I bought a box of 4 emergency light bulbs that keep glowing during power outages. I thought these were gimmicks as how does a bulb know the difference between switched off and a power outage. However I was surprised as they do and work. We have had two short power outages and they remained active. They work through some sort of capacitance that is all I know. If you run out of things to examine these could be interesting for you.
More basic ones measure resistance. If turned off with nothing else on the same switch there will be an open circuit, but if the power is out there will be a low DC resistance through the street transformer and/or other loads. For a quick test remove a bulb and short its input.
I'm thinking maybe the signal polarity is active low. The super dim result of your mod looks like it could be a minimum power output. IF you tie it to ground instead of Vcc maybe it will come on full brightness.
It depends what devices you use and what type of hub you use. There are definitely a lot of 100% local technologies and hubs that run 100% local and never phone home. It all depends if you are interested in home automation or if you just prefer to keep things traditional
I suspect that output is not isolated from mains as I can see only two inductor pins connected. And main chip look like it got some flux or lacquer on it, you should be able to see markings when cleaned, or even try smear some thermal paste on it, to make laser etched letters more visible. Either way i think this light after fix works at limited brightness, probably because of limited current.
I used to preheat the aluminum circuit board with a tea light or votive candle so soldering was easier. it does get slightly sooty but that's on the back and wipes off ok.
Got a RBG WIFI Merkury Bulb that ended up getting broken at the end housing, was going to rebuild it and see if I can get any more life out of it. If not, may just use my soldering iron and take the leds off for a project of mine for lighting the interior of my vehicle 🤷♂️
I never understood why one has to login into an account to turn the lights on or off.. it is like they don't want their lights to be sold. There should be a law that this has to be marked on the package.
I still run some x10 modules (mainly for house exterior lighting and dimming control). The biggest gripe I always had with them was the fact that you needed to run two wireless antenna modules (paired identically) if using them indoors around the house, as they’d only communicate over one branch (or half) of the circuits…
Yes, I was going to ask about the beer. Thank you. Hardly seems worth the effort to have Bluetooth bulbs that can't even change color. It's almost as if the entire point is to get into your phone.
I bought some of these but the full color version, if you look behind all the soft white boxes, there might be one or two hiding there. But yes the soft white ones are useless.
you didn't need to convert it to normal LED as it has a dumb mode on power on, it is only Bluetooth so can't phone home like the esp32 or zigbee ones, just use the second bulb without pairing and it will be in always on mode from power on.
IOT is fine when you build your own stuff. For example you can use a cheap ESP8266 board running the WLED firmware to control a ring (or a strip) of neopixels to build your own smart or mood lamp - all controlled from an app or just a browser from any device that can run a browser, laptop (running any OS), smartphone, tablet, etc. No "dialling home" involved at all because the access point is on the 8266 board itself. Bluetooth controlled non-RGB bulbs seem a bit pointless to me, which may explain why they were cheap.
I too can't advertise for WLED enough.. it is such a nice project and virtually all my living area lights run on WLED.. also my clock and my plant lights ;) .. and all you need is wlan.. half around the world I can still turn off my lights.. try that with bluetooth :D
There are some open source home automation projects that hold all the infomation on your own computer. Given Sylvania used a generic IoT module I'd guess the bluetooth protocol is one of the open standards and you might find it is supported by one of these projects. Then you could use your own computer (Raspberry Pi, old reclaimed PC etc) to join all your IoT devices together without leaking it out onto the internet. It is useful to have lights that turn on and off at night while you are away for security purposes, so a single color light isn't pointless. Back in the day I did the same with cheap timers because I was working away from home a lot and my house was empty for long periods. So if you get any other "IoT" things other than your Christmas lights it might be worth looking into.
Those kind of 'smart' bulbs and devices are all like E.T. they all phone home. But they are all asking to be retrofitted with the cheap little ESP8266 modules. Then you could have Bluetooth and/or WiFi locally without involving the mothership at all. Or if you aren't up for that kind of involvement then those cheap little RF remotes and receiver modules also work great too....? Thanks for your videos though, they are always informative, entertaining and relaxed, keep up the good work. :-)
Home Automation / Smart home stuff can be fine if you want to automate your home and you understand what you are buying. Some technologies are totally local, like Bluetooth, Zigbee, Z-Wave. I am always very wary of WiFi devices as they often do phone home. It is a pity that so many companies use personal information, but that seems to be the way of the world at the moment. I know this was a curiosity, but might as well just buy dumb globes if you don't want the smarts :) Thanks for the tear down :)
I have been using one like this: www.ebay.ca/itm/401126416227 for many years, and I also recently got one like this: www.ebay.ca/itm/354434988660 Both work well, but the newer one has a case and a built-in rechargeable battery.
Got the same one for $5 at Dollarama. Hoping to see some projects with it. That 8-pin chip is easily readable after cleaning of the crappy coating that the manufacturer has all over the board. It looks to be a regular Bright Power chip BP2306/L3J51CJ/HDAM14C One thing that I just noticed while lighting up my desk with Near UV LED's the LED chips are different colours. 6 of one colour of LED plus 12 of the other. Probably to give a more coverage of the visual spectrum but I did not see any thing that would suggest anywhere on the packaging what it should be. I bought some other brand of "smart bulb" at CdnTire and I thought it worked with Alexa straight out of the box but it did not. Tore it apart and found an ESP8266 in it.
The full colour bulbs at dollarama for the same price are a far better deal and option. Besides having the tricolour led’s they also have a series of dedicated white bulbs so that you can choose to run them at full power (or dimmed) at the complete range of white biases (from cool white through daylight through soft white through warm white)…
In regard to the board removal, I have had good luck by removing the tip contact as you did and then just yanking the board out. This will often break the wire or component attached to the threaded portion leaving the bulb base intact. The remaining wire/component can be removed with pliers and for reassembly I drill a small hole through the plastic bulb body just above the start of the threaded base, run the replacement wire/component lead from in to out, and solder it externally.
So my guess is after taking that... silver screwing part... there is no putting it back together, right? had a problem where that part kind of fallout and dont know if I can like reassemble it
Thanks. this type of video is EXACTLY what us hobbyists are searching for. No disrespect to big clive (BC is my hero), but you do the lower level skilled folks better service in matters of practical example. so yeah. more this type of vid please and thank you :) re: the unlit half .. can you bridge the damaged led?. or remove and replace with a resistor equal to the leds from either side? . or both. it's not like the power side of the circuit is faulty.
Bridging the bad LED would cause problems because then the two parallel halves would have different lengths, so they won't share current. Replacing it with a resistor would work at a single power level but if you change the dimming level the equivalent resistance of LEDs change. What you could do is bridge the broken LED and also bridge an LED on the other side.
@@eDoc2020While using a resistor is more eloquent, simply bridging the broken led will work just fine (though it’ll increase the amperage going to the rest of the leds resulting in them running hotter and dying prematurely). This same principle is also good practice with cheapo leds by adding a resistor in series with the led strings to lower he power going to them resulting in significantly longer life (if not indefinite)…
FYI - the smart+ app doesn’t make these bulbs “phone home” at all, and “technically” the email address isn’t even required for setup, though they do want an address for marketing purposes. Everyone should have a throwaway email address for this purpose. The app will allow you to “setup” the bulbs, or at least prepare them for operation and connecting to a smart home base of your choosing without even having an internet connection - though I’d recommend it for first use as it’ll update the bulbs firmware allowing it to not only “talk” to more “smart home” devices, but improves the bulbs overall performance, especially with the full colour bulbs which at the same price I’m shocked you didn’t get. Not only for the colours, but for the fact they can operate as cold or soft white bulbs (which is awesome incase you want different lighting depending on where you’re using them)… Bottom line is they’re 100% worth the price, and don’t phone home to anyone or anything as they’re physically incapable (though your home device might if you don’t manage their connections appropriately like you should). Edit: after finishing watching this, you can “fix” the light by bridging both sides of the bulb you crushed (this is how you can fix all led lights that die). And the Bluetooth module is easy to communicate with if you have a Bluetooth module connected to a computer. There are resources online detailing how to accomplish this…
![[TH] FS vs BME - VCT Ascension Pacific - Lower Bracket Final](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/wnygqsR2Fig/mqdefault.jpg)
@ 10:48
Oh that miniaturised hand pointer thingy is so cool ! 😍😇😆👌😅👍
I bought a box of 4 emergency light bulbs that keep glowing during power outages. I thought these were gimmicks as how does a bulb know the difference between switched off and a power outage. However I was surprised as they do and work. We have had two short power outages and they remained active. They work through some sort of capacitance that is all I know. If you run out of things to examine these could be interesting for you.
Those sound interesting. I'll have to keep a lookout for them
More basic ones measure resistance. If turned off with nothing else on the same switch there will be an open circuit, but if the power is out there will be a low DC resistance through the street transformer and/or other loads. For a quick test remove a bulb and short its input.
I'm thinking maybe the signal polarity is active low. The super dim result of your mod looks like it could be a minimum power output. IF you tie it to ground instead of Vcc maybe it will come on full brightness.
That makes perfect sense, and I don't know why it didn't occur to me...
Totally agree with you on staying away from that IOT thing. --And having to register someplace to turn on a light bulb
It depends what devices you use and what type of hub you use. There are definitely a lot of 100% local technologies and hubs that run 100% local and never phone home. It all depends if you are interested in home automation or if you just prefer to keep things traditional
I suspect that output is not isolated from mains as I can see only two inductor pins connected. And main chip look like it got some flux or lacquer on it, you should be able to see markings when cleaned, or even try smear some thermal paste on it, to make laser etched letters more visible. Either way i think this light after fix works at limited brightness, probably because of limited current.
I used to preheat the aluminum circuit board with a tea light or votive candle so soldering was easier. it does get slightly sooty but that's on the back and wipes off ok.
Got a RBG WIFI Merkury Bulb that ended up getting broken at the end housing, was going to rebuild it and see if I can get any more life out of it. If not, may just use my soldering iron and take the leds off for a project of mine for lighting the interior of my vehicle 🤷♂️
Like you, I too was hoping it would be a simple Bluetooth bulb. But no, you have to tell the overlords how bright you have your lighting. :(
I never understood why one has to login into an account to turn the lights on or off.. it is like they don't want their lights to be sold. There should be a law that this has to be marked on the package.
Do you remember X10 devices? They used the power lines to communicate and was well before any IoT device hit the market.
Absolutely. A cool technology whose image was destroyed by horribly marketing.
I still run some x10 modules (mainly for house exterior lighting and dimming control). The biggest gripe I always had with them was the fact that you needed to run two wireless antenna modules (paired identically) if using them indoors around the house, as they’d only communicate over one branch (or half) of the circuits…
insurance company will not pay out if that light was the origin of a fire ...
That's their job, to NOT pay off. That's why it's such a lucrative business model.
Yes, I was going to ask about the beer. Thank you.
Hardly seems worth the effort to have Bluetooth bulbs that can't even change color. It's almost as if the entire point is to get into your phone.
Yeah, I don't see the point either.
I suspect most people didn't so that's why it ended up selling for cheap at Dollarama.
I bought some of these but the full color version, if you look behind all the soft white boxes, there might be one or two hiding there.
But yes the soft white ones are useless.
you didn't need to convert it to normal LED as it has a dumb mode on power on, it is only Bluetooth so can't phone home like the esp32 or zigbee ones, just use the second bulb without pairing and it will be in always on mode from power on.
I initially wanted to convert it to wireless control that I can trust not to phone home or create a hole in my firewall.
looks like you need a dremel tool in your arsenal.
I have a couple.
I was hoping to do less damage to this light
IOT is fine when you build your own stuff. For example you can use a cheap ESP8266 board running the WLED firmware to control a ring (or a strip) of neopixels to build your own smart or mood lamp - all controlled from an app or just a browser from any device that can run a browser, laptop (running any OS), smartphone, tablet, etc. No "dialling home" involved at all because the access point is on the 8266 board itself.
Bluetooth controlled non-RGB bulbs seem a bit pointless to me, which may explain why they were cheap.
I too can't advertise for WLED enough.. it is such a nice project and virtually all my living area lights run on WLED.. also my clock and my plant lights ;) .. and all you need is wlan.. half around the world I can still turn off my lights.. try that with bluetooth :D
Where is the place of the little white cable please
There are some open source home automation projects that hold all the infomation on your own computer. Given Sylvania used a generic IoT module I'd guess the bluetooth protocol is one of the open standards and you might find it is supported by one of these projects. Then you could use your own computer (Raspberry Pi, old reclaimed PC etc) to join all your IoT devices together without leaking it out onto the internet. It is useful to have lights that turn on and off at night while you are away for security purposes, so a single color light isn't pointless. Back in the day I did the same with cheap timers because I was working away from home a lot and my house was empty for long periods. So if you get any other "IoT" things other than your Christmas lights it might be worth looking into.
It’s 100% open and the module is even capable of accepting firmware updates over the air. And you can communicate with them openly too…
They poured a bunch of adhesive or something in mine so I couldnt access the main circuit
That's relatively common. I've had a few like that.
Makes repair pretty much impossible.
Those kind of 'smart' bulbs and devices are all like E.T. they all phone home.
But they are all asking to be retrofitted with the cheap little ESP8266 modules.
Then you could have Bluetooth and/or WiFi locally without involving the mothership at all.
Or if you aren't up for that kind of involvement then those cheap little RF remotes and receiver modules also work great too....?
Thanks for your videos though, they are always informative, entertaining and relaxed, keep up the good work. :-)
Esp8266s don't have Bluetooth esp32 does have both
You should put your meter on Amps and use it to short out the bad LED. Would tell you if that is the only problem, and what the current draw is.
I'm wondering if there are generic apps for use with this Bluetooth device on play store etc that won't require registration?🤔
I suppose it's possible.
Assuming someone has reverse engineered the signals that are being passed over the bluetooth link.
Home Automation / Smart home stuff can be fine if you want to automate your home and you understand what you are buying. Some technologies are totally local, like Bluetooth, Zigbee, Z-Wave. I am always very wary of WiFi devices as they often do phone home. It is a pity that so many companies use personal information, but that seems to be the way of the world at the moment.
I know this was a curiosity, but might as well just buy dumb globes if you don't want the smarts :) Thanks for the tear down :)
Sadly those lamps seem to be a one way tear down🙂
What component tester do you recommend?
I have been using one like this: www.ebay.ca/itm/401126416227 for many years, and I also recently got one like this: www.ebay.ca/itm/354434988660
Both work well, but the newer one has a case and a built-in rechargeable battery.
Is that a Guinness?
No. I talk about it at the end.
th-cam.com/video/3NPpn-RSOmc/w-d-xo.html
they all phone home to the mothership
Its so the government can steal more dats and spy on us even more in iot the I stands for I will call home and spy on you. The S stands for security
Good teardown, and you wont find these bulbs in the US embassy.
Clip the damaged led off and bridge the pads with a dab of solder😬
Dexterity++ making for a great tear down. 👍😀
2:58 ET Phones always home :)
Data sheet shows it can be used on RGB LED's
Got the same one for $5 at Dollarama. Hoping to see some projects with it.
That 8-pin chip is easily readable after cleaning of the crappy coating that the manufacturer has all over the board.
It looks to be a regular Bright Power chip
BP2306/L3J51CJ/HDAM14C
One thing that I just noticed while lighting up my desk with Near UV LED's the LED chips are different colours. 6 of one colour of LED plus 12 of the other. Probably to give a more coverage of the visual spectrum but I did not see any thing that would suggest anywhere on the packaging what it should be.
I bought some other brand of "smart bulb" at CdnTire and I thought it worked with Alexa straight out of the box but it did not. Tore it apart and found an ESP8266 in it.
The full colour bulbs at dollarama for the same price are a far better deal and option. Besides having the tricolour led’s they also have a series of dedicated white bulbs so that you can choose to run them at full power (or dimmed) at the complete range of white biases (from cool white through daylight through soft white through warm white)…
In regard to the board removal, I have had good luck by removing the tip contact as you did and then just yanking the board out. This will often break the wire or component attached to the threaded portion leaving the bulb base intact. The remaining wire/component can be removed with pliers and for reassembly I drill a small hole through the plastic bulb body just above the start of the threaded base, run the replacement wire/component lead from in to out, and solder it externally.
Great tip!
.Thanks, I'll have to give that a try
So my guess is after taking that... silver screwing part... there is no putting it back together, right? had a problem where that part kind of fallout and dont know if I can like reassemble it
Yeah, most of the time it's really hard to take one of the4se apart in a reservable manner.
Thanks. this type of video is EXACTLY what us hobbyists are searching for. No disrespect to big clive (BC is my hero), but you do the lower level skilled folks better service in matters of practical example. so yeah. more this type of vid please and thank you :) re: the unlit half .. can you bridge the damaged led?. or remove and replace with a resistor equal to the leds from either side? . or both. it's not like the power side of the circuit is faulty.
Bridging the bad LED would cause problems because then the two parallel halves would have different lengths, so they won't share current. Replacing it with a resistor would work at a single power level but if you change the dimming level the equivalent resistance of LEDs change.
What you could do is bridge the broken LED and also bridge an LED on the other side.
@@eDoc2020 thanks for info and taking the time to share it :) - kudos
@@eDoc2020While using a resistor is more eloquent, simply bridging the broken led will work just fine (though it’ll increase the amperage going to the rest of the leds resulting in them running hotter and dying prematurely). This same principle is also good practice with cheapo leds by adding a resistor in series with the led strings to lower he power going to them resulting in significantly longer life (if not indefinite)…
FYI - the smart+ app doesn’t make these bulbs “phone home” at all, and “technically” the email address isn’t even required for setup, though they do want an address for marketing purposes. Everyone should have a throwaway email address for this purpose. The app will allow you to “setup” the bulbs, or at least prepare them for operation and connecting to a smart home base of your choosing without even having an internet connection - though I’d recommend it for first use as it’ll update the bulbs firmware allowing it to not only “talk” to more “smart home” devices, but improves the bulbs overall performance, especially with the full colour bulbs which at the same price I’m shocked you didn’t get. Not only for the colours, but for the fact they can operate as cold or soft white bulbs (which is awesome incase you want different lighting depending on where you’re using them)…
Bottom line is they’re 100% worth the price, and don’t phone home to anyone or anything as they’re physically incapable (though your home device might if you don’t manage their connections appropriately like you should).
Edit: after finishing watching this, you can “fix” the light by bridging both sides of the bulb you crushed (this is how you can fix all led lights that die). And the Bluetooth module is easy to communicate with if you have a Bluetooth module connected to a computer. There are resources online detailing how to accomplish this…
Should he supported by home assist....
Maybe, If I could get it to initially pair without making an account
You need Big Clive's vice of knowledge :-)