Thread: LED flicker candles for candelabra?

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So I got my hands on a great candelabra and wanted to try and set it up to run using LED flicker candles (preferably rechargeable, but if they have to be battery powered, I'll live. LOL).

Anyhow, I found some premade faux candles, which were intended for chandeliers and have a nice waxy drip effect to them and also fits perfectly into my candelabra, but now I'm trying to figure out how to get the LED flicker candle inside the cylinder.

My local dollar store sells battery powered LED flicker candles that run on watch batteries, but I'd like to see if any of you know how to hack those LED flicker candles so that I can run it off a battery or even better make it a rechargeable version.

It's pretty easy to do. The candles run on 4.5 volts, but easily handle 6VDC. If you can hide a battery pack in the chandelier, I'd recommend a 4AA or even better, a 4D cell pack. Remove the the stock batteries, and solder a wire pair to the battery terminals inside the candle. Make a hole in the side of the candle case to run the wire out. Be sure you know which is wire is positive. Solder each of these wires to the terminals on the battery pack, pos. to pos. and neg. to neg. The candles are now wired in parallel with a single power source. You don't need to replace the LEDs if you're happy with the brightness. Regarding the rechargable question, just use rechargable batteries. It would also be good if you can find a battery pack that has an on-off switch so you can turn all the candles on at once. Here's a link to a hack I posted a while back. You don't really need to open the case to get to the battery terminals - just solder the new wires to the contacts inside the battery cavity.

Otaku's LED Tea Light Hack - Updated! - HauntForum.com

What I forgot to mention in my original post is that I'd like to have each candle in the candelabra be independent of the other, so that I can turn each on and not have to hide a battery pack, etc.

Each faux candle is hollow, they're designed to house the electrical for a lightbulb, so I've got about 3" x .5" worth of room to hide an LED, the flicker circuit, and a battery.

Ideally, it would be nice to run it off of a rechargeable AAA battery, but I know that may not be in the cards. In a perfect world, I would be able to tuck the LED, circuit, and a rechargeable battery into the candle "tube" and have a nice little charging port at the bottom.

Thanks for the link, it definitely shows that you can run them off of an alternative power source. Now I just need to figure out how much power I need to run it and more so, how much is too much.

Looks like I'll be making a trip to radio shack tomorrow!

It sounds like you want to do your own hack to make your faux candles flickering, but if you can't for some reason I thought I would mention the following.

I've bought flicker candelabra candles from Big Lots and from Walgreens during the past few years. Big Lots were Sylvania's and Walgreens were from Brite Star I believe. Both came with a removable holder, used AA batteries I think (I'd have to check for sure), had a on/off switch at the bottom of the candle, and were on a timer--8 hours on and 16 hours off I think. The Sylvania's were orange when lit and the Walgreen's Brite Star's were more pale yellow/white-ish. Both kinds worked well and I've used them each year in my haunt's standing candelabras. I did notice that they didn't really like rechargeable batteries (even remember they didn't recommend them). I'm not sure that Sylvania is still making these.

Here's a link to the Brite Star candles at one site to give you a better idea of them: LED Candles: Tea Lights, Pillar Candles, Flame Candles

Thanks for all the responses. I actually found something at Spirit that will work perfectly.

YouTube - LED candelabra solution