LED Keeper® - LED Holiday Light Set Repair Tool

Not as easy to use as the red Light Keeper (for incandescent light strings), but if you follow the directions carefully, it does resurrect most of your defunct LED strings. I had seven or eight strings that didnt work at all, or only half the lights worked (you know what I mean). At first, try after try, I simply could not get it to work, so back to the instructions -- and VWAHLAH!!! Theres a note to keep your hands well away from the part of the string you are testing, because your hands can provide enough conductivity to give faint, intermittent beeps...and you just cant find the bad bulb. Of course, its natural for you to want to hold the string exactly in the wrong place, so you get very frustrated with inconsistent, intermittent, faint beeping. When I finally learned to keep my ham hands at least six inches away from where I was testing, suddenly the thing worked perfectly. I did have one string where I just could not find the fault...I think there may have been several bad bulbs or a broken wire. But all the rest are now working. Where the problem isnt a bad bulb, but a bad socket, you can cut out the faulty socket, and they give you a couple of pods you can use to jump the wires across the gap. SECRET: two pods dont last long. Theyll gladly sell you more for about $2 a pod. Forget it. Use cheap screw-on wire nuts. The ones I had were a little to big to screw down tight, so I inserted a piece of toothpick into the hole in the nut, and it tightened them just dandy.

There are some things that are predictable karma rules - 1) A flock of Pigeons will gather immediately after you have just detailed your car 2) The wind will blow just after you have raked the fall leaves into a nice pile, and 3) It will rain the day after you finish stringing up the Christmas lights. The first two problems are dealt with through a little more effort, and perhaps some sort of crystal therapy....but the third problem means that at least one or more of your Christmas lights will short out as the water finds its way into the light set. In the old school non-led world of Christmas lights, this was not much of a problem. But since I switched to LED, the problem has gotten much worse, and it seems that every year I wind up replacing several strands of those expensive buggers. So, enter this device which promises to find and fix the trouble LEDs. Yay! I watched the video, it seemed simple enough, so I ordered it, and collected my strands of dead LED lights to finally get some control over the spiraling cost of replacement. Or at least, that was the plan..... So by now, you are probably getting the idea that this is a negative review. It is probably a 3 star product, but I took away an extra star because it also broke my heart...never giving me the satisfaction of salvaging my light strands. Heres why: 1) The directions on the package are pretty useless., there are all sorts of gizmos and do-dads on the device, but the only one that is explained is the little hook thingy that you use to test the wires. 2) The product works by trying to short back to the plug, causing the lights on the string to light up, and then uses ptotato chip bag clips to mark the spot to replace the bulb. But heres the thing, to do the test, you must unravel the twisted strands of the wires leading to EACH AND EVERY bulb, and test it one at a time. It is tedious, and since the device pierces through the strand wires to make contact, a negative reading occurs frequently, even if the bulb is good. What is the fix? CUTTING OUT the bad bulb and attaching a shorting (shunt) bar - which is like a fancy wire nut. You are given 2! I had more than 2 on the first string alone! 3) Testing on a net light, I could never even FIND the problem. Had to call the technical service - who suggested it might be the transformer - and then informed me that it is probably beyond repair. Nice! I could have bought two new strands of lights for the cost of a device that tells me to go buy strands anyway... Each of the 4 net lights I tested (each taking about 30 minutes each to test) had the mysterious transformer problem. Sigh.

Replace the battery that comes with it. I thought mine was defective and then used my own battery and it has worked like a charm.

I have had the Light Pro for incandescent Christmas lights for years and it works great. Its quick and easy. The LED keeper is much harder to use and when you find the problem their correction is not ideal. I watched all the videos and they made it look easy, but its not as easy as it looks. I was a general contractor for over 45 years and know my way around electricity. I bought this unit thinking it was going to be easy. It maybe for you, but it wasnt for me.

Awesome product. I used on four light strings and it helped me solve the problem with each. Each string was $16 a piece and were only one year old. It has more than paid for itself already. Just follow directions provided. Not sure about all detecting all defects but each of mine had LEDs the had one contact broken off which caused one section of the string of lights to not light. This tool helped me identify which LED was defective through process of elimination. Each string took about 5 minutes total to solve.

I have been putting up outside Christmas Lights for nearly 50 years. I was always frustrated with the testers for incandescent light strings as they were not accurate or reliable. I finally switched to LEDs 3 or 4 years ago. Knowing I would still have issues with string lighting, I purchased the Keeper along with my first LED string of lights. The LED Keeper has proven to be a Life saver. I wrap my lights in balls of 900 bulbs each. When I get them out of storage, I plug them in and can quickly see what balls need attention. I unroll to the bad section and the keep quickly finds the bad bulb. With the cost of LEDs still pretty steep, this testers has Saved me a Bunch.

I was very frustrated using this tool with my LED lights. First of all, my string from Menards had not one, but three wires connecting each bulb and I had to test all three each time, so that was time-consuming. After narrowing it. down to one bad bulb, I tried swapping that out with a good one from the end of the light string. Well that didn’t work- turns out you need to have working bulbs in ALL the sockets in order for your string to work. I think the written instructions could have used more illustrations as they were hard to follow, but watching the YouTube video helped. Also, I don’t think the black pods would work with three-sting lights like mine because I couldn’t tell which wire was live. If you’re a handyman or good with electric repairs, this is your tool, but the layperson could use a little more guidance.

I was going bonkers last weekend because of the 11 light strands we use during Christmas, 6 of them had a section out. I googled fixing Christmas lights and thankfully this product came up. I watched one of the videos the company has and decided to give this a try. There certainly is a bit of a learning curve (watch the videos!), but I was able to fix four of the strands tonight until I ran out of replacement bulbs (a fifth one randomly started working again). I accidentally tore the entire housing off of the first strand because the bulb was stuck, so put one of the pods on and it lit right up! I went to our backyard, which has a different kind of lights, and I had to fix at least three bulbs, which took a while. But the strand eventually worked again! On these strands, the wires were wound very tightly, so it was hard to fit the keeper in sometimes, but I was able to unwind the wires after pulling on them a bit. Thankfully, I found the bulb on the fourth strand very quickly, probably also because I had some good practice under my belt at this time. I saved about $100 in new Christmas lights by getting the LED Keeper!

I watched a video on YouTube and saw the simple process for fixing the lights. I had 3 sets that were partially out and 1 completely out. The partially out ones were easy fixes; the completely out set was harder but thats because there were 8 bad bulbs! Great product!

This is a game changer if you have LED christmas lights that need to be fixed. Love it