmas LED lights, as I need some sort of night light, I am a grown man, 34 but I am autistic and suffer from many medical problems including hallucination. I turned the lights off in the summer months as it wasn’t too dark, but I have put them back on now, and like every single Christmas for every person, the lights work going into storage but stop when getting them out. I have left the lights up behind my tv, and around my bed, so putting them away wasn’t a factor here.

I recently brought one of those live wire cable detectors and I have obviously turned on the lights, none light up, but the wire live cable detectors lights and bleeps all the way to the end of the light strings. So, if the cable is still live, why are all the lights not working, if I find a few broken (possibly chewed) lights I can just cat them out and reattach right? But how do I find all the broken lights?

so, in July I think... My cat had an operation, and he went into feeling sorry for himself mode, and due to the heat we had, he stayed under my bed to sleep, right next to the lights wire and plug. The day after my cats surgery we adopted 3 kittens, but sadly one suffered from heart failure and vets couldn’t do anything for him, but his brother and sister are still here, but they all slept under my bed, and knowing kittens, may of chewed the cable, (not plugged in). In the beginning of 2021, one of my cats died, completely unexpected, he was young too, no signs, just woke up one night and he didn’t. Then my cats older brother died 29th October last year, he was 14, but this made my cats upset that they slept under my bed, except Nala, who sleeps in my mums room.

I have 5 cats now, and to help cope with the deaths of my boys, I got into DIY, I am not great, but it’s a learning curve, last year I built an outdoor kitchen bbq area. I need to keep busy, but my head and body won’t let me.
 
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Traditionally Christmas tree lights are in series, so one bulb failure would cause all to stop working, to get around the problem the bulbs were designed to always fail with a short circuit, and one bulb with a white marking was a fuse bulb.

However most the LED versions seem to use some step down transformer, which also has built in safety features, in the main I find when Christmas tree lights fail then time to bin them, as made so cheaply little can be done to repair them.

The old type one could use a contact-less pen or meter, and find out where the line stopped, but these will not work with extra low voltage. Picture of lights may help.
 
Hello

Yea, this is exactly my thought, I didn’t know if I could bypass the broken led light, or do I need to change the circuit board in the plug out?

Having to replace them isn’t going to be easy as I have the wires built into the wall in places so I could use one longer string of lights using one smart plug to turn on or off, and have light around my tv and my bed without having too many lights.

Would it be possible to rewire a plug on the lights to more of a normal plug and not one with the circuit board that controls diff type of flashings?
 
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I recently brought one of those live wire cable detectors and I have obviously turned on the lights, none light up, but the wire live cable detectors lights and bleeps all the way to the end of the light strings. So, if the cable is still live, why are all the lights not working, if I find a few broken (possibly chewed) lights I can just cat them out and reattach right? But how do I find all the broken lights?

No, you cannot use the live wire detector for low voltage lights, it has absolutely no relevance.

Would it be possible to rewire a plug on the lights to more of a normal plug and not one with the circuit board that controls diff type of flashings?

No, you cannot do that - the PCB drops the voltage and well as making the lights flash. Fitting the plug direct to the LED's will at best cause the LED's to explode, at worst possibly cause a fire.
 
So, thank you for your help. I found a clean break in the wire, looks like a wire cutter did it. Must of been my kittens back in July sometime.

I soldered the wire back together, and put some heat shrink over it. I also found about a meter before the lights start, the 2 cables were soldered and bare. I didn’t like this idea, so I unsoldered it and resoldered it with heat shrink
 

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