wish list for outdoor lights

[eub]

They're solar-powered, and they turn on as you get near them by Bluetooth. Waterproof of course. If they're pulsed LEDs to save power, that's great, just so as the frequency is high enough that I can't see the flicker.

(I will be very sad when they stop manufacturing incandescent Christmas tree lights and all the LED ones have that horrid nails-on-chalkboard flicker.)

If they have microphones and transmit the outdoor soundfield indoors for my listening pleasure, that would be a bonus. If they do it by micropower peer-to-peer meteor-bounce radio so I can scatter them on public lands, so much the better. They can even drop the whole lighting feature from those models if it helps meet specs.

Comments

[via-lens.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you've got work to do there, Eli. These things aren't gonna invent themselves. ;)

[xuth.livejournal.com]

all the LED ones have that horrid nails-on-chalkboard flicker
If you use a different power supply than just plugging them into a wall outlet you could change the frequency of the flicker. I presume they're just in several passive circuits with a bunch of LEDs in series with a resistor (as that's the cheapest way of doing this) but I've not carefully looked at any of them. Assuming this is true you could just use a 600 hz 120v power supply and you'd lose the obvious flicker (It would still be detectable with movement). If all of the LEDs were in the circuit in one direction (which I would hope they're not since failing to do so doubles the AC power requirements, but you could always rewire the strands) then you could just use a good DC power supply and have no flicker. Some ropelights are powered from DC so that they can be cut to length and (assuming a good power supply) should have no flicker.