# Wiring LED battery Tea Lights to a wall wart for PVC candles



## Saruman of Many Colours (Sep 8, 2010)

Thanks for this tutorial. Looks like a fairly simple procedure, so I might consider trying my hand at this.


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## DaveintheGrave (Feb 12, 2004)

Thanks for the tutorial, Edwin! Great idea!


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## CreepyCreations (Oct 16, 2011)

Great tutorial. I'd never thought of wiring them to a wall wart, but it makes a lot of sense, especially when it comes to those little batteries. The tea lights might be cheap when you buy them at a dollar store, but those batteries can cost a small fortune! Awesome idea. I sense a little weekend project coming on...


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## kimcfadd (Oct 6, 2010)

theedwin,

Great idea!! Do you know how many tea lights can be powered off of one power adapter. I have my PVC candles in groups of 3 (about 5 sets). Also, I took a look at your youtube video of your yard. LOOKS GREAT!!

Happy Haunting!!


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## Skarvha (Oct 4, 2011)

I'd also like to know how many I can wire together.
Also, how do you connect the other end of the wires to the transformer in a more permanent way than the alligator clips. My candles are all outside in my graveyard and I was hoping to run extension cords to a power box.


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## HomeHaunter1 (Sep 18, 2012)

Also once wired you can put them on a timer. I have almost everything on timers so I don't have to turn anything on or off. I'm more often away from home at dusk when I want my stuff turned on. As per the question of how many per wall wart. You need to find out how many volts your candles each take. Try to find a wall wart close to that amount, if your lights aren't bright enough increase your volts until you get the brightness you want. Once you find the eight one that is not too much use heat shrink and solder the wall wart to the leads. Make sure to put a cover over both wires to keep them water tight.


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## kimcfadd (Oct 6, 2010)

HomeHaunter1 said:


> Also once wired you can put them on a timer. I have almost everything on timers so I don't have to turn anything on or off. I'm more often away from home at dusk when I want my stuff turned on. As per the question of how many per wall wart. You need to find out how many volts your candles each take. Try to find a wall wart close to that amount, if your lights aren't bright enough increase your volts until you get the brightness you want. Once you find the eight one that is not too much use heat shrink and solder the wall wart to the leads. Make sure to put a cover over both wires to keep them water tight.


HomeHaunter,
So.......If each tea light uses a 3V battery and I have them together in goups of 3, a 9VDC power adapter would work to power a group (3 tea lights), correct?


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## HomeHaunter1 (Sep 18, 2012)

I don't think so. Think of it this way. You have two lamps. Each lamp plugs into a 110 volt power supply. If you run one extension cord you can plug them both into the one cord and the each get the necessary power. All though it is still 110 volts of power. 
Start at 3 or 4 volts and go from there. There is also a loss in power the further you run a cord. So if your candles are really far away from the plug you might need to use a 5 volt wall wart. Be careful though because if you were to say use a 12 volt you would let the magic smoke out of all your candles.


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## kimcfadd (Oct 6, 2010)

HomeHaunter1 said:


> I don't think so. Think of it this way. You have two lamps. Each lamp plugs into a 110 volt power supply. If you run one extension cord you can plug them both into the one cord and the each get the necessary power. All though it is still 110 volts of power.
> Start at 3 or 4 volts and go from there. There is also a loss in power the further you run a cord. So if your candles are really far away from the plug you might need to use a 5 volt wall wart. Be careful though because if you were to say use a 12 volt you would let the magic smoke out of all your candles.


HomeHaunter,

Thanks! After reading over what I posted, I realized I am running on WAY to little sleep these days!!! Thanks again!!!


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## kittyvibe (Oct 27, 2008)

just watched the video and had a few questions. This may be obvious to some but Im a total newb to electronics so any advice would be appreciated 

1: how do you link (daisychain) multiple lights to the wallwart? What is the configuration? Do you have an example to see the paths?

2: if I dont have a solder gun can I just use electronic black tape to close off the ends? 

3: You mentioned using the hot glue to help protect it from the elements. Were you adding hot glue on top of the soldered components? If yes, would we be able to just use hot glue instead?

thanks for the video!


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## Palmdale Haunter (Sep 26, 2010)

Get a soldering iron, you can get one a Harbor Freight for like $4.... look on Youtube for how to's and practice on some wire. It's super easy....

This is a great tutorial.... I have been wanting to do this for a couple years... I was going to use a PC power supply and uses the 3.3 volt wires,,, 

Have you tried this on the "flickering" LED tea lights? I have wondered if the flicker circuit is in the LED or in the housing...


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## HomeHaunter1 (Sep 18, 2012)

I agree you need to get a solder iron. Essentially it makes two wires into one. Instead of having a break in the middle. Much safer if its done right. 
There is a way to daisy chain the lights. I don't know how to do that though. What I am doing is running all my wires back to the end of the wall wart. It requires more wire but I will be able to disassemble and adjust where I want the lights. 
Second you don't want to use hot glue on live wire. What you want to use is heat shrink. It goes over the exposed wire, when heated it shrinks and replaces the original coating on the wire. Once you have a heat shrink on each wire you want to heat shrink over both wires. This keeps it clean and keeps your work protected.


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## theedwin (Sep 25, 2008)

Thanks for the compliments everyone! 

I still have to make the "PVC Candles" themselves. Until I get that done, I won't be able to wire multiples together.

I plan on making another video to show how "I" wire them together. 

I am running these in parallel so each one will be wired directly to the lead from the wall wart. In the past, I have run 12 of them off of one wall wart, but I am sure I could easily power another 20 or so. It all depends on the amperage of the wall wart you have. 

Kittlyvibe, actually the first time I made these, I just used glue. I still have them, use them and they still work (except for 1 of the tea lights) but I would definitely recommend using a soldering iron. It makes the connections work and stay SO much better. in the video I hot glued them for 2 reasons. The main reason is so that hey don't fall apart. The other reason is hopefully (it is not scientifically proven) it will keep the elements out. Living in Las Vegas, we don't get too many "elements" out here.


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## sp900zxi1 (Sep 27, 2010)

Very nice tutorial and explanation. I love the idea.


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## kittyvibe (Oct 27, 2008)

thanks theedwin, didnt know I could use hit glue. While looking inside a prop today I noticed it had some hot glue on the circuit board too, so I guess that answers that, lol. 

Now Im just looking forward to how you connect them all up 

I found an old motorola phone charger, can I use that to power these? Think it said input 100-240v output 5v


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## CreepyCreations (Oct 16, 2011)

Kittyvibe, you can't use the charger directly, as 5 volts is too high for most tea lights (they usually run on 3 volts). If you are comfortable with some basic soldering and electronic components, you can solder a couple of 1N914 diodes in series with the output. Each diode produces a voltage drop of almost exactly 1 volt, so the resulting drop of 2 volts will leave you with 3. Just remember that diodes are polarity-sensitive, so they have to be put in the right direction for current to flow.


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## CreepyCreations (Oct 16, 2011)

A follow up to my last post. Here's how you can use a phone charger to run your tea lights, with the appropriate modifications.







Drop me an email if you have any questions: [email protected]


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## kittyvibe (Oct 27, 2008)

thanks, I think I understand the diagram, which is awesome btw  Where does one find these diodes locally? I dont want to pay shipping for a bulk bag of these online. :/


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## CreepyCreations (Oct 16, 2011)

You should be able to find them at any electronics store that sells components, such as Radio Shack. A 1N914 is an extremely common type of diode. Just don't let them talk you into buying something else... the voltage drop for most "rectifier" type diodes (like a 1N4001 or similar) is higher ( usually around 1.7 volts) so you'd either use only one and put out too much voltage, or use two and put out too little.


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## HomeHaunter1 (Sep 18, 2012)

So on your configuration does that power two or four tea lights. Also it seems like you show only positive connections. Where are the negative connections.


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## DaveintheGrave (Feb 12, 2004)

The wire right below the one with the diodes is the negative connection. It would go to the negative terminal on the tealight.


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## CreepyCreations (Oct 16, 2011)

I am putting together a video tutorial which goes through the ENTIRE process and shows/explains everything, including dealing with adapters that DON'T produce exactly 3 volts. I'm just exporting the video and then will run it up to YouTube and I'll post the link later.


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## CreepyCreations (Oct 16, 2011)

OK. I finally got my video posted!




If this doesn't provide enough information on wiring tea lights to adapters, I don't know what does! LOL
I cover everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING, so it ran a lot longer than I expected. But there should be enough info in there to take you from start to finish.


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## azazel (Jul 18, 2011)

great now i got a new project got to remake all my candles lol thz for the tut it is great


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## kittyvibe (Oct 27, 2008)

thank you so much for taking the time to make the video creepyC! I lol'd at the hair comment  Little bit of the mad scientist look there, hehe.

The video was funny and informative. 

May seem obvious to others but Im a super noob, so a few things I need to clarify so I understand. 
You mentioned running the diodes for dropping voltage from 5 to 3. With the diodes, you can run about 8 lights per diode. So if your dropping 2 volts with 2 diodes, you can do max 16 lights off the one modified adapter?

Also, can you give an illustration or show an example of real life daisy chain action to connect more than one in the method in your video?

You used red/white cable from dollar store, with male/female ends. Is this a MUST or can we use regular speaker wire? Especially if were going to be hooking up more than one light to the adapter. 

Thanks again CreepyC, your so awesome!


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## CreepyCreations (Oct 16, 2011)

Kittyvibe,

Glad you liked the vid. Yeah, had a bit of the mad scientist thing going on there. I actually had to split the shooting across two days, so the latter part of the video I had some serious bed head going on! LOL

Ok... so the wire colors don't matter AT ALL. You can use regular speaker wire, just make sure you can tell which wire is which, since the way you hook them up matters. if you get them backwards, the lights won't light.

Here's diagram which may help better explain how to hook up multiple lights to the same adapter.








I say roughly 8 lights per diode (or diode pair in this case) simply because of current concerns and heating. So your max is 8. You could probably push it to 10 if you needed to, but I wouldn't go any more than that so you don't risk burning out the diodes.

Any other questions, post here or drop me an email (see signature).


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## CreepyCreations (Oct 16, 2011)

Oh.. and the male/female connectors were just for convenience so I can easily disconnect them and/or replace the tea lights with other thing that can run off the same voltage. You don't *HAVE* to use them.


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## ViennaMike (Oct 14, 2008)

Very nice idea. My comment is on hooking up strings of them. REMEMBER THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BETWEEN SERIES AND PARALLEL CIRCUITS! You can't necessarily hook up LED is series and get them to light. There IS a voltage drop across each. The extension cord analogy is flawed because it has the outlets in parallel, not in series. So you want to figure out how many you want to string together, add up the forward voltage drop across each, then figure out what additional resistor to add to get the right amount of current given the voltage in the wall wart you are using. For example, a 12v wall wart will likely light a nice long chain, but might only light it once if you don't add an appropriate resistor to the circuit.

Also, unless the LED is a special one with a built-in resistor, you typically want a resistor as well as an LED and the power supply. The tea lights being used MIGHT have such a resistor built into the LED or it might not. I've read that sometimes they get away with the small internal resistance that the small battery has. 

If you hook them up in parallel and don't add additional resistance, you'll draw more current per LED, which is bad and can burn out the LEDs and/or overheat the wall wart. The solution is to hook up a resistor with each LED. There's a nice calculator for how to hook them up and what resistors to use at http://led.linear1.org/led.wiz. 

Last item: if you want to build your own, I've found at least one source of just the LEDs, with built-in flicker effect. The source is Evil Mad Science.

Hope this helps!


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## CreepyCreations (Oct 16, 2011)

All my lights are hooked up in parallel for that very reason. Although I measured the actual current running through each light, that isn't to say they don't have some sort of internal resistor. So, I took the approach of the X-Files... Trust No-one. LOL I wired them in parallel so there is no possibility of how the LEDs are put together messing things up. The tea lights in the video must use the LEDs with everything built in. There were no other components, just the LED, the battery and the switch.


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## kittyvibe (Oct 27, 2008)

thanks again creepyC! I think I understand enough now to try it on my own! Appreciate the diagrams, they are very helpful since im a visual person


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## ViennaMike (Oct 14, 2008)

CreepyCreations: Yes, somehow I missed your picture, but I was really responding to someone else who suggested just rigging them in series. I am curious, though, why straight diodes in your diagram rather than resistors?

P.S. to another writer: yes, the flicking LEDs often have the circuit right in the LED, so this should be just as easy with any like that.


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## CreepyCreations (Oct 16, 2011)

ViennaMike,

I use a couple of diodes because the voltage drop across them is predictable, regardless of the current draw. If you use a resistor, the voltage dropped changes as the current drawn changes, so it is not stable. So, in low current conditions, the voltage dropped across the resistor is smaller and could result in too much voltage going to your tea lights or whatever you have hooked up.


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## Oak Lane Cemetery (Sep 5, 2011)

I just did this project today (after referring to this thread) to 3 small LED candles that use the button cell batteries and one larger one that used 2 AAs. I just opened up the backs of the small ones, removed the batteries, then attached lengths of wire from an old phone charger cord to the terminals. The big one I had to open up the bottom, cut the wires going to the battery compartment, then splice my wires onto those. Really simple and it preserved the flicker and the on/off switches. I used a 5v wall wart from an old Samsung cell phone charger to power them. Just brought all the wires together in a bunch and matched polarities for a test, I'll be incorporating these into a prop later so I just wanted to test and verify function for now.

Here's my candles ... https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.213407705681161.1073741855.163428484012417&type=3


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