At 6.8 OHM that LED would be pretty bright I think.

There is a resistor calculator on led.linear1.org/1led.wiz - you need to know the resistor value required so that you don't cause the led to fail. The magic value to plug in is 20mA for the diode forward current!!!! Voltage forward for an insert lamp is about 6.3V and voltage drop for a single superbright led is about 2V but depends on the colour. If in doubt, use a higher value resistor than you think you need.

I had an issue with my LEDs going out this week on my bird of prey and on GI light shining upwards at ship. Only three bulbs-not working on whole machine. Put Green ultra spot shining upward and two multi-green brights under wings. Worked for 2 weeks then went out? When I take LED out and touch to metal socket base it will glow very slightly while I am touching it. I am not sure if this is a ground issue.-Any thoughts?

As I mentioned in that thread, he is the only one I have ever heard of complicating the Klingon ship. Myself and probably hundreds of other people wired it straight to the GI and never had a problem.

He also gets pretty complicated with the Romulan ship, but it's pretty cool that he converted it to actual LEDs. All that extra work is really unnecessary though. See my post in that thread for the "easy" way. I'm sure his way works well too, but at least know you have an easier option.

Good luck!

I wired mine up direct and it worked fine, for about a day then it melted all to shit lol.

Luckily I bought two, was going to hang one on the tree. Did the second with instructions you used and it's been fine since.

Have you changed the entire machine over to LED? I think that may have an effect on V across the machine, and make a difference in whether or not you need the resistor.

Weird. I wonder why so many have had no problems wiring direct for years, yet some have heat issues. I have no other LEDs in mine, though I have thought about experimenting a bit soon.

When I switched to LED the entire machine seemed more poppy, especially the poppers to cannons fired out like rockets. I think LED draw so much less that it raises the voltage on the line, maybe a bit too high for the ornament.

For the OP, I'd jumper the resistor temporarily with alligator clips or anything really and try it. Easy enough to try anyways. This is assuming you're using incandescent throughout as that's what you have on the ornament.

My understanding is that the socket is rated at 6.3V.

The voltage drop @2V with 20mA diode forward current means you would be safe with a resistor value of 220 OHMs (for a single LED).

For a pair wired in series, there is a different calculation. The resistor needed is 120 OHMs (see below)

2_in_series.JPG

looks nice

I installed the Hallmark Bird of Prey, hmm... 2 years ago maybe. I have never had a problem with the front yellow LED ceasing to work. And I have it wired directly into the GI.

Now this one is a bit more complicated. I've done two. A word of advice, the documented method of pulling the circuit board out of the ship and mounting that board on extended wires below the Playfield isn't necessary. For the one that's on my machine, I took the circuit board out, and just wired the existing bulbs straight to the GI. It's been burning like that for ages with no issues. Works great. The second one- I have not tested yet, but I also took the circuit board out of that. On that one, I replaced the stock bulbs with LEDs. It's all wired up and ready to go, but I'm guessing I need a resistor on the line somewhere. Works great on batteries, but i Have not gone back to it to check what I would need for GI linkup. Either way, I just wanted to stop you in the event you were going to go that supper complicated route of remote mounting the BoP's internal circuit board. Don't even know why that's there to be honest. Anyone have a clue?

Why: Christmas lights, when run in series as they always are, each bulb drops roughly 6VAC or so.

GI is about 6.5VAC at full brightness.

It's close enough that it shouldn't cause a problem directly wiring it. Because the more you know...

Not saying this to be a jackass, but barring your machine being seriously miswired, you're imagining that effect. One is running on GI (or +18), one is running on +25. They share absolutely nothing in common, all the way back to using different windings off of the transformer. (You can even completely nuke one and the other will function just fine.)

My freind helped me find my problem with my bird of prey and GI spot going out. Not issue with LEDs or socket but it appears to be a burnt connector on J21 on backboard molex connector. My freind told me to look for burnt area in molex and sure enough huge black and brown area. Thanks to jalpert for my fix.

While exploring recurrent occasional GI circuit #1 fuses going out, I took out the GI lamps (conventional bulbs) one at a time. When I was down to the last few GI lights (I left them on during this process because I wanted to see if any of the sockets would short and blow the fuse while I was manipulating them as I removed the bulbs), I started smelling burnt plastic.

Sure enough, the Bird Of Prey was undergoing meltdown with the front boom light going out (but the other lights still working). This Bird of Prey was connected directly without resistors.

So at some point, removing enough GI bulbs from the GI #1 circuit I THINK caused my Bird Of Prey to meltdown.