Lightkeeper Pro helps locate your faulty bulbs

AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) — Christmas lights are coming on homes and even trees earlier and earlier each year.

Before you pull out those old strands of lights, you might as well be prepared to find out that some bulbs won’t work the way they did last Christmas.

Incandescent tree light sets are often not well made, and during storage the bulbs can break or their wires come loose inside the socket. If you’re tasked with setting up the tree with lights, you probably know that one bad bulb can ruin the whole thing.

If you have ever plugged in a bundle of lights only to find one section lit, the reason is that there is a problem with a light bulb.

A bad bulb breaks the circuit, preventing the lights on the other side of the circuit from turning on. In the past, you either tried to find the bad bulb by unplugging and then plugging the bulbs back in, but now there is another way.

A technological gadget called The Lighthouse Keeper Pro. We bought one at a hardware store for about $22 to test it out. Here’s how it works: The Lightkeeper Pro gadget looks like a plastic gun.

When plugging in the light set, remove one of the working bulbs and place the socket into a slot in the Lightkeeper Pro. Pull the trigger to send an electrical pulse through the strand at such speed that it jumps past the faulty bulb.

All lights should turn on except the bad bulb. Then replace the bulb you removed and the bad bulb with a good bulb and the strand should light up all the way. This usually works, but if you run into a problem, the Lightkeeper Pro beeps to identify where the circuit is broken by clicking the trigger on either side of the bulbs.

When there is no beep, you have found the wrong bulb that is breaking the circuit. The original Lightkeeper Pro only works on incandescent bulb assemblies. The company also has the LED Keeper for diagnosing and repairing LED light assemblies.

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