low voltage lighting

[TC Chris]

I've got an old Sears outdoor low-voltage lighting system. It's a 12V transformer on a timer, with a buriable cable and a number of incandescent lights. I'd like to use LEDs instead. And I know almost nothing about LED technology.

First of all, the LEDs may be diodes, but can they be powered by an AC voltage without s series diode?

And if they want a series rectifying diode, I could add one at the transformer end instead of using one per LED. But at the transformer end, would I add a smoothing cap after the initial diode? Value?

Chris Campbell

[William]

Chris. Friends in AZ have a low voltage system probably similar to yours. As the old-style bulbs burn out the are replaced with LED bulbs. They do nothing special to the old system, they just plug in the new bulbs, and everything is good. I believe they just Googled it and found replacement LED bulbs.

Bill

[hermitcrab]

Yes you can run them on AC... @ 60 cycles you wont notice the flicker... just use a dropping resistor To get them down to the 5 or 2.5 volt LED's you have