What was originally a good idea using light bulbs as cobs.

printer said:

No driver needed, it is onboard. The two wires on the back go to the end pin and the metal housing. The aluminum plate that the circuit is etched on is siliconed in the housing. The only questionable thing is on the led side of the circuit there looks to be three metal shapped things, two together and then one inline with it. these are the contacts for the wires and fir the capacitor. The contacts are actually live, touch them and you are touching right across the line. I have some electrical friendly silicone dabbed on them to insulate them. The bathtub kind may eat the metal over time, or it may not, I was not going to chance it. The black device with the four legs also is attached to the line, it is the rectifier that converts the AC to DC feeding the capacitor.

Be honest with you idk 80% of what you said above.. something I'm pretty interested in for sure. Just another thing to learn. Guess i have a Lowe's trip and a new project in the works for the next few days.

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printer said:

OK, you have separate driver boards on the four, actually gives you less to worry about. You can lengthen the wires to the Led boards from the driver boards. The single one on the end and the cob sty one has the driver with the leds. You can just combine the power wires up, it would probably be best if you found out which is the neutral and which is the hot (the hot going to the center button on the end of the light bulb).

The driver boards are not isolated, this means that the neutral wire runs from the wall socket through the driver board and into the led board. If you took an ohm meter (you do have a multimeter, right?) and measured from the wire to the led board and the power wire coming in you should get close to zero ohms. If not try the other wire, if not then try the other wire on the led board.

You also need to mount the led boards on a heat sink. Some people have used aluminum cookie sheets. They would get real hot otherwise. Without looking at them in person I can not say what they have for temperature protection. Mind you, the drivers off the led board gets rid of some heat.

The neutral is close to ground potential (voltage) and you don't want a high voltage around especially with water around. It would be good to have the driver boards in a metal box with the box grounded. The other two lights have high voltage on them that you could possibly contact, not really a good thing to have if you bump into them or with water around.

In my case I have them above and no water can contact them, I also insulated the high voltage points. I am well versed in electrical/electronics so I understand what needs to be done to do it right. I feel hesitant to advise people that do not have a fair understanding of what they are dealing with. It would be better just to use whole bulbs and get some sockets for them. It is not just worth the risk for the few bucks you would be saving. Especially that you want to mount them at people height.

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