christmas light question?

[dreamcastninja]

I forget how you do this, I have seen someone do it a long time ago. I have a strand of 100 colored christmas lights that i wanted to hook up to a subwoofer to go off whenever the bass hits. I was wondering if anyone here knows how to do it? Do i just cut off the plug and use the positive/negative wires in the red/black speaker wire plugs or is it something more than that? I checked on google and couldn't find anything. Does anyone have a tutorial for how to do this, or know how to do it themselves? Thanks for the help in advance guys!

[stevejt]

The voltage going to a speaker isn't enough to drive a set of christmas lights, maybe LED's, but not christmas lights.  I know where I live, all the flea markets, and car audio stores sell something you wire in that does exactly that.  Don't know if they make one for 110 voltage, though...  Hope this helps!

Steve

[dreamcastninja]

thanks! I do know they did it though for a fact without any extra parts, i forget exactly how they wired it... maybe it was the receiver, but i know they didn't buy/steal anything extra. lol

[crashwg]

A buddy of mine has done it with christmas lights before too...  If I recall corretly it was a shorter string of the small lights (probably 10-15).  He just wired it directly to the the sub and it did exactly as you said with the flashing to the beat of the music.    If you blow up your amp/sub/anything don't blame me though, I'm just telling you what I saw.

[Santoro]

I think some sort of circuit involving a relay would be in order.  I would not want to risk an expensive receiver connecting a load like lights to it.

[shadowdrak]

A relay or a transistor should do it.  I think a transistor would give more of a dimmmer type effect than a relay.  either way you gotta make sure it can support the load.  the string I have says 0.34A at 120V.  That works out to 40 watts.  I would think that a pretty decent amp could power it, but I'd be scared to try it though.