Fixing a dead LED street light lamp. (SOX retrofit.)
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ต.ค. 2024
- At the Glasgow meet I was given a few different SOX (low pressure sodium) retrofit LED street lighting lamps. One was faulty, so in this video I fix it.
I think the reason the lamp didn't light immediately after the fix was down to me apprehensively putting the plug part of the way into the socket and not making a proper connection.
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:-
www.bigclive.co...
This also keeps the channel independent of TH-cam's advertising algorithms allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty.
Among all the other problems mentioned here regarding replacing sodium street lighting with LEDs is that of light pollution affecting astronomers. The old SOX lights have a very narrow frequency output which is easily filtered out, but LEDs are broadband emitters, making filtering far more difficult
I was about to point this out. Astronomers LOVED the sodium lamps because they could so easily be filtered out to prevent light pollution.
Those pins are oxy acetylene tip cleaners Clive. They are like tiny little round files as such. Nice diagnosis mate.
Truth!
Agree, they are for gas torches
Yes, I use them for cleaning carburettor jets amongst other things, available in nice sets for say £3 from welding supply firms or slightly cheaper on line. Usually used without solder.
@@BensWorkshop I got given mine by the local welding supplies company in a nice case with their loogo and contact details printed on it.
@@Equiluxe1 I had to pay for mine :( but then I don't do any oxy welding, only MIG and MMA (Manual metal arc is apparently what arc welding is called these days....)
Here in the US, LPS was never really used except near observatories where the monochromatic wavelengths can be filtered out by telescopes. I was in Flagstaff, Arizona in 2022 where there is an observatory. Most of the streetlights in the downtown area of Flagstaff looked like LPS, until I took a closer look and found they were LED which emulated the monochromatic light produced by LPS. I believe the fixtures were originally fitted with LPS lamps, but were retrofitted with an LED lamp powered by the line voltage to the fixture. What had prompted this observation was that there was one fixture at an intersection where the LEDs were I believe 5000K.
Very interesting vid, I'm familiar with Alan , as we are both in the various Facebook streetlighting groups, although I don't have a collection, I've always been fascinated by streetlighting & the various technologies used, although I also find LED I bit boring as they all look much the same.
SOX (Low pressure sodium) has always been my favourite type, I can still remember as a kid, watching the SOX lanterns in my road warming up from red to orange.
But now like most other areas, Portsmouth has recently replaced virtually all its lighting with LED versions, making a few areas over lit but many areas under lit with dark patches here & there, not so much the fault of the technology but due to the size & positioning of the lanterns.
I miss the yellow sodium lamps. I could tell if a car was coming down the road at night when backing off my drive because headlights are white. That trick doesn’t work with white LED streetlights.
That is one of the disadvantages of LED outdoor road lighting in general, weather its street lighting, car headlights or bike lights, they are all the same cold white colour & not very distinguishable from a distance.
Not to mention that reversing onto a main road is a no no in the highway code. But of course sometimes there's no alternative....
AAAyyyGGG Indeed I would do otherwise, were it not for the steep angle of the drive and that it is impossible to exit the car otherwise (at least not without being a gymnast/contortionist and climbing across to the passenger seat).
Interesting others also think LEDs are not as good for identifying oncoming vehicles. I wonder if there is actual hard evidence that safety is decreased? If so perhaps we should refer to the artificial yellow.
Dave Micolichek: Yes, but I can’t “look a little harder” my view is completely obstructed (or at least so obstructed that I cannot see in both directions far enough to detect if there is sufficient gap to emerge with any certainty). I have to put my hazards on and reverse very slowly using my hearing and other “tricks” to detect approaching vehicles, or hope they are courteous enough to stop. At least at night I used to have another “trick” to use.
Regrettably there are still motorists who charge down narrow residential streets at 30mph+ presumably in the mindset “I have right of way, no need to stop for anyone”. If they do bother to use their horn, then it’s only to sound it in annoyance as they scream on past. Perhaps if they took “a few milliseconds” to THINK a little harder, then they might realise that an emerging drivers cannot possibly see them approaching and the polite/safe thing to do would be to STOP?
Dave Micolichek: Different colour? Yes that’s the point. They are now the SAME colour. White headlights on yellow sodium lights were far easier to see.
Would love a video focussing on the old SOX lamps and the ballasts + ignitors that run them. Also, its a shame that Philips is closing down their SOX bulb factory this November, marking the true end of Low Pressure Sodium...
The old sodium-vapour lamps were definitely better than their LED replacements in producing a large pool of visible light. In my experience, LED street lamps illuminate the area immediately below the lamp standard and for around three metres around but no further, leaving large dark areas between lamp-posts.
As someone with a Philips Mi26 as a floor lamp... I can attest :)
It's sad we didn't develop the technology and fixtures even futher because it was an extremely efficient source. the only really major problem SOX had was that because a lot of lanterns were of the semi-cutoff type, the light could bleed upwards causing sky-glare. that was easy to remedy with an altered optic or going full-cutoff though.
besides that, even the smallest SOX lamps were around 100 lumens per watt (the 35w SOX we are used to seeing in smaller streets and side roads are around 130lpw), the light spread was very even (more even than the 45w Iridium minis that they replaced them with in 2012, that's for sure), the light output wasn't concentrated into a single point making them very low glare compared to metal halide, LED and HPS, and they were also extremely good at cutting through fog, which is a massive visibility boon when you're trundling through a pea-souper of an evening!!
I prefer warm-white led than sox lamp
LED with poor light distribution have that kind of problem, the only good thing is that it doesnt induce glare that much but the street feels like hallway with lights far away from each other
Astronomers love low-pressure sodium street lighting because they are not monochromatic, but dichromatic. They produce light from the atomic transitions of the electrons in the sodium atoms, which produce the characteristic sodium emission spectrum, two narrow lines in the yellow-orange range, quite close together. These can be easily filtered out in a telescope, leaving the light gathered almost undamaged.
@kevin paul halliday I think that haze would be a problem for viewing dimmer object regardless. Have you tried a filter for the sodium lines, though? It can only help.
@@peterjszerszen Well, that's Detroit for you, isn't it? The whole damn city is falling apart, there's no money to fix anything, and the politicians are adamant that they're not going to sell anything, cut anything, or do any long-term leasing of public property.
Of course, there's dumber lighting in some places. You know that huge, multi-decade project to rebuild the B oston highway network underground, that finished incredibly late and over budget? They have fixtures DROPPING ONTO THE ROADWAY, because some dumbass put dissimilar metals in contact in an environment where there's water and salt. The damn things are corroding right out of the tunnel ceiling!
@@evensgrey Yeah, I grew up in Boston but left about 5 years ago.. I remember the concrete panels were falling down.. one of them crushed a car and killed a lady.. her husband was in the passenger seat and survived somehow. flattened the car. It was the epoxy-anchor system they were using. They removed them all, but IDK if they ever put them back. Now the fixtures are falling.. geez.
Every time that nostalgic golden glow is replaced with LEDs a bit of my childhood dies with that bulb.
TnT FoX My childhood was neon tubes getting replaced by cheap yellows that made some things invisible.
i've been trying to find LEDS that emulate the color correctly, amber isnt the same
Color of old tungsten bulbs is just beautiful, hope LEDs or some other form will replicate the spectrum as close as possible.
Who cares about economy bring back our old low pressure sodium lights much more genteel on the eye
Good day to you
Those pins you have look like the nozzle cleaning pins for acetylene welding nozzles
I love the sodium lamps, they're so much easier on the eyes.
Some smartie-pants in my area decided to put in some induction fluorescent lamps, with a bland white color and dim illumination. Many of them are broken now, old 5 years or so, lol.
Fixing things *is* fun, even if you have to break them yourself first.
For cleaning out holes, I just use sewing needles. They're smooth and stainless steel. The solder doesn't stick.
The old sox fittings were only good in the respect that the control gear rarely went wrong unlike son and fluorescent. Colour rendering was terrible. Then there was mbfu which wasn’t too bad. We used to lean a ladder against columns on municipal car parks and service them that way. Only use a portable scaffold in extreme circumstances. Wouldn’t be allowed now. Brings back memories. Excellent video thanks.
Sodium-colored LED lamp with a lower efficiency and shorter life than the original sodium lamp. Not sure what's the point except that selling LED lamps is a good business...
????
The idea of LED yellow - so people don't notice the change isn't going to be too convincing if they don't go through the red (and sometimes flashy) warm-up stage :)
@@dh2032 - SOX lamps are incredibly efficient - often more so than thr LEDs that replace them.
Low pressure sodium lamps are complicated to make and making them depends a lot on the skill of the lampmakers, which crooked multinationals hate as they cannot export manufacture to some turd world cesspit using replaceable and expendable slave labor. Not to mention that it is an established and reliable out of patent technology. Which means that generations of specialist knowledge will have to be relearned by our descendants when they are crawling their way out of the rubble of this civilization.
LP Sodium lamps are most efficient and very long lasting. The LED lamps have a lot of E waste and don't last as long as the power supply's often fail early. The red pink start up from a SOX lamp is simply beautiful.
I would have liked to see a close-up of the sodium lamp powering up as well. I like the monochromatic light they emit even more than the light of LEDs.
Im a simple girl.. I see a video with a SOX lightbulb in it, I like the video IMMEDIATELY
(seriously I love low pressure sodium lamp discharge technology)
Strange girl, lol.
Me too love sox that is why I have two in my garden
@@NeuronalAxon "Strange girl, lol." Remember, 'Normal' is just a cycle on a washing machine... if your not a little strange inside, your not living life right
@@DanafoxyVixen - I never said it was a bad thing. ;)
You're not strange at all. I agree with you. Since I was a child I was fascinated with all types of discharge lamps from fluorescents to mercury vapour, sodium, and metal halides.I still love the stuff.
Those pins are torch tip cleaners. Also good for cleaning carburetors.
They're also sold by unscrupulous vendors as 'nut files' for stringed instrument maintenance and repair. But they are pretty horrible for that use.
this. I've seen the same exact pins in a tool marketed for carb jet cleaning
Old guitar strings work for cleaning carb jets too
I've listened to you explain the bootstrap circuit and second winding many times and I understand it but for some reason this time It just hit me as a massive revelation of how it works to use the knowledge to troubleshoot bad switchers more thoroughly. It never hurts to review things several times to make it really become clear.
That last sentence is especially true when working with mains.
I talk about it every time for a couple of reasons. Some people may be new to my videos, and for others who have seen it before, but not quite clicked with it - it will all suddenly fall into place.
@@bigclivedotcom And thank you for doing so Clive, i have been a sub of yours for years and still catch a few things i overlooked - and mis understood.
All I think is how much more reliable would stuff be without the dodgy electronics !
Bootstrap circuit ??? Sounds most Doctor Who gibberish. From what I know, you put a voltage across a LED and it lights - so anything more than that is hoax.
@@millomwebYes. From what you know your comment is understandable. Good day.
If you use Suntan capacitors in your lamp power supply, does the lamp start putting out ultraviolet?
These are awesome! I'm sure that astronomers will be happy that they have LED modules that look exactly like LPS. I wonder if the emission spectrum is similar enough.
Personally, LPS are my favourite lamps. I find LED lamps quite glarey (glary? They both look wrong).
Spoken like a true Scotsman "We all know what methylated spirits tastes like" 🙂 liked and subscribed, loved the 'for the dummies' explanations.
Big clive dips his wick again 🤣🤣👍👍
😀 I remember the old low pressure sodium lamps - particularly, when first struck, are red and slowly turn bright orange, (to me, they were more of a bright orange than yellow)
The orange lamps are high pressure sodium. (HPS)
@@buddyclem7328 The low pressure sodium ones also glow orange.
Still got a couple of sox lamps and the best part is definitely the warm up phase
0:23 Will your videos be watchable in that TH-cam?!
U-Tube
@@HuntersMoon78 Tube U.
Definitely not the right youtube, it isnt killing enough small creators
As long as you're willing to sit in a bath of liquid sodium!
0:23 Wait, we're all in a vacuum streetlamp tube?
If you have two lamps, you'd have a pair of SOX
I mention SOX lamps in the chat every time you do a live stream... glad to see you finally do a video on one! Power it up!
My favorite tool for dealing with through hole component removal is the desoldering pump (AKA Solder Sucker) then you can clean up with the solder wick.
those are are garbage
Rite Big Dude, The other day was doing a bit of desoldering and some of the leads had a fair bit of solder on them and were a wee bit long so decided to cut the back with flush trim cutters to ease dwell time and the compenents to my suprise came out with a bit of a pull! I have just tried this with a CD40099BE chip! and the same thing happened. Conclusion, won't be doing much desoldering from now on!!! TFS, GB :)
I just started this video, forgetting my volume was cranked up, quickly turned it down, and someone outside yelled "Big Clive!" I yelled "Big Clive!" right back at em.
lol, whereabouts do you live?
@@NeuronalAxon Louisville KY
@@JerryDodge - Ah, I was picturing Australia for some reason - 'Hey - Big Clive!'. lol
Jerry Dodge THAT WAS ME!
To anyone complaining about nostalgia, get with the times. We need to make changes like this for the environment which is infinitely more important that some feelings. Go take a photo of the old orange glow, it'll last longer.
It’s a shame LPS lamps have gone because they were completely recyclable, unlike the modern e-waste & plastic equivalent.
Astronomers also liked them. A simple sodium band was much easier for observatories to filter out.
@@jackmcgramm2259 Astronomers may have liked them because the could filter out the objectionable monochromatic yellow. Unfortunately the human eye can’t. For the first time in forty years rural areas are free from urban skyglow.
The part that's boggling is the ALUMINUM is still the pricey part - and the cheap electronics failing still require replacing ... the aluminum.
One of the roads on my journey to work each day had the Sodium lamps swapped for LED's a couple of years ago.
Within a couple of months, about 25% of them were flashing.
About a week later, the local council replaced them. The lamps have been 'disco free' ever since.
Makes me wonder if the original ones were bought 'on the cheap'.
Or just a bad batch swapped under warranty.
Well if I was on public works and paid $100 a bulb I’d have returned them and purchased the $120 name brand after the embarrassment of having to swap them all.
Also our city had an entire LED bridge go dark for want of some MOV surge protection. They spent $470,000 USD on fancy LEDa and never bothered to fix it or
It’s perma-borked.
www.tulsaworld.com/news/local/power-surge-damages-lighting-on-boulder-bridge/article_fc8fe4f0-89de-11e3-9bee-0017a43b2370.html
What Micheal Wynne said also used for cleaning carburetors, piano wire some call it, guitar string, but the set you have are files, so push thru the hole starting with a smaller one til desired size for electronics. I just woke up (so not awake all the way) but not sure what it would do to a double sided hole, im not sure. I'm guessing if ya filed to much it would eventually grind the doubled sided hole out.
It would definitely pose the risk of damaging the through hole plating.
Change your 1/60 camera setting to 1/50 and the 50 hz flashing is gone
He's filming on an iPad.
@@TraeSMR I thought he was using a Moto G6 now
I'm pretty sure he knows that.
I personally prefer the light output of SOX... Especially as the LEDs being used in current replacements have a terrible greenish blue colour to themas the manufacturers are favoring raw LPW over modest colour rendering. Not to mention being absolute glare bombs seeing as the light they produce is far more concentrated than SOX.
also leds are not good for human eyes
@@Altamira-Arazz It depends on the construction of the lamps to be fair. there are a few ways to drive LED lamps on AC, and a few of them, such as capacitive droppers and unfiltered bridge rectifiers, will introduce a lot of flicker, even if your lamp operates with opposing pairs to light on each half of an AC Sine wave.
If it's a good quality lamp, you will normally get a properly filtered switching power LED driver in the lamp, which will completely remove the flicker from the light output. cheaper or more compact lamps that can't fit a switching supply in them will normally have a capacitive dropper arrangement instead, which produces significant flicker.
@@DigBipper188 I mean white led lights emmit blue light also emmittes by computer screens
Good to see your hands back
I live in a little fart of a town in southwest Pennsylvania, and the house is right next to a secondary state maintained road. (Saying that PennDot, or anyone properly "Maintains" the roads is a bit of a stretch, but you get the idea) about every 1/8 mile or so, was a merc vapor ( I think ) streetlight. (the bluey-white ones) Recently they were all switched over to white LED heads. Maybe it's just me, but I think they are better. It seems that there is more contrast and sharper definition of items lit by them. The older lamps had curved, glass lenses that scattered the light, even sideways. IE light pollution. These new ones while brighter are flat panels behind flat, clear glass. You can see things lit up really well but not see the light source in the head until you get within a few dozen or so feet of the illuminated area. I kinda' like 'em. brighter, sharper light giving a more defined "image" of items & shadow with less glare and light pollution in windows at night. I could see the light from the old one in front of the house, shining in my window at night. The new one does not invade my darkness.
Skimping out helps to ensure more purchases of replacements.
And that's the irony - it probably costs the taxpayer hundreds of £££ every time one fails and either has to be repaired or gets chucked due to one component :( Wonder how many authorities actually bother to go down to component level to repair them - probably not many I imagine?
@@Umski every LED I've put up that doesn't work gets sent back to the manufacturer
@@user-lq1dk6gr3p that's good to hear :) If there's a good repair loop then that makes sense, but can't help thinking there's a premium on that process rather than a tech repairing it in-house?
Samsung has been very successful using the very same low quality "Sam Young" NXB series capacitors used in this street light in their LCD TVs in the past 15 years, making sure their power supplies will fail sooner or later from them drying out or puking their guts out. With newer, less powerhungry and less heat-generating LED backlit TVs they've started using even lower quality crapcaps to ensure something or another will fail, even without being assisted by waste heat from the PSUs heatsinks
@@Knaeckebrotsaege That's a reflection of the twisted, modern ethic of "If it's legal, it's ethical."
Hello Clive, I really enjoyed your Angelfire website as a kid. I just wanted to say that I really appreciate you. Thank you
I didn't have an angelfire website, but I did have a demon one.
@@bigclivedotcom Well, either way, I still have the joule thief I made based on the instructions there. It was a cool website.
@@rexnecis It does sound like my website. Glad you enjoyed it.
Even though the LEDs are now more economical, practical and longer lasting the sodium lamps will always be much more interesting. The physics of their operation is so much more rich and accessible to the curious. You have noble gas mixtures which you can use as an entryway to element ionization potentials and the nonintuitive Paschen's law governing dielectric breakdown gradient and gas pressure. The sodium itself is interesting for its phenomenal efficiency at converting electrical potential energy into yellow light at the two Fraunhofer D lines due to spin-orbit coupling in the electron transition from the 3p to the 3s levels. The D lines can be used to demonstrate Zeeman effect due to external magnetic field splitting of the lines (energy levels) (see Ben Krasnow's video). The spectral emission of the high pressure lamp exhibits an interesting property of self-inversion or self-absorption where the pressure broadened D-lines are partially reabsorbed by cooler sodium vapor surrounding the hot arc, just like the atmosphere of the sun and stars produce absorption spectra. The sodium in the tube is actually an amalgam with mercury, an interesting point to discuss eutectics. The discharge tube itself isn't even glass, it's sintered aluminum oxide which the corrosive sodium doesn't attack nearly as easily. The outer envelope of glass containing the discharge tube is coated with indium tin oxide, transparent in the visible but reflective in the infrared to increase heat retention in the arc tube and increase efficiency. The coating on the tungsten coils at the ends of the discharge tube used to enhance thermionic emission of electrons when hot is interesting. On and on it goes. So much more to enjoy thinking about than with the relatively boring, simple semiconductor band-gap of an LED and a little blob of posphor overcoat.
10mintwo You need to also think of the complex physics of giving the transformer core the desired magnetic properties (involves shape and mixing of metals). The electromagnetics to store energy in that core for release on the other side. The tricky chemistry of turning wet paper into an efficient but long lasting capacitor. The even trickier chemistry and physics of making a blue spectrum LED die. The electron orbital physics and chemistry of the phosphor pasted over the LED. The tricky eutetics of making various solder compounds work, such as SnPb, SnAgCu and SnCu.
Nothing can beat those drawings 👍
Cool video .. that lamp your repaired costs £45 new 😲
It's often worthwhile to fix something instead of getting new. My dad recently had an ice machine break. Found the issue to be a rusted IR diode. Replaced it and saved him $200 for a new one. I hate products that are designed to not be repairable. Some IKEA electronics I own is all glue welded shut so you can't access the circuitry without breaking it.
@@Okabim yeah.. a lot of the time when things break, even expensive things, the problem is just one 10 cent part and the knowledge to fix it. im sure so many things have been thrown out due to a blown capacitor or similar.
8p for the part to repair it, but how much for the electrician to carry out the repair? Unless you have a workshop that does hundreds of them every hour, it’s not worth it.
Maybe somebody can run a business saving dead ones from landfill and selling reconditioned ones at half the price of new ones. There's a liability that has to be accepted... Swapping lamps costs more than the lamps.
Just think how much more reliable it'd be without the dodgy electronics in there. What's the point of charging up caps to power things when there's a power supply to hand already ?
Singlesided boards without plated holes are very weak.
A light knock or push on a component or vibrations can rip the copper off the board and then it is just a matter of time till the foil breaks and you have an open circuit or a fire...
A very important consideration in avionics. Not so important in a street light which isn't going to get much in the way of vibration.
I love how my cat gets comfortable and sleeps whenever I put on your videos :-)
It seems quite a common effect. I'm not sure why cats like my voice.
@@bigclivedotcom Well, I did just read your comment in your voice haha, it's quite distinct and calming actually.
That would make a great inspection lamp
2 LED street lamps on my road have the same problem. Much prefer the sodium ones
Put the SOX lamp back in... SORTED!
Complain to the couincil and start a protest
@@johncoops6897 yes they wasted money that could have gone to the nhs or road repairs
@@johncoops6897
Not true as street lighting does not fall under a duty to provide.
Unfortunately Philips are discontinuing SOX lamps and the last factory is closing down this November... 😞
I guess the only solution now is to invent an LED lamp that emulates the colour of a SOX.
Mr Carlson has a solder sucky thing that works really well 😀. Great video as always Clive, many thanks.
Carlson's soldering is painful to watch.
Those pins are called "torch cleaners" - I've found they are useful for clearing blocks in solder sucking devices or - torches :).
Well, well... If you ignore the CRI of 0 of the sodium lights, they are much better for me. The air is much more transparent to them and you can see very far from a single light source. Moreover their light is not triggering your pupils as much as the LED lights which produce a lot of light, but then your pupils react and you see that special "dark light" effect of the LEDs...
By the way ... with that frequency of flickering it was clear that the final capacitor was not the issue :) Otherwise, nice video!
That bulb has youtube inside? It's like a ship in a bottle.
Daft project idea: That sodium simulation lamp sucks! Let's see it done properly with additional led colours, a programmable controller to simulate the whole sodium warm-up experience :) Dont forget it goes yellow by the electrodes first! :)
I never thought of fluxing my solder removal tape, what a great tip! thank you!
I've almost never encountered solder-wick that wasn't pre-fluxed, actually.
I know it's made and you can buy it, but I don't know why one would.
SAVED a couple of braids I had laying around my lab. It is something with knowing 🙂
idk what those little file or needle things are but they arent desoldering needles. desoldering needles are like large (relatively) diameter, unsharpened hypodermic needles made out of stainless steel. the central bore means you can fit them over the leg of a hard-to-desolder component and of course solder doesnt stick to stainless steel so you can withdraw the needles once the joint has reset and the component is free
Those de-soldering tips at 16:00 look like what we welders call tip cleaners. For cleaning out the tips of our oxy-acetylene torches.
It turns out they are. It seems to be a creative listing.
Those through hole cleaners sure look like oxy-fuel tip cleaners, they range in size from 0.4mm to 1.6mm and can be picked up from any welding supplier for those who are interested.
That's odd. They were sold as being for PCB through holes.
@@bigclivedotcom there is no doubt in my mind that they were, they have a 101 uses!
@@bigclivedotcom Look on ebay for "hollow desoldering needles" - these type seem better
@@bigclivedotcom I use the same ones for cleaning my vacuum desoldering iron.
For clearing the through hole solder try using wooden toothpick. Heat up the pad and stick the pick in the hole. Works like a charm.
Propelling pencil leads work nicely.
*Are the desolder tips on the keyring ribbed for your pleasure Clive?*
I presume the ribbing is for filing out clogged holes.
bren106: I think that the ribbing is to help fight tooth decay. Can also be used on dentures but always check with your dentist and your doctor First (liability disclaimer) use at own risk.
5:36
Those tip look like oxy torch cleaning tips. I would imagine it also could be used for desoldering guns.
@@crosstalk71 Torch tip cleaners have 1001 uses! I use them often to bore out small carburetor jets to get small engines to run right when they come from the factory set too lean to be worth a shit due to emissions compliance bullshit.
The pin set look like acetelyene torch tip cleaners. I use them for my torches of course but they are handy for your purpose. I have used them to clean orifices in air filtering equipment as well.
Oh man, now I need a sodium yellow lamp. But the other ones are cool too.
I still have a SOX street light with original SOX bulb in it. It's a Philips SRM, which is a really common fixture in my town. They've retrofitted most of them with cool white lamps now.
I've got two in my garden
Quick tip for desoldering bad caps. Rock the can so it stresses the wires and breaks the component off the board with only a sliver of wire left through the hole. Then you can simply clean out the hole with your normal desoldering techniques, vacuum and / or braid. That way you aren't fighting the thermal inertia of the capacitor to heat up the solder.
If you can access the leads on a bad component with snips, that works too. Just be careful not to pull on the lead and lift a trace or scrape the board with the cutters, ideally the wire will break just proud of the board.
Every time I see a SOX lamp, I recall Photonicinductions moonlight sonata and praise for keeping the streets lit.
The future is bright!...the future is Big C! ;-)
Those “pins” you used to clean the pcb holes look very much like oxy tip cleaners. When cutting steel, slag sometimes clogs the copper cutting tip and these cleaners are used to remove the slag.
The “pins” (files) are often used to clear the holes in the tips of desoldering stations. The metal tips of the more expensive commercial desoldering will clog and can be cleared when hot.
Double sided boards with plated through holes are much more reliable for removing components as the pads are much less likely to lift.
No need to remove that 470uF cap, just add your cap in parallel to test, much quicker. Same with the 22uF, specially with the shotgun approach.
There is a set of those tiny round files in My dads shop there kept in his welding box to clean out his cutting torch tips.
Cities need to be careful with LED lamp selection unfortunately because cost-savings isn't everything,
in my area many of the roadside streetlights are replaced with mostly white LED lamps that
are strictly down-firing (virtually no light comes out the side like with older styles) so you
get a lit road, but a very dark street, if that makes any sense. The part the cars drive
on is well lit, the sidewalks and street in general is quite dark compared to when
they had traditional lamps with kinda rounded lenses instead of flat plastic at the
bottom that only lets light out angled down. So you can have a technically "lit"
street thats all very mugger and rapist-friendly, sadly. Especially because many
businesses that used to stay lit-up at night are also on the effeciency bandwagon
and going to minimal or no lighting after hours. Good for carbon footprint I guess,
also good for rapists and scumbags.
My council uses them roadside lamps off roadside in the close under trees so half the houses are pitch black and my house lit up brighter than the daytime.
We had them turn off a row of leds as it was too bright having them on all night.
It has broken down 8 times since they installed them and now has been on permanently the past 3 months .....i think they just give up!
th-cam.com/video/wIC-iGDTU40/w-d-xo.html&t
Great video as always! can you light up the sox light in a video? Can you show us your streetlight collection?
The metal pins are for cleaning out migwelding tips. The rough sides are to smooth the inside of the tip so the welding wire doesn't grip the inside
Hi Clive. Please see the SLR - single light regulations that are due to come in to effect regarding replacing power supplies within LED luninaires
I think we can safely assume that the Chinese importers will ignore those. It's disappointing that they are planning to ban T8 fluorescent tubes. They are still an efficient, serviceable, long lasting light source.
With all those LED bulbs and fixtures Clive has acquired over the years. I wonder if the International Space Station can see his house at night?
I have our Czechoslovak Tesla RVI 2000W (metal halogenide vapour lamp) from 60s. It runs on 400V (normal between phases voltage - we have three phase distribution system) and it after seven minutes of starting outputs 200 000 lumens :D
Unrelated but... Do we have any info on how photonic induction is doing
@@589nm6 glad to hear it!
Your videos are a joy. Articulate with spots of humor. (c:
LP sodium (SOX) lamps are almost monochromatic, except for a couple of other weak minor lines (mercury etc), so much so that they are useful as photographic dark-room 'safelamps", the sodium line being in a section of the spectrum to which photographic papers are insensitive. I used to have a 35 W SOX lamp in a housing with an Ilford brown filter and my 'dark' room was quite brightly lit with no detriment to fairly sensitive B & W printing paper. I can't comment on using a SOX lamp for colour printing as I used light-tight drums for such work but I understand that others have used them for RA4 process work.
Yes, the QA lab at a local factory used this color of light, as well as red ones for testing their holographic products. It's a shame that these style lights didn't come out sooner.
@@franglish9265 - SOX lamps have been around for a long time, early 1930s, and I my DIY one dates from the mid 1980s. I believe that Agfa, among others, did market a darkroom lamp based on a l. p. sodium tube that was much smaller than the SOX design. The LED analogue would naturally run much cooler, consume less energy and would start up in much less time.
@@JUANKERR2000 Yes, I have one, it has a tiny 10w SOX bulb in it plus additional filters in green and red for some reason..
congrats. You just saved Glasgow £100
No Clive, not all of us know what methylated spirits taste like :-)
I tasted it in a video.... It was terrible.
Awful but hits the spot! 😣
Pentti Kantanen, you haven't lived then have you
2:00 let me stop you just here Clive... You must surely be in a minority if you found the old LPSox colour temperature annoying... Personally I really like it, not just for nostalgic reasons but I actually do find it better for visibility when driving at night. Not sure how many others note the same, maybe my eyes are just weird but I much prefer the colour... High pressure ones are good too, the LED ones just seem to lack something that makes it that much harder to see.
I remember when I was a school there was a low pressure sodium lamp that was used in a dark room on the Physics course to demonstrate the wavelength of the light. Someone (not me) lit an incense stick and hid it near the lamp. The students who were doing the experiment got worried and called the teacher about the "strange smell". It took the teacher ages, but he eventually found the source. Someone got into a lot of trouble for that.
Your key ring of wire's looks just like welder and torch tip cleaners. They are different gauge file like wires often sold with a little tin/mental flip open box that keeps them from getting bent and or damaged.
Clive - I know I won’t be alone in wondering if you could do a video on discharge lamps, and show the ballasts, the tubes warming up etc. Any chance of this please?
It seems like the weakest park of these LED lights are the electrolytic caps. They'll fail before the LEDs do, which doesn't say much for the advertised longevity of LED type lamps.
Were the capacitors 85° or 105° rated? The higher temperature version would be better but in this case the capacitors are located away from where most of the heat is generated.
Another great fix video Clive, Thanks.
That was fantastic, really enjoyed this video........ I enjoy them all you know what I mean!!!
How is that even a comparable retrofit? That 35W SOX lamp is probably putting out ~4500 lumens, while that LED lamp is probably only managing ~1600.
Even if the lumens/watt figures for SOX and LED are technologically convergent, it's still a functional downgrade as applied to a retrofit scenario bound by existing fixuture spacing. You're saving power by reducing area illumination by the same factor. If that's what constitutes green tech, just optimize the strategy by removing all the street lights entirely.
Led Street lights are terrible patchy and dim I hate them. Love sox
Texhnically sox retrofits dont need lenses cuz the armatures usually have a really cool refractor that does the jobfine
I've got a pin-spot LED that's doing the same thing. I'll try to see if the circuit looks the same and try one of your fixes.
The 28W version of that lamp is £103, so I'm guessing the 16W lamp will be around £80
EDIT: They are £62
What u growing 😂
@@vasili1207 SOX lamps aren't used for growing, your thinking of SON lamps :P
That's a LOT. I guess slapping "professional" on a product makes them pricey.
That's an outrageous price for them.
@@vasili1207 Nothing, I just Googled the name.
Great video Big Clive
Surprising how often you come across this fault, either cooked cap or cooked resistor, although the usual symptom is it works fine until it's power cycled then doesn't start.
I read a lot of the more expensive led street light fittings don't use capacitors in the p.s.u to make them more reliable .
Cost from Soxled , depending on wattags and design , saw from ~ $66 usd to ~$89 usd for this bulb and higher based on other designs with larger numbers of led strips . A 360 deg lamp with several led strips is upwards of $190 usd (rounded up)
In the UK that exact lamp is going for £63 inc. VAT in 2022. So if you are a local council and you have thousands of these lamps a bit of component level repair is probably going to be cost effective over buying new ones in. Especially if you partner with some neighbouring councils to get the repair volumes up.
I don't know why, but aux/bootstrap capacitor does seem to fail more frequently than the output capacitors! Maybe it's the placement, the heat, just turn-on voltage spikes? I absolutely don't see why the aux capacitor should be low-ESR in principle, it runs very little current and is supplied via an order of magnitude more resistance on bootstrap. As you say, low-ESR capacitors, where necessary by design, fundamentally cause issues, because just about any low-ESR capacitor will no longer be low-ESR eventually after not that long of a timespan if you start pushing it.
As to the replacement taking a while on the very first try... maybe it was reconditioning itself :D
LED street lamps, horrible things😡. The engineers are sitting on a ticking time bomb of crappy smps all built by the lowest bidder that are just are waiting to fail.
The roughness, in theory, grabs the solder so it doesn't end up back in the hole. If you've ever tried using a clipped off piece of a lead or a length of wire to clear a hole, you'll note that this is often just what happens.
err, your video seems to be in 30fps, which works best on north american 60hz,you get beat frequencies on 50hz, the flicker should much less noticable if you set it to 25/50 if you can, or fiddle with shutter speed till it's some small fraction of the line rate (i.e. 1/33, 1/50 or 1/100 ), your camera might not expose that though