re: Question about Christmas lights.

quote:

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You can just plug in into any bulb outlet in the unlit section and pull the trigger and they come on. Have no idea how it works but it does.

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Light keeper pro. It's awesome.

Each bulb has what is called a shunt. When the light burns out the shunt is supposed to close so current will still go through the burned out bulb. Sometimes a bulb fails and the shunt doesn't close. You stick the light keeper pro in place of one of the bulbs and pull the trigger a couple of times and it closes all of the shunts that need to be closed and the string of lights will turn on. You then need to replace the burned out bulbs because if you get too many bulbs burned out in the string it will burn out the entire string of bulbs. There are normally 50 lights per string at 2.4 volts each for 120v. Each light that burns out and is replaced with a closed shunt increases the voltage to every active light in the string. Too many burned out lights and the voltage per bulb gets to a point it will burn out every light in the string. I had that happen to one of the strings in my pre-lit tree where I just used the light keeper one too many times without replacing the burned out bulbs. Had to replace every bulb in the string.

I do find it's crazy that it's cheaper to buy a string of 300 lights and steal bulbs from it than to buy 50 replacement bulbs.