HOW TO TEST AND FIX CHRISTMAS LIGHTS - Light Keeper Pro and Non Contact Voltage Tester Method
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 พ.ย. 2019
- When you have a set of mini Christmas lights that won't light up, you can either toss them and buy a new set for a few dollars, or there's some cases where you may want to find and replace the burnt out bulb(s).
This video shows two accessories I use to find bad bulbs, and how each procedure works. The beeping was louder than I expected so I had to chop out parts of the video after it was uploaded so if it’s not clear how the beeping tester works, when there is live voltage it will beep continuously and if there is no voltage it may chirp once or twice and stay silent.
Non-contact voltage tester:
Amazon.ca: amzn.to/3HbGOeY
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Light Keeper Pro:
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Workbench equipment I regularly use:
946C Solder Hot Plate 200mm x 200mm www.banggood.com/custlink/K3D...
ANENG AN8008 True RMS Multimeter www.banggood.com/custlink/KKD...
Minleaf NPS3010W Power Supply www.banggood.com/custlink/KKK...
FY6900 Dual Channel 60MHZ Signal Generator www.banggood.com/custlink/vGK...
Siglent SDS1104X-E 100Mhz Digital Oscilloscope 4 Channels Standard decoder
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Very clear. Your explanation was easy for even someone with no electrical experience to understand. I can now fix my lights. Thanks!!
I watched several videos on fixing Xmas lights and this is the first one that wasn't too complicated. Thank you!
The best explanation for finding the bad lights, thus far!!! Thank you so much!!!
Best, clear and easy to follow video. I had seen many others in the past, but for me this one wins! Great job!!!
Nice step by step presentation. Easily understood and relevant material and tools repeated. I'll probably just do this the first way with all my lights in my backyard. I do believe that you have saved some squirrels!
Great information. Thank you very much, my wife got so frustrated today after she wrapped the Christmas tree up, with a whole bunch of lights. When she got to the top all the lights went out, she almost died. I just purchased both devices using your links. Thank you again
Excellent Tutorial!! This video clearly and simply explained both the mechanics of the lights, and the troubleshooting philosophy. This will help me save a lot of time and money on our copious displays. Thank You!
Thank you so much for this video. I absolutely love that you explained how the string lights work, how the bulbs work, and how the lightkeeper works. In order for me to fix something...I need to understand how it works. I was having a very difficult time finding this information in a simply laid out way. I feel much more prepared now to try to fix my many broken strings
Great description of how the shunt works.
Brilliant - testing made easy! Thank you! Gonna buy voltage testers for all the family! Happy Christmas!
Wow that’s awesome thanks so much for showing, I got my lights to work by manually checking the bulbs, then as soon as I hung them they stopped working. I have the light fixer pro Gun thing but can’t find the directions and only used the bulb tester, never knew how to use the shunt feature, this fixed it! Thanks!
It’s worth noting that some strands with multiple serial sections may lead with a different pole. For instance, I have a set 100 (50x2). The first 50 “tap” on common and the second 50 “tap” on neutral.
So, you either need to flip the plug when testing the second half, or start testing the second half from the other end.
Very helpful comment - fixed a couple of strands and definitely needed to flip the plug to isolate the bad blub(s).
Excellent video! It can be a frustrating process to find the problem but you explained it very well. Probably millions of miles of lights have been discarded that could have been recovered.
Thanks for sharing. I have wireframe displays and thought the sniffer was to sensitive as it always had a tone/light red when close to wiring. The shielding with the hand is the what solved my trying to trouble shoot dead sections of lights. May look for a way to shield without having to partially remove from frames. Thanks again for sharing.
This was spectacular. Thanks for putting in the time to create a simple - yet clear - explanation of the mechanics of how the light strands work.
I have used light-keeper-pro for many years which has saved my incandescent sets, but is is not useful on led lights. Excellent VIDEO !!!
Wonderful information!! Planning to purchase one. Pray it does the job. 😊
Wonderfully helpful, informative video! Thank you!
Great Troubleshooting Workflow. Thanks for sharing.
Merry Christmas To All
Very good explanation! Merry Christmas!!!
Very clear instructions
Thanks so much
Thank you. Very clear & well thought through. Seeing your previous video, I thought I'd add a binary division search method -- you nailed that here, without even adding an obfuscating term. Again, thanks.
You can also unplug the strand and plug the light keeper into the strand and click the trigger in a dark room, and look for bad bulbs the flicker. Replace those bulbs.
Great troubleshooting technique!
Good Video. I have a lot of lights to fix this year. I usually just use the pen type sniffer to sniff out the bad bulbs but they are very sensitive. Watching that video gave me an idea. I have a few different multimeters with the NCV function feature that we all pay for and never use. They work and all have different sensitivities but, they are not as sensitive as my fluke Sniffer. The multimeter may make it easier to find the live wire. I'll get back with you if it makes the process faster. Happy Hunting lol.
That light keeper pro device also has a noncontact voltage tester on its nose and it’s less sensitive to the point where I thought it wasn’t even useful until I watched a video from the manufacturer showing different features and now that I know how to use it it’s got the perfect sensitivity without having to isolate and shield from the other nearby conductors. You just touch it up against the base of each bulb socket and it seems to reliably detect presence and absence.
@@GadgetReboot - time is now right for you to put up a video demonstrating that capability of the lightkeeper ...
Loved the Video. Liked your instructional sounding voice and, best of all, It worked!!!!
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you . I've been decorating a hotel lobby and Party room for several years. The lights I plug in to test seem good but as soon as I hang them and plug them in, half are out, which leads to much frustration and several under my breath comments. I'm going to get both of those Gadgets no more frustration for me!!
Great info! LED bulbs will be a whole new ball game to fix.
Just bought a tester pen! A good one but have not try it yet !
Thanks for the video!
Great Information - Thank You for posting ...
WELL EXPLAINED.
Best time to buy the line keeper or something similar is the day after Christmas. Thanks for making the video
Awesome… thank you so much!
thank you so much. my tree has a crazy woven pattern between the two circuits and i really didnt want to try taking out every single unlit bulb!
Clear easy explanation to repair lights. Plus a diagram… very helpful THANK YOU
👋i hope you're safe over there? I hope this year brings happiness prosperity love and peace 💞❤️🕊️🕊️ all over the world! Happy New year 🎆 🙏🌍
I'm originally from Canada currently living in California ☀️☀️☀️and you where are you from if i may ask?
Thank you!
Great video my friend
Was very helpful
Thank you
Great explanation easy too follow. LOVE YOUR ACENT WITH OUT AND A FEW OTHER WORDS. :-)
I should have said people can avoid having to go shopping oot and aboot by just fixing the lights and staying home
if you had an LED string of lights could you use a voltage detector to find the bulb where voltage enters but does not leave the bulb/base ?
Ohh too cool.. I get it.. wish I hadn't thrown out miles of wire over the years.. but I won't remember squat by next year.. so in my SAVE in CHRISTMAS Folder you go... Thank you brother,.
Thanks for a clear/great lesson by a great teacher!
Thank you for explaining I just wasted about an hour last night and it never fixed the full set, but I assumed it was prob one of the bulbs not lit I never thought it could have been a lit bulb that was the problem thanks!
Great video and explanation.
You used the voltage tester on incandescent lights. Can the same technique be used on a LED string.
Also correct me if I am wrong. The Light Keeper pro works only on incandescent bulbs?
I would have to test the method on an LED string to be sure, but I'm all packed up to move next week so my things are scattered. And the Lightkeeper Pro is intended to fix incandescent filament shunts so no good for LEDs but they do make an LED Light keeper. I haven't used it but I think it just provides a way to tap into the string to bypass the bad LED.
I need to upgrade to LED to learn more even out of curiosity, maybe when I get settled from the move.
Amazing 🤩
I identified all the bad xmas tree bulbs years ago. Anything that had a glass bulb was tossed (Value Village to be precise), and was replaced with LED sets.
:)
I bought some LED lights years ago but when I put them in place I hated the way they looked. I don’t know if it was because it was too early for LED to be realistically incandescent or if it was just a weird set but more recently I did find better looking LED, But there’s still the retro nostalgic thing that keeps me buying incandescent when I find them cheap enough.
Come to think of it, where are those LED lights. I need to do a decoration audit. I think I could easily throw away half of the decorations and make more room for semiconductors!
thank you for the video, I have a string that was on for a while, and the whole string just stopped working. I tried to use the method described, but I can't seen to find out where the bad bulb(s) are as I have power for the remaining string, and the voltage tester lighted up for all the bulbs on the string that are not lighting up. I suspected that there are multiple bad bulbs and I just gave up to buy another one. If you have a bad string of bulb, turn it off and find the problem right away, or else, many of your bulbs will continue to be burned out.
Great idea using a chicken stick I never would have thought of that!!
I’ve had it sitting around doing nothing for years so might as well put it to good use.
Cool. This used to happen to me every year! LOL
Does the same method apply to icicle style lights?
Some of these types of strings also have a fuse inside the male plug that affects the whole series of lights. I would first check to see if this is the case before testing all the lights, etc.
I have a non-contact voltage tester tested all the lights on my stran they seem to be getting power they are LED would that be any different from the regular Krypton bulbs I don't know if they have the shint in them or not I went around and pushed all the lights in and even replace the fuses
When looking at any 120V socket, the narrower/shorter of the 2 plug sockets is the hot. When plugging the light plug in, I would think the wire coming out of the plug that aligns with that side of the socket should always be the hot.
Not all the plugs are polarized so they can be plugged in with hot on either side
@@GadgetReboot Yes, I agree on the plugs. But the sockets are polarized. Whichever wire that is wired to that side of the plug that gets plugged into the hot part of the socket will be the hot.
If the Shunt burns out then wouldn't you just use the Toner to find where the power stops?
But what if the lights are built into the tree?
All good and fine with a brand new set on the table, but try on a 7 ft tree with many burned out lights, nothing but a headache, I gave up doing it with the light keeper, instead just replaced any burned out lights and so far it seems to working.
whenever I have a pre-lit tree where the light keeper is the easiest way to get it going again, once it lights up I then try to find all the burned ones and replace them so the remaining ones last longer and don’t have excessive voltage across them. But when they are all off it can be hard to figure out where the bad ones are.
My tester (the same as yours (capacitive probe?)): I don’t know . When I come back on previous ones , it doesn’t buzz…or it does . Very confusing.
I detect voltage at every light but none are lit. What next? I'm guessing this doesn't work for led
You're likely detecting voltage off the other hot wire that's not running light to light. I've found it somewhat tricky to determine false positives and isolate the line, especially when it's already clipped to the house. It can be tricky to stretch and grab with your hand like he demonstrates. I bought a dual range tester that has a less sensitive range starting at 70 volts. That got me through my last strand for now. Works just the same for LED.
Led strips usually work in a very very different fashion which is why everything beeps, I suggest seeking a tutorial specifically for led
So I tried the first one where toy seperate the whires and used the tester but all of them kept beeping and the whole string is out can toy help me pls
I wonder how that thing "repairs" the shunt in the dead bulb....I'm almost looking forward to wrestling with christmas lights in a few weeks....I will reread the instructions for the light keeper pro....Don't remember if they mentioned anything about proper polarization...
I think the light keeper does mention flipping the plug around to detect voltage, or maybe it was on one of those ads on their TH-cam page where I saw it in a video.
For repairing the shunt, if I remember correctly it has something to do with the fact that the shunt has extra resistive material on it that sometimes does not burn away when the bulb filament blows, so it stays highly resistive and doesn’t work properly, so when a high energy pulse is sent through the string and gets to the shunt, it tries to burn off the resistive coating and if it does, everything magically lights up again.
@@GadgetReboot OK, that makes sense, will try to reread the directions, if I kept them!
great video, now what happens if the fuses keep blowing in the plug so i cant check with power or plugged in, and there are no signs of damaged wire, and it has one of those controllers on it to make it stay steady, or have different effects
There could be a problem in the controller (may not be worth trying to figure out especially if it's just glued together like one I had) or maybe if all the bulbs are actually blown, and all the shunts are working, it could be just creating a big short circuit through all the dead bulbs across the plug. I had one set I just couldn't figure out so I threw it out.
@@GadgetReboot thats what i figured, it cant hold a fuse at all, when i plug it in in,it even sparks a little at the plug, so i took controller apart, seperated wires, and will try a new fuses without the controller hooked up, and then use a jumper for each set of lights, it is a sign that says happy holidays, so there is 3 sets of the sign, each string has probably 30 or more bulbs per piece, thanks for your reply and have a great christmas and new year
What is the gun doing that it trips the fuse links.
When I was trying to research it myself, which I didn’t put too much time into so I’m not sure if this is accurate, this one blog post comment from 2005 gave one suggested theory that I will go with for now:
gadgetopia.com/post/4746
“I’m guessing that the device generates a pulse with a relatively high voltage but a very limited current, sorta like a large battery in series with a high resistance. When the lamps are connected in series with the resistance, no current flows and all of the battery voltage appears across the filament of the open lamp. This high voltage (presumably) burns the resistive material off the bulb shunt and allows it to work. Once the shunt is activated and current starts to flow, most of the voltage appears across the high resistance and very little voltage appears across the shunt, thereby not burning it out.”
Info on shunts from www.energy.gov/articles/how-do-holiday-lights-work
“In incandescent holiday lights, shunts are small wires wrapped beneath the filament. Initially, they are coated with a substance that makes them an insulator. In other words, electricity cannot pass across the shunt as long as the filament exists, because the coating gives the shunt a higher resistance initially than the filament, and the electrical current avoids the shunt in order to find the path of least resistance through the filament.
If the filament burns out, however, the high temperature from the burnout will cause the substance coating the shunt to melt off, revealing the lower resistance wire beneath. Now the shunt has gone from an insulator to a conductor, and current passes along shunt, keeping the circuit closed, and the remaining lights burning.”
👍
Hey man so I have a problem wondering can you help Solve the problem?so I decided to see what will happen if I pulled out a light bug on my Christmas lights and I put the little light bug back in but now they are not working anymore any suggestions?
Maybe the two wire leads on the bulb are pressing inward to the bulb base too much and can't make contact with the socket. Try spreading them apart so when the bulb goes in the socket the leads will touch the sides of the socket and hopefully make contact
danke schon
How are you suppose to plug it in if one end is male that plugs into the power source and the other a female that also has a female on the led keeper....
Here's the instructions lightkeeperpro.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/LKP-Instructions.pdf
There's multiple ways to do it. If the lights are plugged into AC, the light keeper plugs into a light socket with the bulb removed. If a light socket doesn't fit, then the lights can just be plugged into the light keeper instead of the wall. I don't know why they do it multiple ways if it works just plugging it into the light keeper in the first place.
So that device sends a burst of electricity meant to make the shunt move and possibly connect?
yes and sometimes the shunt still won’t work so then the bulb is bad forever
The first bulb makes the pen beep and thr last bulb makes the pen beep. Why won't they turn on? I don't get it.
Continuity tester- of course!!!
Helpful video.
But I can tell you: this fixing tool usually doing more damage to the bulbs then good.
Once you shorted your non-shorted burned-out bulbs, and replace them - usually you figure out you've got more burned out bulbs now then it was before.
Also, if you have different set of lights, how to figure out what is the bulb's target voltage?
You can't put bulb from say 50 string line into the 10 string line - it'll burn out immediately.
The same kinda effect if you have too many bulbs burned out and shorted on the one string.
Ok, I’m an electrician and your comment makes absolutely no sense. This “tool” is simply a continuity tester. It only checks to see where the electricity stops flowing. So if you have a short, you’ll know because your l bulbs will short off and on. An in that case, technically you can fix that too but may not be worth the time invested!
@@bbikermama I was talking about second dedicated tool and it's feature to short unshorted bad lights when you insert bulb socket into the tool and start clicking
@@boltyk1 If you mean the lightkeeper pro, it is a very useful tool. A lot of times the string won't light because the shunt that's supposed to carry the voltage around a burned-out bulb isn't working. The lightkeeper sends a shaped charge down the line that clears the bad shunt. I believe it's a piezoelectric tool, which is why the clicking sound. It works great, IF the problem is the shunt. If a bulb is actually missing, the string will never work until it's replaced. Still, it's easy to look down a string for a missing or broken-off bulb.
As for the voltage of the bulbs, right on the packet it tells you what length set the bulbs are for. 100-bulb strings are the most common for trees and outdoors, and the others are for something like 10-40 bulb sets.
I bought my lightkeeper years ago, and it's paid for itself many times over by now. A worthy tool in your Christmas lights box. It comes with the circuit tester, too.
@@ShroomKeppie I found the standalone non-contact tester is the most helpful tool to find a problem bulb. And the lightkeeper is only for a bulb test feature.
Tricky points for me was to keep in mind that lightkeeper tests lightbulbs using batteries, and when these batteries are low (need to be replaced) you still have this small red led indicator ok, but not enough power to lit the lightbulb so you have a false sense the bulb is bad.
Another caveat: when testing bulbs from a low-count strings (less then 50) these 3 button batteries are barely able to lit it. And drain it's batteries even quicker. I'm not sure why having a lot of space in this lightkeeper they decided to put these 3 small button batteries instead of 3 AAs or at least AAAs.
@@ShroomKeppie If you have small number of good lightbulbs left in your string, this lightkeeper click feature going to correct shunt, but high voltage start burning these good bulbs left in your string until you get some bad shunt again to stop this burnout process.
If you're "lucky" and all bulbs in your string had good shunts - then it will be time to change a fuse. And change it again, and again... every time you'll try to plug this string on after till you figure you need to pull one lightbulb out . :)
You have the string light not the ones that hang?
Icicle light strings operate on the same type of electrical circuit diagram as showed in this video. So the same testing techniques apply.
@@stevebabiak6997 it’s a bit complicated
Nice vid I put a little tap on the working part because you will lose your way
The tester from Amazon will do the same thing as the voltage tester it will beep when there is voltage in a socket.
How do you know its a bad bulb vs bad fuses?
if using the light keeper pro, if pulling the trigger 30 times doesn’t fix it, it might be a fuse or maybe the bad bulb just can’t be recovered and it needs to be tracked down and replaced.
if using the AC noncontact voltage tester, if there’s a blown fuse there should be no live voltage detected anywhere with the tester.
How does that tool repair the shunt?
I think I read somewhere that when the shunt fails to engage, it's because the heat from the bulb burning out wasn't enough to burn the insulation off the shunt and allow it to kick in as a bypass conductor, so the pulse from the device tries to finish the job.
@@GadgetReboot
Thanks
Now if only I can find my lightkeeper pro....I never actually knew it did this.....maybe I can fix some sets I have.
That is soooooooo easy when the lights are not already on the tree !
We just bought a non-contact Voltage Tester. Carefully went through the steps above and nothing. Only one side of the string lights up. We even moved some bulbs around to see if that is the problem. Nope. Do you have any other suggestions?
There could just be a wiring issue also like a bad socket - sometimes wires get all frayed in the socket and the bulb can't make contact.
I didn’t know you can jump start lights 🤣🤣🤣
What if you have a section with all the lights being black and burned out. Do you recommend you replace them all or toss them?
sometimes all of the lights can be burned so at that point it’s probably cheaper and easier to just throw it out but if the bulbs all look scorched they may still work so I usually try to locate and replace a couple of bad ones, and at that point if nothing comes on it means the whole string is probably dead so then I throw it out.
Only problem with this testing -- assuming that the light string you’re testing is wired that way! Long strings tend to be wired in segments- that is, one bulb burns out, but the electricity continues to flow to the next segment.
via the parallel connection of the independent series strings, yes. so all we are doing is diagnosing the one series string that has the problem in it and ignoring the ones that are still functioning.
My Christmas lights have only two wires
Never worked for me
Seems so easy, but of course when I try it, not so easy. Every bulb on my string is out, and every one is getting current according to my non contact voltage tester. I’m going to turn into either the grinch or the hulk
One Way to confirm all the bulbs are really blown and The noncontact tester is not just picking up some other stray voltage if it is overly sensitive or still too close to other live power, if you are picking up voltage going along several bulbs that are all out, try pulling one out of the socket and that should definitely break the circuit, then try testing again and you should definitely only see voltage on one side of that bulb wire and not on the other side.
if you’re picking up voltage on both sides of the socket with no bulb in it, you must be picking up something else so try going to a different room just to see if there’s a difference or try separating the wire out further from the rest of the wires on the string.
@@GadgetReboot thank you! Will try
@@GadgetReboot nope! I unplugged a bulb and the pen still beeps on both sides. I'm pulling my hair out.
Udaya💡💡💡
I’m here for the binary search.
Yo... its 3am and the sound mix for this video just woke up everyone in a 3 block radius when that voltage detector started machine gun beeping. I hope all your neighbors get Harleys for Christmas and have jobs that require them to wake up early every day. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
I'd love to see the folks around here riding hogs - that would be worth waking up at 3am for! Thanks for the laughs. Also, I took a look at the video and the beeping didn't come across extra loud here, and I don't recall others complaining. Maybe your setup is unique.
Why does electricity even start down a path that it cannot complete?
similar to water flowing through a pipe that’s capped off at the end and nowhere to go, the water still will fill the pipe and if there’s ever a way out then it will take it.
I think I get how the products work but you need to review basic electricity. Current will not flow unless it has a way to complete a circuit. Water is not the same as electrical current.@@GadgetReboot
In computer science, this is called a "binary search".
To programmers: it's binary search!
First thing that came to my mind. 👍
I wrote my first binary search in Pascal, speeding up a former algorithm with sequential search from 24 hours to 20 minutes (millions of records)…. Years ago.
Too bad i saw this video too late. I had already thrown out two strings before Christmas because they did not lit up
How to fix the light? You need a tool🤦🏻🤦🏿🤦🏿🤦🏼🤦🏽
waste of time to watch
It worked for me, you must have used the tool wrong. I searched for this video because it shows clearly how to use the tool...
I just bought these so I will try them when I get them.
I've fixed a number of strands, but have also struggled. I guess it takes some practice and the right tool. These testers can be sensitive, so you must make sure not to mistake voltage on the hot line that's not going through the bulbs.