LED Ornament Conversion

I found this childhood gem in my Christmas ornament bin, but due to modern times, I couldn’t power it since I switched to all LED Christmas lights. Due to that, it’s just not possible to simply connect this ornament to an LED strand, not only due to the incompatible socket, but also the way LEDs are powered from mains voltage in a strand. But, I manage to hook up the ornament, but sadly, it didn’t work.

I had no choice to crack open the ornament and re-engineer it to work with LEDs. The problem as you can see, is there is a circuit that will flash between the two lights. The ornament even takes into account mains voltage with a bit of hack to get it down to the lower voltage a circuit normally requires.

Back to how LED Christmas lights work – As we know a LED is a diode that creates light when current is passed. Since they are diodes, they just use the strand as a long rectifier, converting AC to DC voltage. With that said, I cannot just plug in a circuit and get 5 volts.

So, I just used a simple 555 timer circuit I found online and used the components off the old board. Now that I have it wired (as you can see), I just need to have a dedicated light strand dedicated to these moving ornaments that supplies my 5 volts.