LED vs Incandescent Lights

Cheryl I suspect that you might want Gunrunner John to take a shot at this one or one of the other experts on resistors and that kind of stuff. Maybe try Doug as he has gotten to be pretty good after the roundhouse redo experience.

i can do the basics but this sounds like it is a bit more advanced. But I want to see the replies.

"I have been thinking... dangerous for me..."   

Ms. Cheryl,

I'd venture to say that your personal bulb glows much brighter than you give yourself credit. Good Luck! with your project. Yes, what you're wanting to do can be done with minimal effort exercising great care. GRJ can explain it better.

I think it's a really neat system and they may be able to advise you on adapting it to your needs, a call or email to them may be worthwhile? Since it's new, they may just be willing to work with you to come up with something that would help you both, you never know?

I have briefly seen this at my LHS and it does look like a very nice, well thought out system that is reasonably priced. Don't know much about it though. I hope you are able to adapt it to you needs and also that WS does well with it. Looks like a good addition to the hobby that would benefit many folks.

Electrically it will work. I believe those street lights are a pain to disassemble. Have you looked at that first? I don't think the led will fit up through the post on the premade with plug led.

That was from a thread on how to replace the incandescent lamp in one that was out.

If getting an led up the post isn't possible ,then go to Evans Design's web site ,they have a separated wire harness that should solve the problem of getting the led up the lamp post ,i have converted all of my street lights to led's,it is really easy to do.

Hi Cheryl, do you know what voltage and current the plug and py puts out, since LED's draw very little current you could connect many together from a cheap zener diode resister setup.  , youn can buy a variable power supply very cheap on EBAY and just adjust the voltsage and current you need!

check out this power supply cheap!

Alan

NOTE FROM MODERATOR:  ebay link deleted not allowed per terms of service.

Thanks for all the input!  Did some experimenting last night, and the cap on the MTH Street light comes off to expose the bulb.  It is a bare wire bulb that has it's two legs folded over to insert into two holes that are metal connected to the lead wires.  We took a 3mm yeologlo led folding the leads in the same manner, put a resistor on one lead and tried it with a nine volt battery.  Worked perfect.  I suspect if I wire one of the WS extensions, with their plug, to the light, it could be plugged into their module and we're off and running.  Their modules have individual dimmers for each light connected and can be run from a DC trans former.  They also have a "control" port which can be use with an AIU to turn on/off the light.  Pretty cool!!  I tried the lights in my Rico Station, which is my guinea pig for this project, and there was sufficient light with two leds.    Am moving forward with the project!

Good news, Charly! Sounds like you are on your way. I wonder how many street lights you could power from one port on the controller. Wire the whole street in series and see if it works. Then you would only need one plug in one port.

Edit: just checked, one light per plug in the FAQ's for the control box. So, no go on the whole street in one plug.

Yeah, I checked that too   Sounded good

You might consider one of the connecting cables rather than an extension.  For the same price it appears you'd get twice as many plugs to attach your own LED...albeit half as much wire per plug.

Given the wide variety of lighting requirements on layouts, I think there will be others who use the Just Plug system but want to add their own LED to a special fixture like your streetlight.

Maybe someone has already done this but a contribution to the hobby would be to make some measurements and report exactly what comes out (voltage/current) from the system as you adjust the brightness.  I didn't see this info on the WS site (for obvious reasons).  Since you are going the DIY route with wiring, soldering, etc. for your streetlight knowing this info may allow you to double-up or even triple-up on your LEDs per output.  A photo of the guts of a light-hub would be interesting should you have occasion to open one up.

My faux pas, I meant the connecting cables   I've also determined that I can pop the leads out of the connectors so I can thread the wires through holes smaller than the connectors, which is cool   Light hub is assembled with screws, so a photoectomy should be no problem

For the inquiring minds...  one photoectomy as promised

Pretty simple little gizmatchie.  It seemingly will power an LED directily, no resistor needed.  However, only one LED per port.  I have fourteen street lights, divided by four ports, equals 4 hubs.  A miniatronics 3mm yeloglow LED fits perfectly into the street lamp, and even feels gas lightishly.  So onward, Ivanhoe!!!

Nice pictures - shows exactly what I was curious about! Given the name of the system, they surely don't want to confuse their target market but in looking at their circuit, you can connect more than one LED per port.  Of course if you want individual brightness control of all 14 streetlights then you need 14 ports.  But if you subscribe to the school of inquiring minds:

Place 2 LEDs in parallel (no resistors required).  The max brightness as set by the knob will be half per LED but it may be enough.  If still bright enough, try 3 LEDs in parallel.  If still bright enough, try 4.  Etc.

If the brightness drops too much using the parallel method, you can instead connect 2 LEDs in series (no resistor required).  In this case the max brightness range using the knob should be the same per LED (as when only 1 LED was connected).  This assumes you are powering the hub with 14-16VAC accessory voltage or their recommended power pack.  If no drop in brightness per LED, try 3 LEDs in series.  Etc.

FWIW, WS specifies DC current.  Since I have a plethora of old DC HO transformers, I plan to put them to work powering these little puppies

I wonder if you're thinking of the DC output specification of the light hub driving an LED?  From the WS site:

And reading further down the instruction manual, don't forget to put sun-glasses on any figures in your layout walking by an LED street-light:

What can I say...  but...  OOPS,

Until you know what the JP5770 power pack supplies, it's not oops yet!

Everything on their site and in their instructions specifies 16VAC.  Soooooo, I can use all the AC accessory power I've got, which is a lot, to power these.  Don't have to worry about using DC.  No biggie.  I have lots of power packs in both varieties