6:25 I believe this is a character in Chinese "seal script", an archaic form of writing sometimes used to make texts look more formal, 𝔧𝔲𝔰𝔱 𝔞𝔰 𝔴𝔢 𝔲𝔰𝔢 𝔊𝔬𝔱𝔥𝔦𝔠 𝔱𝔢𝔵𝔱 𝔰𝔬𝔪𝔢𝔱𝔦𝔪𝔢𝔰 𝔱𝔬 𝔪𝔞𝔨𝔢 𝔱𝔢𝔵𝔱 𝔩𝔬𝔬𝔨 𝔞𝔫𝔱𝔦𝔮𝔲𝔢. Unfortunately I can't read even regular Chinese so I don't know what it says.
Yes, seal script. The characters share the same ground line as the rest of the script on the board, so that gives the orientation. The Chinese are not above making a piece of text also an illustration. Mostly, it looks to give the impression of a "chop" mark, the equivalent of a signature, in a rough way. The text is clean, but the border of the surrounding field is quite rough. Odd. Sorry, not fluent, I can look up words, but I'm decades out of practice.
One thing I love about electronics is how many different ways you can design a circuit to get a task done. Sometimes multiple designs are even equally efficient. But then there's this thing. 🤣
My friend in Kyiv decided to construct a makeshift home light for the periods of power outage (they take place daily, often several times a day). He's got almost no spare parts or modules on hand, but at least he can salvage something from his earlier projects, and between the blackouts he can use his soldering iron. I know a couple of cheap rechargeable lights from a dollar store could save him (especially if they take 18650 cells and allow for replacing them), but when everyone in a big city faces this situation, they certainly don't have enough on the shelves.
Be careful with which laptop battery you use. Not all of them use 18650 cells. I have a Thinkpad T420s which used a square battery. They work just like 18650s, but you will never find an off the shelf anything for them, except for universal parts that work on any cell.
Bernd my friends wife bought him one from there (your certainly right ) he said after about a couple of weeks he would no longer trust the battery on it ? could be in the middle of doing a five mi job it died ? when he needed it for loft's or dark place's at work he's a plumber e.g cold fill tank's in loft's with ball valve's Exocet.... he binned it didn't want to be stuff in a loft with one leg hanging out of the client's ceiling in the dark
The resistor divider on the USB data lines comes from the original iPod era and it uses it to detect that the device was plugged to a wall wart charger instead of a regular PC port, where it could only suck 500mA while on the charger it allowed 1A. Nowadays the current rating is set by the USB C power delivery system I believe
A pile of things now will just keep trying to draw what they want until the voltage starts to droop. I have some neat 9-36v input USB power boards with 4 USB ports on them that will happily feed 3A into each pair of sockets. (Particularly handy for driving USB powered SBCs.) Mind you, I did push one up to 5A before it finally let out the smoke. It's always handy to destructively test any hardware you intend to use. Fun, too.
Please note that Apple devices didn't use to recognise non-Apple chargers without this resistor string. I haven't played much with the USB-C devices yet so not sure what they do.
I have a pair of similar lamps branded Feit Electric. Inside is room to fit additional 18650 cell. Of course I added one. Simply paralleled a self protected cell whats intended for electric hair cutter. Increased runtime another couple hours. Works great.
I've had one of these for years and it uses either 4 x AA or 2 x 18650 and I love this layout because I can easily get a total of over 6600mha compared to the cheaper 2200mha cells used by these packs.
@@caramelldansen2204 I'm referring to the floodlights - the modern ones, being smaller can only take 4 x 18650, the older ones with the flashlight on the end can have 6 x 18650s squeezed in.
The symbol seems to be the ancient family crest of the Shao family. It is a pictogram showing some kind of offering to the heaven (top) and a water drop caught in a container (bottom) - as far as I understood from my Chinese wife’s description. She works in electronic components business and will ask around in her PCB manufacturing contacts if anybody knows more about this 😂. Will update here if I get any more info.
Bernd my friends wife bought him one from there (your certainly right ) he said after about a couple of weeks he would no longer trust the battery on it ? could be in the middle of doing a five mi job it died ? when he needed it for loft's or dark place's at work he's a plumber e.g cold fill tank's in loft's with ball valve's Exocet.... he binned it didn't want to be stuff in a loft with one leg hanging out of the client's ceiling in the dark
After some more research it turned out that this is the work of a Chinese artist from the 1980s who re-imagined a lot of family names in this ancient style. So it is made to look really old but actually isn’t. Nobody from the PCB manufacturing contacts recognized this as being a thing at a certain factory or something like that. Maybe just the designer having fun putting his name on it 🙂
I've bought a couple of these types of lights using removable 18650 batteries. I use 3400mAh 18650B in them. They are superb for ice fishing at night. I was worried about the effect of cold on the batteries, but they last so long, and I think the light heats up the cells, so it isn't as much of an issue as I had feared. They don't keep you as warm as an old Coleman fuel lantern, but you don't need to carry a heavy glass lantern, and stinky fuel.
Cheers Clive, it’s like watching circuit design evolution. There will be winners, but mostly there will be losers. Really enjoying the content and learning process 😎👍
Based on the dates silkscreened onto the board, the two boards are 10 years apart in age at the time they were designed. Does this represent 10 years progress in design? Or 10 years of reading the previous guy's chicken-scratch notes and cobbling ?
That USB output circuit sure was strange. I had to watch your explanation a couple of times before I completely understood it. But PNP transistors have always confused me anyway, because they're backwards from the norm. I'm continually amazed at your reverse-engineering skills. Thanks for giving us such a thorough explanation.
They aren't "backwards from the norm" because they are normal themselves. PNP and NPN transistors are both normal devices and you'll see them everywhere.
I also think it evokes a Minion at first glance. That character (or perhaps it's two, one on top of another) looks like oracle bone script or one of the seal scripts. I'll leave finding out what its modern character is as an exercise for those more knowledgeable in Chinese linguistics... I did try a brief radical lookup of seal script but failed to find anything resembling a match.
Looks like a decent portable light, and I agree that the resistor values should be altered to give better battery runtime. Even if you don't consider the heat dissipation, pulling 3.8A from a 2P Li-Ion battery pack is not going to help it in terms of battery life (just over 1 hour?) and battery longevity (will lose its capacity faster).
That larger switch looks like the one that has a rotating contact inside, which may explain the delay. The processor has to come online before it turns on one or both mosfets for the lights.
It's worth remembering that as LEDs get hotter, their conversion efficiency of current to light decreases. So much so, that at some point they may actually output less light as the current increases. Below that point the light output is a relatively linear function of current, so reducing the current through the LEDs by substituting larger resistors is unlikely to reduce efficiency and may possibly improve it. Given the penchant for Chinese manufacturers to drive all the components as hard as they can get away with, that sort of mod makes a lot of sense.
Thats a very interesting point. my one starts off bright and then dims down. If I switch it off and back on, it comes back bright. I wonder if I should back off the current a bit and have a more stable output?
@@kenaston4220 If it's dimming over a relatively short period (a minute or less), then it's probably a thermal effect, rather than the battery voltage dropping, so there are efficiency gains to be made by reducing the current and/or putting a better heatsink on the LEDs. Perhaps test the theory by blowing cold air from a fan over it?
I picked up one of these style of worklight on Amazon last week, similar shape/design and screw positionings, what was interesting though is that it had a battery compartment with two 18650 cells, but you could also take those out and add AA batteries instead. Seemed like a nice improvement and allows for you to keep some extra cells around. The one I got was "Trongle LED Rechargeable Work Lights, 30W" on Amazon but theres a few almost identical ones.
@The Tired Horizon Do you know what make and model that is? I've searched but can only find two or four cell models. I'd be quite interested in getting one of the six cell models as an emergency backup light. Thanks 👍
It is a Chinese totem symbol for the surname Shào (邵). I suspect it is a bit like a family crest. These pictograms predate surnames, and modern Chinse writing (more like Oracle script), and were originally a clan tattoo.
I got one like that a few years ago on eBay but it has a single round COB LED and a flashlight at one end. First push gave you the flashlight, second was the front LED (very bright) and third gave an alternating red/blue warning on the front LED display - very nice. I put in a pair of 5000mAH 18650 cells (in parallel!) - works very well. Everything else is virtually the same except the 'test' button is not there - the battery test LEDs come on with the main LED.
I have a pair of lights similar to your yellow one here, except that they use a single LED/lens assembly and run off 4 alkaline AAs - classic rechargeable chemistries don't work, sadly. I rather like them because, contrary to many cheap lights, they throw a very broad pattern. Quite handy in a low crawlspace, where focused beams become blinding in reflection.
I have a strong love for cheap led flood lights, my wife tends to give me at least one for Christmas/Fathersday/Birthday every year, so they tend to be floating around everywhere except wherever I need them.
While I don't get them as presents I also have the same thing with Stanley knives and tape measures, literally I have several of each (for some reason) and when I need one you won't find the buggers!
Looks like a creepy snow angel. I am guessing that they had trouble in making the boost circuit shut down on no load or to get rid of the loading from the resistors setting the data line values, when boost is off.
@@kevinbean3679 it 1st aired 62, it only ran for about 37 episodes. I used to have all of them on a hard drive. Nostalgia is better than reality though.
I bought one similar to the yellow one in a local chinese shop in Italy (no branding on mine and back was more similar to the blue one) and they had 3 models of the same one. Two big led arrays, one long strip and one with only one big led array but RGB. All of them were the same on the back and front except the LED itself
I had another look into mine and remembered that mine has another COB LED on the left of the unit but has only full power/dim for the two big arrays, other than that mine came with a pop-able back and slot for 2x18650 or 4xAA
The mosfets are typically in the milli ohms range when turned on so dissipate very little power. I'd more worry about the leds, though at some point the battery will drop voltage so that may be straining as well.
the high power mode rely on the total circuit resistance like some direct-drive flashlights. if you swap the battery with unprotected high current ones, the led would be screaming for help within minutes for sure
In the past I've used series strings of resistors (2K2/3K3 and 3K3/2K2) on the USB data lines to get a USB charger to work with Apple devices. It works OK for me but I'll give those values a try next time I butcher a supply.
Now I get it! The company that makes these lights had two monkeys. One was in one lab and one in another lab. "Here. Take this enclosure and build a light. All you get are these chips, 1K Ohm resistors and Kiko, you get two lensed LED lights and ChiChi, you get this rectangular LED array. And you each get a Banana. Have at it, boys!"
I have a much better version of this light. I bought 3 of them and they are very powerful, use 18650s or AA Batteries !!!! From Amazon, not Lidl though !!!!
@@acmefixer1 Probably but also consider JLC and PCBWay manufacturing and assembling all our designs.... Your think they don't keep the designs for their own use or to sell back to us in other stuff
They are bats. There is actually a stylized character in the middle, meaning "Fortune". The character for "bat" sounds the same as that one. It's probably the logo for the company.
I have a variation of this case type too, but with a single white LED board on the middle, surrounded by a ring of red LED`s (which can stay on or flash). I had to repair it recently (CX-ST02 board), as the charge socket (which is mounted directly against the USB power out on mine) had parted company with its little board, despite being rarely used. That's when I discovered that the charging ports power isn't actually soldered to the board its on, they`re just contacting pins with "receiver pads" on the board, & the only thing soldered is the outer port surround clasps to the edges of the board, on mine at least.. When you connect it to a computer USB to charge, it actually comes up as something on the PC, which got me all para (I don't want those crafty Chinese chaps hacking my computer after all!), so I charge it from a USB plug now instead.. Maybe those chips are to communicate/signal when connected to a computer?
I've not heard of one that presents itself as a device when plugged into the computer. I'd expect that to require the data lines of the connector to be connected to a processor.
WHAAAAT??? No SOS mode? 😱 Then it can't have been made in China then. What a relief, something worth buying. *Thank You* for this video Clive. Much appreciated. 👍
Clive, Am I correct in assuming that all one needs to do is ground the VSel pin (pin 7) and the lamp will protect any lipo cell you put into it protecting it from overcharge and over discharge? Thanks for another great video! K.
Question how do you determine that two of the components are mosfets and the third is a transistor when they physically appear the same? Hope it’s not a daft question (I am new to this)
It's a good question. Mosfets are also transistors (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor). The other is a bipolar transistor. One even if there is no part number you can tell them apart by testing them (preferably out of circuit). The bipolar (NPN or PNP) will have two 0.6V diode drops when tested with a multimeter.
The similarities, could they be from two different EEs using the same chassis design shop who adapted previous work? ... Edited to add: probably in-house at the same Chinese manufacturer. On second thought, the two-source version is obviously a revision of the earlier.
The resistor network is not to "stop Apple phones trying to suck as much current as possible". It is actually to _allow_ them to charge using higher current than they would otherwise. If you plug a USB-compliant device (including an Apple device) into a port whose data lines are not connected to anything, it is not allowed to draw more than 0.5A according to the spec. These resistors are configured to tell Apple devices that this charger is capable of supplying 1A of current, so it's OK for them to pull that much. However, I'm not sure why they didn't just go with the more standard "dedicated charging port" indicator of just shorting the data lines together, though, as that also works even with non-Apple devices, and AFAIK Apple devices understand it just fine too (since it's part of the USB BCP spec)..
I wonder if the floating VSel line was some small effort at charging the batteries faster? Bad form to rely on the protection circuit that way, but a clever hack otherwise.
Relying on the protection board in a battery pack to limit the charging voltage is a very bad thing to do. Protection circuits are generally designed to allow the maximum voltage that won't actually result in rapid destruction (fire!) of the cells. It is expected that they will allow the main charge controller to reach its maximum setpoint without cutting off charging. That means that the protection circuit probably won't do any good in this case and the battery will be overcharged. It takes surprisingly few overcharge cycles of surprisingly little excessive voltage to significantly shorten the lifetime of the battery. Undercharging will result in greater life, both in terms of number of cycles and total energy deliverable over the lifetime of the battery.
Hey i know this might not be the correct video to ask you, but i have a NI--MH AA Battery charger it is a Sony Cycle Energy charger and just a couple of days ago it suddenly stopped charging my batteries. I dont know much about electronics but i think i know what the issue is. I opened the charger and in the beggining of the circuit next to the prongs that connect to Mains there is a component that looks like a Resistor and it looks burned and has a tiny crack in the middle. Everything else in the circuit after this component looks fine. Again sorry to ask you but how can i buy that component. Do i look it up as a Resistor? Do they have a certain rating? This is what is printed on the board next to it : RF1 100HM 1W And it also has colored bands but only the outer ones are distinguishable since it is burned in the middle. They are colored GOLD and BROWN.
@@bigclivedotcom Thank you for responding and sorry to bother you again. I will try replacing that fusible resistor but how can i know what rating it might be? Can i use a multimeter to test it? It has color bands but only the outer ones are visible. It looks like the one in this image: https: // www. elprocus. com/ wp-content/ uploads/ Fusible-Resistor. jpg
I hacked earlier versions (the ones with twin square COB LEDs on front and a flashlight on the side) of these with a Dremel, so I could squeeze 6 x 18650 cells inside. This runs for 16 hours on full power and 25 hours on low. Got bored waiting for the tiny flashlight to run it flat, but it was at least 3 days.
Is that right? I made a strobe using LEDs (2 x 9-element LEDs), and I was suprised at how little afterglow there is. It went up to 200 flashes per second with a resolution of 1.4 degrees on a rotating member. Even at high RPM, the image produced was crisp, which would not have been the case if there was any afterglow.
@@DownhillAllTheWay I guess it depends on the material used for the secondary emission. I have some no-name Chinese white LEDs which glow visibly, albeit dimly, for several hundred milliseconds after removing power (and no, it isn’t a capacitor discharging into the LEDs).
@@wtmayhew You get some odd effects. I had a bayonet plugged ceiling neon light a few years back, and after it had been switched off, it continued to flash for a long time afterwards - about a flash every 5 secs at first, gradually getting slower till it stopped about 15 minutes later - with the mains switched off! Naturally, I thought there was mains leakage somehow, but when I looked it up online, it turned out to be a known phenomenon with those neons. God knows how it happened. I don't
@@DownhillAllTheWay Thanks for the reply. It is oddly reassuring that electronics is part art and not all cut and dried science. Gotta love seemingly obvious situations which yield surprises.
I have a very similar light that is a nebo tango light. It has the two different leds that can operate independently. Or together on turbo mode. But it is dimmable for both legs independently. With small light on its lowest setting which is 25 lumens it says it will last 35hours. Battery doesn't last real long in turbo mode with a 1000lumens for only 2minutes. It several other settings that last a lot longer. Anyhow when your light is on hold the power button and maybe it will be dimmable. Pretty neat feature. This one says HL18B. I have had this one for two or three years and it has been pretty handy and reliable.
They can not make them last too long as once every one has one the factory would have to close, built in obsolescence fry the chips of boil the battery.
Alright, spot on big Clive ! I was just using one right now and wound up soldering directly to my 12 volt outlet on my controller inside my micro house!
@@bigclivedotcom I just figured by the number of battery's of 1.75 added to close to 12 plus output charger was 12 so I wired some large alligators with a coil of good copper heavy gauge red and black to the spots inside where the input was drilled a whole tied it in a knot replaced the cover extracted the lithiums added them to my ebike battery build clipped the alligators on my power bank and vola!
@@Derek_Garnham thanks to our fearless leader into this great opportunity for the many years I never threw away my good led lights gadgets and boxes of coiled wires and packages of various sizes of alligators I keep all around me always. Lol
I have a question please i couldn't find its answer on internet although i searched in 3 languages. I'm a quality control engineer in a German company and i noticed lately that some RCBO typs in combination with Socapex (6 channels) a remaining voltage of 20~30 volts. And it's not a capacitive effect because it does not change if i move wires away from each other. Do you have any experience from the entertainment industry (Socapex) standard. About the matter? I know it's ok as long as it's below 50v. Thank in advance for reading and commenting or maybe video about the subject
In socapex you have six circuits in very close vicinity in a multicore. There are capacitive coupling effects between the cores when measured with a high impedance multimeter. Testing with a proper electrical tester would add enough load to shunt the effect. Dimmers also have high leakage when off due to the snubber networks.
"power outages around the world" are you perhaps mentioning South Africa as well. Wr currently have scheduled power outages. Wr even have different stages. If our power capacity is good then it's stage 0 . And we can get up to stage 8. Basically the higher the stage the longer and more power outages wr get in a day at a scheduled time. Right now we are at stage 4 and in the town I'm in at the moment (each towns or city's scheduled time is different) that means we have three scheduled power outages that last for two hours each . We call this loaf shedding because we're shedding the load of different towns at different times. But as it is our power infrastructure is pretty fucked.
Hi Clive , I’ve just started a technical training course at Lytham’s Lowther Pavilion and was wondering if you could recommend any TH-cam channels that cover the basics of things like sound and lighting. Obviously I’ll be watching your content again that’s angled towards it but I’m curious if there’s any that would get the Big Clive stamp of approval.
If considering working in the entertainment industry I'd strongly recommend getting a trade first as the industry is quite exploitative and low on proper training.
cheers, that makes sense . I’ve been soldering since age 10 , I was an apprentice bnfl tiffy after school , sparkys mate after that for a couple of years.
I wonder if it's possible to flip the LEDs heatsink to the other side? at least the larger portion of that plate won't sit above the batteries (the large part will be on the left instead of being on the right).
Is it a lop type of rabbit with some form of hat (with logo(?)) on? I'm inclined to agree with genarchnix that it is a designer's chop/chap/brand mark. Both lamps look ruffi-tuffi, that would be rugged, in their external construction. Why use standard English when you can so easily make up personalised words which just do the job. And occasionally confuse the hell out of unsuspected readers too. Thanks again for another descriptive tear down.
The weird thing is how many little things are different, given how similar they are... the amount of money wasted on the second mold... but maybe they made enough of these that they needed new molds anyway.
@@bigclivedotcom Clive, I'm enjoy your channel and look at a good few of your vids, so please don't take this as vindictive nit-picking, but ... Intensity - if it's already on 100% duty cycle, the only way would be to boost the battery voltage (multiplier?) - but that applies to every flashlight. Battery capacity - if there's room for a bigger one - but there's no super ingenuity required there. Maybe put a higher-capacity battery into it with the same footprint? Or otherwise cut some of the plastic moulding out of it to make more room. Software? Can you modify it? If you know the processor type, you could replace it and write software from scratch to do what you want, but other than that, can you even find out what's in the chip? OTOH, it's a flashlight. What *_can_* you make it do that would be useful? Flash A-B-A-B-A-B - Maybe - if you have an application for that. The front of that light, with its two big round lenses, reminds me of a jumping spider! 🙂 There was a comment in your video that reminded me of a video I saw many years ago. You might enjoy this ... th-cam.com/video/zmP0hmuDbMQ/w-d-xo.html
At 10:18 where it's said that the chines tend to push the resistors hard, basically if they aren't smoking, it's fine, HE's CORRECT. So many times I have to fix things because of this issue.
Another great teardown video Clive. Our corner shop by us is selling a smaller work light like this for £10, planning on picking one up on Friday, (payday lol), to have a look and see if it can be hacked, will send you some info and pics if you would like, keep up the good work and see you Saturday night
1k and 100k likely the standard reel on the PNP machine, though I will bet they also will drop any value from 560R to 2k2 in the one position, and 82k to 220k in the other, depending on what is on the shelf when the reel ran out, and what was on sale that day in the market when they went looking. Yes putting in higher value resistors for the LED will help, probably best done using actual 2W wire ended resistors on short leads, tucked up in the spare space in the unit. Making them 2R2 and 3R3 would probably not drop light output much, as the lower current will drop the LED into a more efficient part of the curve, so 50% longer battery life and likely only a 20% drop in light output
5:05 "parallel zero ohm links" for when zero just isn't low enough...
It can even provide additional power drawn from a nearby black hole :D
Two zero ohm links in parallel is:
1 / (1 / 0 + 1 / 0)
Division by zero three times! Doesn't that open up a portal to the 17th dimension or something?
@@sootikins Ah yes, the 17th dimension.The dimension when we realize that ALWAYS there is togetherness in between us and The Oneness.😏😏
@@brucepickess8097 I just thought it was a spare dimension where the Flying Spaghetti Monster stores his crates of Parmesan cheese.
😅
Makes me think of both "The Minions" and the movie "Short Circuit" at the same time.
I thought it was a tape. Like a magnetic tape we would play music from in the 90s.
Big Clive no disassemble…
With a dash of Wall-e.
@@suzu9404 Ha Ha, I can hear Johnny 5 saying that
@@suzu9404 Johnny Five is alive.
6:25 I believe this is a character in Chinese "seal script", an archaic form of writing sometimes used to make texts look more formal, 𝔧𝔲𝔰𝔱 𝔞𝔰 𝔴𝔢 𝔲𝔰𝔢 𝔊𝔬𝔱𝔥𝔦𝔠 𝔱𝔢𝔵𝔱 𝔰𝔬𝔪𝔢𝔱𝔦𝔪𝔢𝔰 𝔱𝔬 𝔪𝔞𝔨𝔢 𝔱𝔢𝔵𝔱 𝔩𝔬𝔬𝔨 𝔞𝔫𝔱𝔦𝔮𝔲𝔢. Unfortunately I can't read even regular Chinese so I don't know what it says.
I believe it roughly translates as "We love cripsy fried dog"
@@MattyEngland 😂😂😂
If I squint I see the person from the Munch painting 'The Scream'...but maybe that is just me.
Yes, seal script. The characters share the same ground line as the rest of the script on the board, so that gives the orientation. The Chinese are not above making a piece of text also an illustration.
Mostly, it looks to give the impression of a "chop" mark, the equivalent of a signature, in a rough way. The text is clean, but the border of the surrounding field is quite rough. Odd. Sorry, not fluent, I can look up words, but I'm decades out of practice.
One thing I love about electronics is how many different ways you can design a circuit to get a task done. Sometimes multiple designs are even equally efficient. But then there's this thing. 🤣
6:57
You almost made me spit out my coffee!!! LoL!!!
It looks like an umbrella and a mushroom.
Free Rorschach Test with every circuit board, from your friends in China.
You could get three prime ministers in between those button delays... :P
My friend in Kyiv decided to construct a makeshift home light for the periods of power outage (they take place daily, often several times a day). He's got almost no spare parts or modules on hand, but at least he can salvage something from his earlier projects, and between the blackouts he can use his soldering iron.
I know a couple of cheap rechargeable lights from a dollar store could save him (especially if they take 18650 cells and allow for replacing them), but when everyone in a big city faces this situation, they certainly don't have enough on the shelves.
Old laptop battery packs are a great source of the cells, and you just need to look for those of roughly equal capacity to use.
Someone get this mans' friend some 18650 cells
Be careful with which laptop battery you use. Not all of them use 18650 cells. I have a Thinkpad T420s which used a square battery. They work just like 18650s, but you will never find an off the shelf anything for them, except for universal parts that work on any cell.
I could source your friend some 18650 cells if needed...
I very much enjoy this channel, possibilities, solutions and critiques. keeps the wheels turning. Perfect!
The PNP transistor connected to the 5V and 4.2V rails reminds me a bit of the old 7400 series TTL input circuitry except those used NPNs.
The Aldi one that I bought is *definitely* not 4400mAh. It's less than a half of that. Charges from flat to full in less than half an hour.
Bernd my friends wife bought him one from there (your certainly right ) he said after about a couple of weeks he would no longer trust the battery on it ? could be in the middle of doing a five mi job it died ? when he needed it for loft's or dark place's at work he's a plumber e.g cold fill tank's in loft's with ball valve's Exocet.... he binned it didn't want to be stuff in a loft with one leg hanging out of the client's ceiling in the dark
The resistor divider on the USB data lines comes from the original iPod era and it uses it to detect that the device was plugged to a wall wart charger instead of a regular PC port, where it could only suck 500mA while on the charger it allowed 1A. Nowadays the current rating is set by the USB C power delivery system I believe
A pile of things now will just keep trying to draw what they want until the voltage starts to droop. I have some neat 9-36v input USB power boards with 4 USB ports on them that will happily feed 3A into each pair of sockets. (Particularly handy for driving USB powered SBCs.)
Mind you, I did push one up to 5A before it finally let out the smoke. It's always handy to destructively test any hardware you intend to use. Fun, too.
@@ConstantlyDamaged Wow! 😃 🚭 😄
Please note that Apple devices didn't use to recognise non-Apple chargers without this resistor string. I haven't played much with the USB-C devices yet so not sure what they do.
I have a pair of similar lamps branded Feit Electric. Inside is room to fit additional 18650 cell.
Of course I added one.
Simply paralleled a self protected cell whats intended for electric hair cutter.
Increased runtime another couple hours. Works great.
I'm laying in bed and this is just perfect to watch while falling asleep (not because it's boring! Just soothing)
It's fine. Many people watch my videos to help them fall asleep.
¡Si'! 😁💤😪🔦
Big Clive, the Bob Ross of electronic circuitry.
The voice that does it for me without fail is jerryrigeverything
@@hanelyp1 nah, he's circuit Jesus!
Reckon you'll pass the million mark by the new year!
I doubt it will be that soon. To be honest, I'd rather the channel doesn't get too big so I can reply to comments like this.
I've had one of these for years and it uses either 4 x AA or 2 x 18650 and I love this layout because I can easily get a total of over 6600mha compared to the cheaper 2200mha cells used by these packs.
After hacking bits of the plastic case away with a Dremel, I managed to squeeze 6 x 18650s in to that type. The newer ones are a bit smaller.
@@dermotdobson2700 A bit smaller? 18650s are literally defined by their size...
@@caramelldansen2204 I'm referring to the floodlights - the modern ones, being smaller can only take 4 x 18650, the older ones with the flashlight on the end can have 6 x 18650s squeezed in.
The symbol seems to be the ancient family crest of the Shao family. It is a pictogram showing some kind of offering to the heaven (top) and a water drop caught in a container (bottom) - as far as I understood from my Chinese wife’s description. She works in electronic components business and will ask around in her PCB manufacturing contacts if anybody knows more about this 😂. Will update here if I get any more info.
It's a gorilla with abs and big ole gorilla chest, the family crest of Saint George Floyd and Ahrmed R'Aubery
Bernd my friends wife bought him one from there (your certainly right ) he said after about a couple of weeks he would no longer trust the battery on it ? could be in the middle of doing a five mi job it died ? when he needed it for loft's or dark place's at work he's a plumber e.g cold fill tank's in loft's with ball valve's Exocet.... he binned it didn't want to be stuff in a loft with one leg hanging out of the client's ceiling in the dark
Khoroshen sorry that was meant for Bernd one above yourself in the comments i will cut and paste it into the correct one oooops
I was thinking it looked like some sort of Chinese pictogram. Very interesting.
After some more research it turned out that this is the work of a Chinese artist from the 1980s who re-imagined a lot of family names in this ancient style. So it is made to look really old but actually isn’t. Nobody from the PCB manufacturing contacts recognized this as being a thing at a certain factory or something like that. Maybe just the designer having fun putting his name on it 🙂
I've bought a couple of these types of lights using removable 18650 batteries. I use 3400mAh 18650B in them. They are superb for ice fishing at night. I was worried about the effect of cold on the batteries, but they last so long, and I think the light heats up the cells, so it isn't as much of an issue as I had feared. They don't keep you as warm as an old Coleman fuel lantern, but you don't need to carry a heavy glass lantern, and stinky fuel.
Cheers Clive, it’s like watching circuit design evolution. There will be winners, but mostly there will be losers. Really enjoying the content and learning process 😎👍
Based on the dates silkscreened onto the board, the two boards are 10 years apart in age at the time they were designed. Does this represent 10 years progress in design? Or 10 years of reading the previous guy's chicken-scratch notes and cobbling ?
That USB output circuit sure was strange. I had to watch your explanation a couple of times before I completely understood it. But PNP transistors have always confused me anyway, because they're backwards from the norm. I'm continually amazed at your reverse-engineering skills. Thanks for giving us such a thorough explanation.
They aren't "backwards from the norm" because they are normal themselves. PNP and NPN transistors are both normal devices and you'll see them everywhere.
I also think it evokes a Minion at first glance.
That character (or perhaps it's two, one on top of another) looks like oracle bone script or one of the seal scripts. I'll leave finding out what its modern character is as an exercise for those more knowledgeable in Chinese linguistics... I did try a brief radical lookup of seal script but failed to find anything resembling a match.
Looks like a decent portable light, and I agree that the resistor values should be altered to give better battery runtime. Even if you don't consider the heat dissipation, pulling 3.8A from a 2P Li-Ion battery pack is not going to help it in terms of battery life (just over 1 hour?) and battery longevity (will lose its capacity faster).
That larger switch looks like the one that has a rotating contact inside, which may explain the delay. The processor has to come online before it turns on one or both mosfets for the lights.
It's just a single contact for the microcontroller.
I've been watching your videos for a long time now. You make great educational content. Much Respect
This is the weirdest piece of Minions merchandise I've ever seen.
It's worth remembering that as LEDs get hotter, their conversion efficiency of current to light decreases. So much so, that at some point they may actually output less light as the current increases. Below that point the light output is a relatively linear function of current, so reducing the current through the LEDs by substituting larger resistors is unlikely to reduce efficiency and may possibly improve it. Given the penchant for Chinese manufacturers to drive all the components as hard as they can get away with, that sort of mod makes a lot of sense.
Thats a very interesting point. my one starts off bright and then dims down. If I switch it off and back on, it comes back bright. I wonder if I should back off the current a bit and have a more stable output?
@@kenaston4220 If it's dimming over a relatively short period (a minute or less), then it's probably a thermal effect, rather than the battery voltage dropping, so there are efficiency gains to be made by reducing the current and/or putting a better heatsink on the LEDs. Perhaps test the theory by blowing cold air from a fan over it?
I picked up one of these style of worklight on Amazon last week, similar shape/design and screw positionings, what was interesting though is that it had a battery compartment with two 18650 cells, but you could also take those out and add AA batteries instead. Seemed like a nice improvement and allows for you to keep some extra cells around. The one I got was "Trongle LED Rechargeable Work Lights, 30W" on Amazon but theres a few almost identical ones.
@The Tired Horizon Do you know what make and model that is? I've searched but can only find two or four cell models. I'd be quite interested in getting one of the six cell models as an emergency backup light. Thanks 👍
@The Tired Horizon Thanks
It is a Chinese totem symbol for the surname Shào (邵). I suspect it is a bit like a family crest. These pictograms predate surnames, and modern Chinse writing (more like Oracle script), and were originally a clan tattoo.
I got one like that a few years ago on eBay but it has a single round COB LED and a flashlight at one end. First push gave you the flashlight, second was the front LED (very bright) and third gave an alternating red/blue warning on the front LED display - very nice. I put in a pair of 5000mAH 18650 cells (in parallel!) - works very well. Everything else is virtually the same except the 'test' button is not there - the battery test LEDs come on with the main LED.
I have a pair of lights similar to your yellow one here, except that they use a single LED/lens assembly and run off 4 alkaline AAs - classic rechargeable chemistries don't work, sadly.
I rather like them because, contrary to many cheap lights, they throw a very broad pattern. Quite handy in a low crawlspace, where focused beams become blinding in reflection.
I'm going to start saying, "One moment, please," and disappear for 10 minutes, then come back and act like I've only been gone for 1 second.
Sometimes it's several hours with the tricky reverse engineering ones.
I have a strong love for cheap led flood lights, my wife tends to give me at least one for Christmas/Fathersday/Birthday every year, so they tend to be floating around everywhere except wherever I need them.
While I don't get them as presents I also have the same thing with Stanley knives and tape measures, literally I have several of each (for some reason) and when I need one you won't find the buggers!
@@skylined5534 ..and what makes it worse is that when you didn't need them you couldn't move without tripping over 'em ! Been there, always.
Looks like a creepy snow angel.
I am guessing that they had trouble in making the boost circuit shut down on no load or to get rid of the loading from the resistors setting the data line values, when boost is off.
I recall Space ship XL 5, but can't recall the year; '65 or '68?
Good handle Richard KB.
@@kevinbean3679 it 1st aired 62, it only ran for about 37 episodes.
I used to have all of them on a hard drive.
Nostalgia is better than reality though.
@@FireballXL55 Thank you, so many years ago.
I bought one similar to the yellow one in a local chinese shop in Italy (no branding on mine and back was more similar to the blue one) and they had 3 models of the same one. Two big led arrays, one long strip and one with only one big led array but RGB. All of them were the same on the back and front except the LED itself
I had another look into mine and remembered that mine has another COB LED on the left of the unit but has only full power/dim for the two big arrays, other than that mine came with a pop-able back and slot for 2x18650 or 4xAA
Monkey spanking is better than 'baiting the master'...
This is why we respect you Big C! DVD:)
The mosfets are typically in the milli ohms range when turned on so dissipate very little power. I'd more worry about the leds, though at some point the battery will drop voltage so that may be straining as well.
the high power mode rely on the total circuit resistance like some direct-drive flashlights. if you swap the battery with unprotected high current ones, the led would be screaming for help within minutes for sure
If you ever make merch I would definitely take a "One moment please..." shirt lol
There are merch files on www.bigclive.com that you can download and make customised garments.
We have ones like the yellow in our Dollar Store in Canada (DOllarama) they run on 3xAA batteries, almost the same plastic case.
In the past I've used series strings of resistors (2K2/3K3 and 3K3/2K2) on the USB data lines to get a USB charger to work with Apple devices. It works OK for me but I'll give those values a try next time I butcher a supply.
Very cool. Thanks Big Clive.
Oh, and absolutely No Clue on that logo. At first I thought it was a smudge of heat sink compound but figured it's on the wrong side.
Now I get it! The company that makes these lights had two monkeys. One was in one lab and one in another lab. "Here. Take this enclosure and build a light. All you get are these chips, 1K Ohm resistors and Kiko, you get two lensed LED lights and ChiChi, you get this rectangular LED array. And you each get a Banana. Have at it, boys!"
I have a much better version of this light. I bought 3 of them and they are very powerful, use 18650s or AA Batteries !!!! From Amazon, not Lidl though !!!!
@@acmefixer1 Probably but also consider JLC and PCBWay manufacturing and assembling all our designs.... Your think they don't keep the designs for their own use or to sell back to us in other stuff
They are bats. There is actually a stylized character in the middle, meaning "Fortune". The character for "bat" sounds the same as that one. It's probably the logo for the company.
I have a variation of this case type too, but with a single white LED board on the middle, surrounded by a ring of red LED`s (which can stay on or flash). I had to repair it recently (CX-ST02 board), as the charge socket (which is mounted directly against the USB power out on mine) had parted company with its little board, despite being rarely used. That's when I discovered that the charging ports power isn't actually soldered to the board its on, they`re just contacting pins with "receiver pads" on the board, & the only thing soldered is the outer port surround clasps to the edges of the board, on mine at least..
When you connect it to a computer USB to charge, it actually comes up as something on the PC, which got me all para (I don't want those crafty Chinese chaps hacking my computer after all!), so I charge it from a USB plug now instead.. Maybe those chips are to communicate/signal when connected to a computer?
I've not heard of one that presents itself as a device when plugged into the computer. I'd expect that to require the data lines of the connector to be connected to a processor.
It's a picture of a hoodie hanging their head. Maybe! What a busy circuit board.
The variants of this i got have a battery compartment that supports 2x18650 of 4x AA batteries. Pretty decent lights i've had them for 2 years
@ 15:45, the battery might fit to the right, avoiding contact with the heatsink?
WHAAAAT??? No SOS mode? 😱 Then it can't have been made in China then. What a relief, something worth buying.
*Thank You* for this video Clive. Much appreciated. 👍
Clive, Am I correct in assuming that all one needs to do is ground the VSel pin (pin 7) and the lamp will protect any lipo cell you put into it protecting it from overcharge and over discharge?
Thanks for another great video!
K.
Theoretically yes.
Question how do you determine that two of the components are mosfets and the third is a transistor when they physically appear the same?
Hope it’s not a daft question (I am new to this)
search "SMD marked A20 or 1Y" and make a decision as to how it's used to give you a clue.
@@FireballXL55 ah ok it was a daft question thanks
@@xenusceptic No that is how we move on, if you don't ask we don't improve. Have a great day.
It's a good question. Mosfets are also transistors (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor). The other is a bipolar transistor. One even if there is no part number you can tell them apart by testing them (preferably out of circuit). The bipolar (NPN or PNP) will have two 0.6V diode drops when tested with a multimeter.
Partly their position, the current they will be handling and the codes on them are also able to identify most devices.
The similarities, could they be from two different EEs using the same chassis design shop who adapted previous work? ... Edited to add: probably in-house at the same Chinese manufacturer. On second thought, the two-source version is obviously a revision of the earlier.
C, is the LED CREE square with acrylic lens separate? The LED assy is interesting to me also
These LED COBS use flip chips.
I saw a boat in the symbolism, which I thought- export then you turned it over and I saw an umbrella - keep dry.
I HAVE A LIGHT LIKE THAT AND IT HAS BLUTOOTH SPEAKERS ALSO
The resistor network is not to "stop Apple phones trying to suck as much current as possible". It is actually to _allow_ them to charge using higher current than they would otherwise. If you plug a USB-compliant device (including an Apple device) into a port whose data lines are not connected to anything, it is not allowed to draw more than 0.5A according to the spec.
These resistors are configured to tell Apple devices that this charger is capable of supplying 1A of current, so it's OK for them to pull that much.
However, I'm not sure why they didn't just go with the more standard "dedicated charging port" indicator of just shorting the data lines together, though, as that also works even with non-Apple devices, and AFAIK Apple devices understand it just fine too (since it's part of the USB BCP spec)..
pushing a cluster of 1k Resistors to their absolute limit sounds kind of freaky
Who's been a Bad Monkey?? SPank SPank....
If you change the batteries, make sure you use protection.
So, you need to protect yourself when changing the battery ????????🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔. Yes you should always handle lithium batteries safely. 😏
why is there goatse on the back of that board?
once you see it, you cant unsee it
I wonder if the floating VSel line was some small effort at charging the batteries faster? Bad form to rely on the protection circuit that way, but a clever hack otherwise.
Relying on the protection board in a battery pack to limit the charging voltage is a very bad thing to do.
Protection circuits are generally designed to allow the maximum voltage that won't actually result in rapid destruction (fire!) of the cells. It is expected that they will allow the main charge controller to reach its maximum setpoint without cutting off charging. That means that the protection circuit probably won't do any good in this case and the battery will be overcharged. It takes surprisingly few overcharge cycles of surprisingly little excessive voltage to significantly shorten the lifetime of the battery. Undercharging will result in greater life, both in terms of number of cycles and total energy deliverable over the lifetime of the battery.
I could just be a crazy person but your monkey does look like a character from The Oracle bones this would be very early Chinese writing.
The silkscreen image is a mantis or stick insect.
We don't get cool stuff like this at Aldi's in the United States.
Sure we do. I paid $12 for a nearly identical light and it came with an AA powered head lamp.
Hey i know this might not be the correct video to ask you, but i have a NI--MH AA Battery charger it is a Sony Cycle Energy charger and just a couple of days ago it suddenly stopped charging my batteries.
I dont know much about electronics but i think i know what the issue is. I opened the charger and in the beggining of the circuit next to the prongs that connect to Mains there is a component that looks like a Resistor and it looks burned and has a tiny crack in the middle. Everything else in the circuit after this component looks fine.
Again sorry to ask you but how can i buy that component. Do i look it up as a Resistor? Do they have a certain rating? This is what is printed on the board next to it :
RF1 100HM 1W
And it also has colored bands but only the outer ones are distinguishable since it is burned in the middle. They are colored GOLD and BROWN.
That may be a fusible resistor or sense resistor. It may have failed because of another fault.
@@bigclivedotcom Thank you for responding and sorry to bother you again. I will try replacing that fusible resistor but how can i know what rating it might be? Can i use a multimeter to test it? It has color bands but only the outer ones are visible. It looks like the one in this image:
https: // www. elprocus. com/ wp-content/ uploads/ Fusible-Resistor. jpg
@@alexm.4720 any 10-100ohm
@@Datlaai1 Thank you for responding i will try replacining it and see what happens.
Given the layout similarities, if it's not by the same manufacturer, it's from someone who cloned it.
I hacked earlier versions (the ones with twin square COB LEDs on front and a flashlight on the side) of these with a Dremel, so I could squeeze 6 x 18650 cells inside. This runs for 16 hours on full power and 25 hours on low. Got bored waiting for the tiny flashlight to run it flat, but it was at least 3 days.
I’m surprised the designers don’t use pulse width modulation to vary intensity. There’s enough LED afterglow that it won’t flicker (much).
Is that right? I made a strobe using LEDs (2 x 9-element LEDs), and I was suprised at how little afterglow there is. It went up to 200 flashes per second with a resolution of 1.4 degrees on a rotating member. Even at high RPM, the image produced was crisp, which would not have been the case if there was any afterglow.
@@DownhillAllTheWay I guess it depends on the material used for the secondary emission. I have some no-name Chinese white LEDs which glow visibly, albeit dimly, for several hundred milliseconds after removing power (and no, it isn’t a capacitor discharging into the LEDs).
@@wtmayhew You get some odd effects. I had a bayonet plugged ceiling neon light a few years back, and after it had been switched off, it continued to flash for a long time afterwards - about a flash every 5 secs at first, gradually getting slower till it stopped about 15 minutes later - with the mains switched off! Naturally, I thought there was mains leakage somehow, but when I looked it up online, it turned out to be a known phenomenon with those neons. God knows how it happened. I don't
@@DownhillAllTheWay Thanks for the reply. It is oddly reassuring that electronics is part art and not all cut and dried science. Gotta love seemingly obvious situations which yield surprises.
I like firefly mode.
I wish more lanterns and lights had a good glow-worm mode.
The white blob looks like a roach got squashed there during manufacturing.. 😅
I'm guessing it's the designer's personal mark, similar to Dave's platypus.
Are they allowed to smoke a J while working?
I have a very similar light that is a nebo tango light. It has the two different leds that can operate independently. Or together on turbo mode. But it is dimmable for both legs independently. With small light on its lowest setting which is 25 lumens it says it will last 35hours. Battery doesn't last real long in turbo mode with a 1000lumens for only 2minutes. It several other settings that last a lot longer. Anyhow when your light is on hold the power button and maybe it will be dimmable. Pretty neat feature. This one says HL18B. I have had this one for two or three years and it has been pretty handy and reliable.
Always use protection...
Interesting light, thanks.
The picture on the circuit board looks like a guy with a hoodie with graphics looking down with his hands in his pocket
They can not make them last too long as once every one has one the factory would have to close, built in obsolescence fry the chips of boil the battery.
Alright, spot on big Clive ! I was just using one right now and wound up soldering directly to my 12 volt outlet on my controller inside my micro house!
12V? How did you connect one of these to 12V?
@@bigclivedotcom I just figured by the number of battery's of 1.75 added to close to 12 plus output charger was 12 so I wired some large alligators with a coil of good copper heavy gauge red and black to the spots inside where the input was drilled a whole tied it in a knot replaced the cover extracted the lithiums added them to my ebike battery build clipped the alligators on my power bank and vola!
@@robertallen5890 Thanks for clearing things up, I understand perfectly now. 🤣🤣
@@robertallen5890 I get you, sounds like my approach to these sort of things. How often do you need to feed the alligators :)
@@Derek_Garnham thanks to our fearless leader into this great opportunity for the many years I never threw away my good led lights gadgets and boxes of coiled wires and packages of various sizes of alligators I keep all around me always. Lol
Can you do a review on those security cameras you screw into a light bulb fitting. As usual, seems too good to be true.
If the logo is meant to be viewed the same way as the text, it looks like some sort of bird to me. The chicken of light?
Sure wish we had these in the USA
You do, but under random brands, and with random functionality.
If there is a delay. You can try double click.
So are the zero ohm resistors 5% or 1%?
😆
Infinity percent, or even more.
What was that movie with the gremlin in the circuitry it would show up on all the electronics? That's what the image kind of reminds me of lol.
I also have something very similar its got red bumpers and a single circular light. I cannot remember where i got it from unfortunately
It would be neat to have a short video of your favorite hackable devices.
most are going to need ways to light up spaces here shortly.
haha lets brighten this up ghehe pun intended thx for the nice vids :) take care
I thought the thumbnail was a tape. Like a magnetic tape you would play music from in the 90s.
Yes I can see the similarity, mine though never had "hackable" printed on them.😏😏
I have a question please i couldn't find its answer on internet although i searched in 3 languages.
I'm a quality control engineer in a German company and i noticed lately that some RCBO typs in combination with Socapex (6 channels) a remaining voltage of 20~30 volts.
And it's not a capacitive effect because it does not change if i move wires away from each other.
Do you have any experience from the entertainment industry (Socapex) standard.
About the matter?
I know it's ok as long as it's below 50v.
Thank in advance for reading and commenting or maybe video about the subject
In socapex you have six circuits in very close vicinity in a multicore. There are capacitive coupling effects between the cores when measured with a high impedance multimeter. Testing with a proper electrical tester would add enough load to shunt the effect.
Dimmers also have high leakage when off due to the snubber networks.
So they put the hot LED heatsink over the batteries?
Nice.
There is an air gap, but it's another good reason to downrate the power.
"power outages around the world" are you perhaps mentioning South Africa as well. Wr currently have scheduled power outages. Wr even have different stages. If our power capacity is good then it's stage 0 . And we can get up to stage 8.
Basically the higher the stage the longer and more power outages wr get in a day at a scheduled time. Right now we are at stage 4 and in the town I'm in at the moment (each towns or city's scheduled time is different) that means we have three scheduled power outages that last for two hours each . We call this loaf shedding because we're shedding the load of different towns at different times.
But as it is our power infrastructure is pretty fucked.
Hi Clive , I’ve just started a technical training course at Lytham’s Lowther Pavilion and was wondering if you could recommend any TH-cam channels that cover the basics of things like sound and lighting.
Obviously I’ll be watching your content again that’s angled towards it but I’m curious if there’s any that would get the Big Clive stamp of approval.
I've never really looked at many. It tends to be an on the job thing.
If considering working in the entertainment industry I'd strongly recommend getting a trade first as the industry is quite exploitative and low on proper training.
@@bigclivedotcom ❤️fair enough . I’ll do a bit of research on the specific booth gear and have a general mooch around utube.
cheers, that makes sense .
I’ve been soldering since age 10 , I was an apprentice bnfl tiffy after school , sparkys mate after that for a couple of years.
I wonder if it's possible to flip the LEDs heatsink to the other side? at least the larger portion of that plate won't sit above the batteries (the large part will be on the left instead of being on the right).
I will buy a thousand of them specifically because they have no SOS mode.
I concur!
Please leave plenty in stock for the people in Ukraine that got their power grid blown up since you posted that comment.
@@jkobain me to, ... ---- ...😏
They could at least put the SOS on a different switch So that It can be super glued and never pressed again
Is it a lop type of rabbit with some form of hat (with logo(?)) on? I'm inclined to agree with genarchnix that it is a designer's chop/chap/brand mark.
Both lamps look ruffi-tuffi, that would be rugged, in their external construction. Why use standard English when you can so easily make up personalised words which just do the job. And occasionally confuse the hell out of unsuspected readers too.
Thanks again for another descriptive tear down.
The weird thing is how many little things are different, given how similar they are... the amount of money wasted on the second mold... but maybe they made enough of these that they needed new molds anyway.
Question on unrelated topic. Drill batteries. Can a single cell be charged while it's still connected to the other cells?
Yes it can.
@@bigclivedotcom awesome! Long time fan. Thanks!
im surprised they only got such small heatspreader with 11W power. i did a DIY emergency lamp, at 12W they're quite warm after 30 minutes of use.
Did you say this was hackable? To what end? What can you make it do that it doesn't do by design?
The intensity, battery capacity and potentially software are all hackable.
@@bigclivedotcom Clive, I'm enjoy your channel and look at a good few of your vids, so please don't take this as vindictive nit-picking, but ...
Intensity - if it's already on 100% duty cycle, the only way would be to boost the battery voltage (multiplier?) - but that applies to every flashlight.
Battery capacity - if there's room for a bigger one - but there's no super ingenuity required there. Maybe put a higher-capacity battery into it with the same footprint? Or otherwise cut some of the plastic moulding out of it to make more room.
Software? Can you modify it? If you know the processor type, you could replace it and write software from scratch to do what you want, but other than that, can you even find out what's in the chip? OTOH, it's a flashlight. What *_can_* you make it do that would be useful? Flash A-B-A-B-A-B - Maybe - if you have an application for that.
The front of that light, with its two big round lenses, reminds me of a jumping spider! 🙂
There was a comment in your video that reminded me of a video I saw many years ago. You might enjoy this ...
th-cam.com/video/zmP0hmuDbMQ/w-d-xo.html
At 10:18 where it's said that the chines tend to push the resistors hard, basically if they aren't smoking, it's fine, HE's CORRECT. So many times I have to fix things because of this issue.
Another great teardown video Clive. Our corner shop by us is selling a smaller work light like this for £10, planning on picking one up on Friday, (payday lol), to have a look and see if it can be hacked, will send you some info and pics if you would like, keep up the good work and see you Saturday night
Check if it's rechargeable. There's a cheaper one that uses AA cells.
1k and 100k likely the standard reel on the PNP machine, though I will bet they also will drop any value from 560R to 2k2 in the one position, and 82k to 220k in the other, depending on what is on the shelf when the reel ran out, and what was on sale that day in the market when they went looking.
Yes putting in higher value resistors for the LED will help, probably best done using actual 2W wire ended resistors on short leads, tucked up in the spare space in the unit. Making them 2R2 and 3R3 would probably not drop light output much, as the lower current will drop the LED into a more efficient part of the curve, so 50% longer battery life and likely only a 20% drop in light output
Did you try fast double clicking to see if that triggeres the SOS or stroboscope feature?
Yes. Fast clicking isn't something this unit does to even work normally.
@@bigclivedotcom oh interesting. So that delay screws everything up