Rewiring a Lemax lighted Christmas tree.

Yes it is posible by building a voltage dividing network or a DC to DC inverter. But the best thing to do in my opinion is to go to Radio Shack and pick up a 5 VDC power supply.

Oh yea, RS has a real nice computer power supply that puts out 12VDC, 5VDC, and 3VDC. The out puts have a crow bar circuit that protects the supply.

It cost about thirty dollars but you can do alot of projects with it.

I think we had a thread on it a few months back.

Or check your parts bin for a 3 to 5 volt wall wart / AC adapter.

The tree's battery box should have a socket for Lemax's own wall adapters, which can power up to three Lemax accessories.  I believe two different ones are available for different voltages.

Aaron

You could make up a 7805 regulator circuit. For that you would need a 7805 regulator,a small capacitor and bridge rectifier.

 

Another way is to get some 1n4001 diodes. wire 4 pair of them as shown here.

 

www.jcstudiosinc.com/BlogShowThread?id=488

 

Instead of putting it in series to a motor as shown put it in series to one or more light bulbs,that are on the layout. Tapping the 2 ends of the string will yield a bit less than 3 volts AC when current is pulled through it. Wire this to the tree if it is light bulbs. If it is LEDs add a diode in series in the direction of flow.

 

Dale H

The 3-output 4.5V Lemax #74706 adapter comes with 3 output connectors so clearly that would be an expedient plug-and-play solution assuming your battery box has the jack as Aaron suggests.  I see Amazon is selling these for about $20.

 

If you are going to roll-your-own, I suggest a DC-DC converter module you can get on eBay for about $1 (search eBay for "LM2596 module") and that includes shipping albeit from Asia; usually takes about 2 weeks. There are some US sellers but they charge maybe $4-5.  Then add a bridge rectifier (about $1-2 at Radio Shack) and this would hook up to your Z4000 14VAC accessory output.  Adjust the module voltage to 4.5VDC and off you go.  These modules will supply the same (more) output current as the Lemax adapter.

 

If you have a surplus DC output wall wart that's, say, 9V or 12V you can skip the bridge rectifier and the DC wall wart can supply unregulated DC into the LM2596 module.