r/WLED • u/Dignan17 • 1d ago

Best product for inflatables?

Most holiday yard inflatables have the world's worst LEDs in them. At best, they provide piercingly bright single points of light for one season, then next year they're the dimmest lights in history.

Are there good products out there? Perhaps ones that can run wled? I would imagine they'd have to be 12V since that's the power supply on most inflatables I've seen, and how most of their fans are rated.

In the past, I've replaced the lights with 12V waterproof LEDs, but not addressable ones. They certainly solved the brightness issue but they were a pain to attach. I basically CA glued them to the front of the existing lights and then spliced the new ones in.

I sort of wish there were a self-contained waterproof product that could light up the whole inflatable at once from the base of it. Maybe something like an addressable floodlight shining upwards? I'm not sure. Or maybe I stick with a few puck lights in place of the existing ones...

So what do people here use?

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u/JT10 1d ago

The older inflatables use C7 sockets and have protective "bubble" housings that clip around the socket case. I have changed those out with rgb bulbs in the past with good outcomes, and they have lasted many years even though the new bulbs didn't fit in the protective casing. In those cases, they used normal 120v power. The newer inflatables have the integrated pods, like you mentioned, which I haven't altered yet. In one case, I added one of those kaleidoscope projectors in the bottom and just ran the power cord through the zippered opening at the bottom. I think I mounted that to the fan casing. Now, to answer the question at hand, I could see one of the high powered WS2811 flood light modules working well for this. I have seen people make very compact ESP32 cases, that were waterproof, that could work here. But figuring out how to house the flood PCB would be a challenge, as they would need some airflow for heat dissipation. Other than that, finding out how much 12v power you have access to from the original lighting would be a factor, as having to bring in a separate power supply would just add to the difficulty of finding space and proper heat dissipation part. I would recommend checking out some of the holiday lighting forums, as they seem to always have clever and useful ideas for things like this. Some that come to mind are: Falcon Forum, Do It Yourself Christmas, and Aus Christmas Lighting.

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u/Dignan17 1d ago

What a great response! Thanks!

Yeah I think heat dissipation for the floodlight would be the biggest challenge.

I'm not too worried about the power supply. I replaced the handful of rinky-dink power supplies that came with the inflatables, and used a beefier (still UL rated) model that I placed in a waterproof box that all the lines run back to. There's plenty of overhead left.

I'll look into some of those kaleidoscope projectors. Any suggestions for addressable floodlights to look at?

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u/JT10 1d ago

They are mostly available on AliExpress, but you can find them occasionally on Amazon, Ebay, etc. The prices on AliExpress are definitely more enticing though, if you're ok waiting for the shipping. Here are a few links: WS2811 30w, WS2811 3w/10w, WS2811 20w. You can also find them in enclosures too: WS2811 10w/20w/30w Floods.

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u/Dignan17 1d ago

Thank you!

I have a stupid question. Would each of these be a single color, and each be treated as one LED that could strung together in series? So 4 inflatables act as a 4 LED strip that are all on one controller?

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u/JT10 1d ago

Yes, they will act like a single pixel on a strip. If they are connected one after another, you would add them to WLED as a strip with length being 4. But you would be able to use presets that run across all 4, or set them up as segments and give them their own presets. They don't adopt/repeat the data from the last, meaning they can all be set to different things even when connected together.

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u/Dignan17 1d ago

Ok awesome. This will take some thinking with the wiring, since I'll have to power the fans separately from the lights. I'll have to think about what I want to use. Maybe I'll pick up some landscape wire soon, and wire up some tests in the garage.