Smokin’ ebay 100, 200 and 500 LED fairy light strings from China.04:33

Part of me loves these strings of lights because they are cheap and cheerful, but part of me also knows that quite a few people have probably been given an unforgettable electrical festive experience from handling them while powered.
Here’s an autopsy on some 100, 200 and 500 LED sets with some data about the series LED multiples and resistors used in line.
Then I decided to hack some into one of the little capacitive dropper modules to take the strain off the resistors, and the results were very good. But still a bit of a shock hazard. So only for flame retarded rubber Xmas trees mounted on the ceiling.
It’s notable that a thermal scan of the 500 LED set once I’d wired them into the capacitive dropper, showed such a low resistor temperature that they didn’t even show a different colour from the rest of the LED assembly.