Very nice low-voltage lighting festoon

This is a string of 10 outdoor festoon lights that is designed to run on a 5V power supply.
It's actually surprisingly bright for its total of 5 watts and would provide acceptable illumination in a dark outdoor area. The filaments are not being driven hard, so they should last a long time.

Although it comes with a touch controller, it can be replaced with a direct connection or switch for simpler control or for use with a USB PIR sensor module. The lamps/bulbs/globes themselves are quite interesting because they have a plastic globe surrounding a standard glass filament support and the globe is crimped into a standard E27 style base. The internal resistor is 12 ohms, and both the 3V filaments are in parallel.

I originally included a link to the eBay listing of this item, but the seller price gouged it to double the price, so I removed it.
Keywords to find similar items are:-
24FT Festoon Outdoor String Lights Dimmable S14
Reference price £17 for a string of ten lights.
They are probably available from local eBay sites and AliExpress.

These lights would be perfect for camping, living off grid, emergency lighting or anywhere you wanted a safe low voltage string of lights. They'd also work well on a tree, indoors or out.

I tested the string of lights at different voltages:-
5V - 1000mA
4.2V - 600mA
3.6V - 400mA
3V - 165mA
2.5V - 12mA

A power pack based on a couple of decent 18650 cells (or a 5000mAh pouch cell) and a TP4056 module would run these lights for well over 10 hours per charge.


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