Christmas lights cable

Is there anywhere I can buy two core, green or clear (not black or white) cable that will be suitable for 24v Christmas LED lights, at low current (Like around 50mA) stranded bell wire would be fine I expect, but in green? Probably need 15-20 meters of it.

I need to rewire some "snowfall" Christmas lights that have been bought from Amazon by my mum, who has asked me to set them up, that are frankly dangerous in their current state (Came with a US style plug (despite being 230v) with a un-shuttered, un-fused UK to many adaptor that looked like it cost 3p to make), this then connects to a very small in-line cylindrical PSU that looks like a ferrite ring capsule (I thought it was at first) and this outputs 120vac out to the set, over dubious looking cable that is not double insulated and is supposed to be OK to used outside) This cable also has one marked conductor, making it look like it should have been DC, but it isn't)

On further investigation, the 8 tubes of SMD LED's in clear tubes, each with a built in controller to control a number of groups of LED's to "snow" downwards (think the red light bar on the knight rider car, but slower, and only going one way), are wired in series, so each tube gets

15V AC, so I plan to rewire them into series pairs, and feed them 24V AC from a proper transformer, I think they will be happy with the slight reduction in voltage, maybe they will be a little dimmer, that won't matter.
Reply to
Toby
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Clear has long been one of he standard colours for speaker flex. From 15v to 12v might be a big problem, I'd use a 15 or 30v transformer.

NT

Reply to
meow2222

If you do that, you can twist it using a large back yard and an electric drill. Once you have it twisted it and it is still stretched across the yard run a hot air gun along the length and it will help each wire accept its new role as part of a twisted pair.

Bill

Reply to
Bill Wright

The classic method is once twisted, to give it a very slight stretch. Only takes a second.

NT

Reply to
meow2222

Are they worth the effort? Bah Humbug!

Too much cheap nasty tat around at Xmas.

Reply to
DerbyBorn

+1 I do it all the time with LT cable for mobile radio installs, the short pulling action makes all the difference to it staying twisted.
Reply to
Bill

Thanks everyone for your suggestions

I found some solid core telecom jumper wire (twisted pair) I had forgotten I had, and although it is blue and yellow, it has done the job for now. (She really wanted them up this weekend)

They seem to be working just fine on the reduced voltage, on about 25m of cable.

I just chopped them into pars, and put a jelly crimp on one end (they are in series), and jelly crimped an extension wire on to the other end, hopefully that will last this Christmas, if not, I will replace it with clear speaker cable!

I had a large 24v transformer, from when Christmas lights were not LED, and have used this to feed these new ones, plus a number of other static sets outside, I have also replaced the controller with a simple bridge rectifier (They are LED's so need DC) on a couple of the sets, because they reverted to flashing every time they were turned on, which was very irritating...

Reply to
Toby

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