I want to make my indoor X-Mas tree lights blinking and looking at YouTube they say to use a bulb with a red tip on it which is included when you buy a set, remove an existing bulb and install that bulb but my 3 years old lights don’t have this bulb.

I guess you could make a simple circuit to do that but I don’t know how and what parts you need

Any other trick to make the lights blinking?

Thanks

 

I thought the red tip bulbs only worked with incandescent light strings. If your lights are three years old aren't they LED? Still, I hate the affect those bulbs created by turning ALL the lights on and off at the same time. It just makes me think there's an electrical problem. I much prefer the modern lights that can be set to twinkle where lights blink on and off sorta randomly (there is usually a pattern if you are bored enough to devote that much attention).

 

Yes the red tip are for incandescent string lights. They are sold separately if you need some. The led string lights will have a bulb with a red mark on the base to indicate it is the flasher bulb. Theses also can be purchased separately.

 

It’s possible on YouTube the lights were incandescent, I forget. I also agree no good to have the lights on/off but rather blinking randomly.

Guess I’m out of luck, can’t get locally any of these Flasher bulbs for LED’s

 

Kind of expensive - but says it works with LED's

https://www.amazon.com/christmas-lig...+light+blinker

 

Your link doesn't take you to anything specific. Just a list of 799 products.

 

'"" There is usually a pattern ""

Back in the incandescent era they has "3-way," "4 way," etc. strings with that many separate series strings in the same set. For example a 4 way twinkle would be had with four hot wires with the bulbs in series and a single return or "neutral" making up the string. Every 4'th bulb would be on one of the series circuits. Each series circuit would have its own red tipped bulb.

They did make a few series sets with one circuit and random twinkling lights. They used a special kind of bulb which when, when it twinkled off, shunted (shorted) its filament without breaking the overall circuit.. One consequence was that the 120 volts or whatever supply was divided among the remaining bulbs. These sets had a few higher amperage bulbs that did not twinkle, enough so that only rarely, if ever, any bulb would receive a high enough voltage to drastically shorten its life. In action you would see most of the lights twinkling and a few just getting dimmer and brighter.