Having seen an interesting LED wiring loom used in a particular style of decorative light in the past, I was surprised to find it on AliExpress during a search for signage components.
It’s basically a long series string of two pole XH type connectors designed to allow easy connection of a string of LEDs in series on a non-isolated capacitive dropper power supply. That allows a large number of individual LEDs to be powered from a cheap and simple power supply.

The downside of this system is that every socket poses a shock risk due to a lack of shrouding of live metalwork. That makes it particularly awkward that this system was used on a fashionable decorative light range that had the LEDs stuffed randomly throughout a structure wrapped with spiral aluminium wire, and in amongst “flowers” that were more coiled aluminium wire scrunched together. I don’t think they were earthed/grounded, which makes me wonder how many people got tingles off the lights. The newer ones seem to have switched to using strings of sleeved LED Christmas lights.

Old-school filament-based Christmas lights used to be available in twinkling form. LEDs, with their hard-on and hard-off nature, aren’t naturally predisposed to such behavior. To rectify this, some time ago, [Mark Kriegsman] built an Arduino program that makes LEDs twinkle beautifully.

The program is known as TwinkleFOX, and relies on the popular FastLED library for addressable LEDs. [Mark’s] demo setup is built around using WS2811 LEDs, put together in a string with plastic diffusers on each bulb. The Arduino is programmed to vary the brightness of each LED according to a triangle wave function. To create the twinkling effect, each LED has its own unique clock signal, so they vary in brightness at different times and at different rates.

https://gist.github.com/kriegsman/756ea6dcae8e30845b5a

Getting up on a ladder to hang Christmas lights is a great way to hurt yourself if you’re not careful, and winter conditions only add to the peril. One enterprising hacker has whipped up a neat way to avoid ladders entirely, by hanging their lights while planted safely on the ground.

https://imgur.com/a/fVySUB2

Where do you start when tasked with developing a lighting design? What makes a design memorable and interesting? Led by expert lighting designer, Craig Rutherford, this webinar explores the fundamentals of visual design with a focus on lighting concerts and developing a coherent style.

Martin Professional Business Development Manager Brad Schiller shares his favorite lighting terms and explains their meaning, importance and history. Covering all genres of production, this webinar introduces some of the more obscure nomenclature from every letter of the alphabet.