String lights on a timer vs. solar: my backyard experiment backfired

I set up 120 feet of LED string lights on a wall timer in my Austin backyard last May, figured it'd be set and forget. Two weeks in, the timer glitched during a storm and left them on for 36 hours straight, cookin the bulbs and my electric bill. Meanwhile my neighbor's solar set from Home Depot dims way too early by 7pm in summer. Which setup actually holds up for y'all in humid climates, or am I just overthinking this?

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leo1072mo ago

Wait, have you tried one of those cheap smart plugs instead of a dumb timer? They're like $15 and you can set sunrise/sunset offsets so it just follows the actual daylight, which honestly solves the whole "dims too early in summer" thing without relying on solar panels.

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hugoharris2mo ago

Figured out the same thing last month after my dumb timer kept turning the porch light on at 4pm when it was still bright out. Read this piece about how smart plugs with ambient light sensors basically do the same job as those fancy solar controllers, but for a fraction of the price. The sunrise/sunset offsets are cool, but honestly the geofencing is what got me, it turns things on when my phone gets close to home, which is way more useful for security. Only catch is you need decent wifi coverage near the outlet, my garage one drops signal all the time. But for $15, it's way less annoying than resetting a mechanical timer every time the seasons change.

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