Poundland lights unexpected feature and USB mod.
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 พ.ย. 2018
- It turns out that the sets of battery operated fairy lights at Poundland have an extra feature not mentioned on the packaging. The way it's been implemented is "economic" but still seems OK.
I also used a couple of 10 ohm quarter watt resistors to convert a 120 LED string for USB use. The current is about 100mA which is quite bright and high enough to keep most "intelligent" USB powerbanks awake. This USB mod will work for most parallel LED strings that don't have the two-wire multi-channel effects (two channels relying on polarity reversal).
For higher intensity you could use a single 10 ohm resistor, but it would need to be rated at about 1W to keep cool. Likewise you could get longer run time at lower intensity by using higher resistor values noting that if the current is too low some powerbanks will switch themselves off. Not a problem with a cheap simple powerbank or a mains USB adapter.
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.com/coffee.htm
This also keeps the channel independent of TH-cam's advertising algorithms allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty. - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
You're like the Bob Ross of electronics, Big Clive. So relaxing to watch you explain a project. Keep up the awesome work!
HA HA I could just imagine how Bob Ross would sound if he were Doing electronics.
[ whispering ] " And over here, lives a happy little transistor"
"and we just dab on a little solder, right here, like this.. Dap dap dap dap"
"there we go.."
and maybe next to it lives a big, tall Capacitor"
All of your videos are so informative and entertaining. You're a rock star.
Only people who have worked on electronics know the rage induced by realizing you forgot to stage the heat shrink before you soldered.
Last year I did some of these for the historic railway station I volunteer at. However, I had a surplus USB charger type supply with a hardwired lead to a micro USB. Instead of removing the box, I just cut off the micro USB plug, let the cable in through a hole and soldered it to the main battery terminals. That way I didn't need to muck around with resistors and still had the flash effect available. In fact I combined two similar sets together, each with their own box, glued back-to-back and connected to the same PSU. That way the flashes of each set don't remain in sync and an interesting bonus effect is created.
This year, I found there were two more sets that needed to be modded. I should say now that these sets have the same kind of 3AA battery supply, driving a chain of 50 LEDs. This time I took a set and installed one of those LED driver SMPS units, exactly the same one that you used on your LED strip flouro light replacement. Although I had recovered mine from a failed LED bulb (one LED burned out). The original batteries supplied 150mA to the 50 LEDs, but with the driver I was getting 300mA. That's still only 6mA per LED, but they sure are bright!
This arrangement worked fine on the bench with the resistance of an ammeter & clip leads in the circuit but when I installed it in the battery box with nice short leads, it still worked fine on the flash mode, but the solid on mode was now causing the PSU to cycle super fast. I guess it considers the voltage drop of effectively a single LED too low & an overload condition.
However, I didn't see this as a drawback as now we simply have two modes, normal flash & super-fast flash. It'll be used in the normal flash mode down at the station anyway. So job done after fitting a really long light duty mains lead, that way an extension cord is not needed to put the set where it wants to be.
Finally, I should point out that the sets I have been working with do not have the timer function built into the controller.
Brilliant yet again! I'm a coatings chemist by trade but I am really learning electrioncs thanks to you. Please keep the videos coming and thank you!
Big Clive doing what he does best at this time of year. I always enjoy your videos. A BIG 👍 from me!
wise decision to chop the USB lead in the middle instead of right at the plug. That way you can use the micro usb side for other projects.
Maico 👏 👏
Glad i saw your video the other day - i went hunting in poundland and found the clear warm white sets - they look amazing and the secret timer is good - ideal if you fall asleep or got to bed and forget to switch them off
Great Video Clive thank you.
A new video, just in time for tea. Excellent timing indeed!
The shiny paper looks amazing!
This little tutorial on how to convert christmas lights into usb powered christmas lights is genuinely fantastic.
Note that it only works with the parallel strings. But you can run several from one powerbank or plug-in USB supply.
Good video as usual, but I was expecting that you'd power the control board with usb and not the lights directly so that you would still have the functionality that the board offers.
Just solder a USB lead on to the battery contacts. The extra half a volt shouldn't bother it.
@@woofer2121 not sure if the battery contacts will take the solder though.. perhaps it'd be better to take out the circuit board, remove the battery contacts and solder the USB wires directly into there?
@@vimicito yeah some of the crappy "chrome" contacts won't take solder
@@woofer2121 lightly sand them, should be good to go
@@vimicito could always just solder it where the battery connections connect to the circuit board.
Excellent video, thank you for your time. 😊
I was waiting for the photo getting probed with the fluke :D
I'm waiting for that on every video. One of the many 'living in hopes' I have about Clive's offerings.
I feel like i would do that way to often
That’s funny cause I was so hoping he would. Even if it was to just show where he probed at.
he said he has done that once already
It's quite obvious where the track goes without probing: The negative power pad (where the U1 label is) goes under the chip to C1 (decoupling cap); therefore the other track must go to the pin in the corner as discovered with probing. But I think BC probed it to show how to find such things for those of us who need to know!
I wish BC had been my tutor when i did my Electronics HNC all those years ago! :-)
Thanks Clive, keep them coming!
So glad I watched this video! I have been wanting to add some LEDs to a clock above my PC and wanted to run them from the USB on my PC, but could not for the life of me remember what the resistor value was. Thanks! :)
It depends on the number of LEDs you use. 100 ohms would give 20mA, 47 ohms would give about 40 and 20 ohms as used here gives about 100mA.
Oh man I don't know much about electrical components and the ilk but when I see a Big Clive video I just have to watch it.
10:19 good advice when repairing strings of lights with the CR2032. The other mod for USB ( plus the resistors of course) or batteries would workout the case , a USB female conector and add another switch . That way the would preserve the functionallity of power saving and add two power options... with the work of ripping the case :P
Great video Clive, secret feature and mod must get some of these.
Thanks for sharing 👍😀
Interesting Hack as ever 😄👍
You're the best, Clive haho! 🍄
The way you are holding the wires with 2 fingers and the solder with the other tow its a very nice trick.. I laughed when I discovered it first :D
Oh, Clive, the PICs I've worked with often have compensation registers for the internal oscillator. You can hook the A/D to the battery (using something like a 1.5V reference generator) and as the voltage goes down relative to the 1.5V reference, you can increase the oscillator trim. I know this exists on the PIC32MX because I've used it quite a bit. And the lowest-end PIC32MX110F016B is under $3 in single quantity. I pretty rarely use the lower-end PICs anymore because the 32MX line has so many awesome features and great peripherals, and it comes in a huge range of sizes and speeds. Anyway, back to watching the video :D
Or, of course, you could just add a 32.768kHz crystal and be done with it, which is probably what I would do in the same situation again. But it was fun to learn about the compensation registers.
Many of these timerds do use the crystal. Even with the calibration enabled I found the PIC microcontrollers drifted too much with time.
@@bigclivedotcom Fair enough, it's a pretty crap RC oscillator :)
your new finger nail looks good. cheers.
Great video, came across it by accident and glad I did, good job explaining it. You taught it well, anyone wanting to do this, this is the best video to watch and learn.
Great hack.👍
P.s. I really like the trick you showed us using the shaft of the soldering iron to do heat shrink.
Gadgetboy - that’s a very old trick!
I have a control box for a string of led lights that is similar. I modified it to plug into the wall via usb charger. Since 3 batteries add up to 4.5vdc, I added a small resistor and it works great and it works with the original controller board which has several modes. I no longer have to worry about batteries.
I have the same solder station. The workmanship inside was awful but after reflowing cleaning and tightening the screws it's worked great for 5 years.
@@blitzwing1 Anything that happens to it is easy to fix and get parts for. I also thickened some of the traces with solder. I only wish they would use an iron with a little more mass. Have you tried the tweezer soldering iron accessory?
We like the storm noises in the background.
Nice video very informative. I have a question though, I have a few of these lighted Christmas pieces that I have gotten from different stores Amazon ,Wal-mart where they have lights built in that flash all the time, have you ever made a video on how to fix these, or in my case, stop the lights from flashing to where they are steady on?
Can you add a quartz and the resisters to make it operate or would programming be needed? Just curious if that would work
Mark Eckelkamp would be an interesting experiment!
most microcontrollers have "fuse" settings that select internal oscillator vs external crystal which the programmer must set. (They are called "fuse" because ages ago they were a one-time "blow the fuse" setting, but modern parts typically use EEPROM or flash memory.)
I would need to be reprogrammed.
Sylvan Butler Agreed, either a hardware fuse would need to be set or, alternatively, the appropriate register would need to be toggled to switch the local oscillator source on the fly. Given that most of these very cheap microcontrollers are OTP (one time programmable) you are very limited in terms of after the fact alterations. Sometimes it can be done to an OTP micro if the new fuse settings just happen to align with the old as the default state for uninitiated bits/fuses in E/EPROM is typically logical “1”, so if the change *only* happened to require reprogramming an existing fuse that is logical 1 to 0 and no bits/fuses already at logical 0 required flipping back to logical 1 then you may be able to make that change after the fact provided they forgot to set the security bits to prevent reading the existing program state - but odds are you would also have needed to reset hardware dividers and such as many internal oscillators run at 4MHz and you would be installing a 0.032768MHz oscillator in its place, so the timings are going to change enormously (122 times slower!). Otherwise, adding an external oscillator would almost certainly be akin to just soldering random disconnected parts on a PCB that effectively go nowhere and have no power - they would just be decoration rather than active components.
@@Sylvan_dB The dirt cheap micro mentioned is (at least listed as) one time programmable. Might of course be available in EE versions as well.
A few questions if don't mind. Can you point me towards where to get the soldiering kit, heat gun and who does usb Christmas decs. Is it just pound land? Thank you
3:57 Looks like you were trying to avoid the huge screw hole for a second. :D
I kept seeing them as actual holes in his bench! It was messing with my head, especially when he would move it. :)
HA! ..he has stereo vision there
You should always avoid huge screw holes.
They result in very unsatisfying sex. 😀
@@BedsitBob Tossing a hotdog down a hallway is definitely less satisfying.
I like the timer and some of the other functions supplied on some of these strings. And I want them to run from Thanksgiving to New Years or 12th night (Jan. 6th). I tend to simply add a standard diode between the USB supply and the circuit. 5.1v less 0.6v is perfect. The good news is - since the voltage stays constant, the timer drift is reduced and the LEDs stay bright. The bad news is - some power banks shut off if you don't draw enough current. My latest single cell banks shut off at around 30ma.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!! May Each day be worse than the Next. (It's a good thing.)
Love it! Quick question. What if your USB lead has 4 cables coming out if it?
product review, tear down, reverse engineering, and mod it to your heart's content! Wow........ That's like going 4 level up!
Thanks for the video.
yes helping hands are very handy I have extra croc clips on mine and a small solder reel holder and I have one of those too !
YIHUA 8786D, I'm only writing this here because I had to re-watch the part where bigclive mentioned the name three times before I managed to fully grasp the name. Probably my non native-speaker shining through again.
Now that's a quality modification. Makes it easy to make your garden look nice with fairy lights and a cheap and rechargeable power source. Just put the power bank in a sandwich bag.
I used your Sharpie polarity trick while modding a new fan onto my 3D printer last week. So simple and so good!
Thanks Clive.
I have a question about a pool table light. It has 5 glass bulbs with leds in them the leds are burnt. I can get them out of the bulbs. I would like to change them to RGB lighting and I was wondering if your mini rgb kit would do for that project. I can send you pictures of the light if it helps.
Clive awesome video man. I was also thinking like everyone else You could of just solder some the USB cable wire directly to the battery inputs of that box or to the micro controller to keep the same functions. in our dollar store we don't have that many led's on Battery powered here. Most i ever saw was like 25 or 30 led's. I need to start making my own Battery projects for the holidays soon.
Love your videos, thanks for taking the time. What do you do with all these led projects? must be able to see the isle of man from space by now. Hmm maybe I should invest in the isle of man poundland franchise
Righto, just used this as reference for how to turn an LED I had lying around into a USB plug that, er, is a small lamp. Get some use out of the power bank.
Worked a right treat.
What are your thoughts on those heat shrink lengths with the ring of solder in them?
I've not tried them yet.
@@bigclivedotcom I used the wire splice with crimp with the heatshrink casing and the "glue" / "sealant" to make them moisture resistant and oil resistant, on a f wire harness on a 99 7.3 l diesel injector wiring harness. That's a pretty tedious but very important part of that feul system / engine. So it was important to you use something reliable and it worked fantastic. I have not tried the connectors with solder tho.
I used a few on some LED shop lights in the basement - mostly just to try them because I was so curious. They were very easy to use and have held up so far (about 2 years), but they are indoor so I never expect trouble - even if I just twisted the wires together and taped them :)
@@raymondmucklow3793 these crimps come with a low temp solder lump already on them but the problem is that the connection could become very weak if a short circuit appears. These connections are usually only good for low to medium amperage or to simply make a good watertight connection. Everything has it's ups and down's. Hope this helps.
They work alright, although if you heat them too fast or too much they tend to burst since the ends tend to crimp shut before the solder melts. I've had best luck with a regular lighter on those. They do work quite well and seem pretty water ingress proof.
I typically use the crimp connections with a built in heat shrink and hot melt glue, I get through a bunch since I deal with a lot of trailers and trucks running in brine half the year.
In case anyone was wondering, "A good blob of solder" is actually a scientific unit of measure. All the cool kids use it
Although it has been used informally for a number of years I believe the blob (and hence the good blob and little blob respectively) was finally recognised as an SI unit at the the 26th General Conference on Weights and Measures, yesterday in Versaille. Unfortunately it seems the announcement was overshadowed by the new definition of the kilo, mole, ampere, and kelvin. :P
The correct terms, in ascending order are: Touch, Dab, Blob, Gob, Lump, and Turd.
"Look at that huge turd of solder on that joint!"
A good blob is a little more than a smidgen, but less than a touch.
It's the Plebian System of weights and measures. Also includes one glug of wine, one shake of salt and a gnat's nadger of chili.
Hi Clive, Thanks for producing these fun videos. An ESP 8266 or NodeMCU ESP8266 could receive clock syncs and toggle commands from a LAMP stack using GET/WGET? for remotish (wifi-range) operations.Alternately, Would adding a transistor and pullup resistor enable these to be toggled on and off via batch file on a pc (ie disable/enable usb device)?
Red Sharpies can be very useful - when you have them ;-) .. Keep the Holidays safe (it keeps it safer for the rest of us)
Are battery powered fairy lights the norm in the UK? In the US Christmas lights plug in.
More efficient to use a voltage regulator vs resistor?
Just wondering, why you did not include the circuitry from the battery holder into your USB conversion.
You could have gotten USB compatibility while still keeping all the features.
There is no way to make a simple system that auto-corrects drift by having two elements that drift in opposite directions, or maybe just by different amounts, and then applying a correction based on the measured difference?
Hi Clive!!!! Love the channel! What temp do you typically run your soldering iron at? Thank you...
Around 350C, but go by soldering feel and not a displayed temperature.
Huh I’ve got the exact same power bank but it always heats up on the usb plug-in and started burning the table under it . Still in a drawer somewhere battery flat
"...always a storm outside on the Isle of Man a this time of year, it's just the very nature of living on an island"
It is indeed, and those of use who are fortunate enough to live on islands wouldn't have it any other way. Greetings from Vancouver Island, way out west here...
I should also add, I love your wire strippers. Who makes them?
Could you please desolder the microcontroller to see what the markings below it are?
8:03 - was that a spark as you cut the power leads?
Could you connect the usb wires directly to the battery box so you can still have flashing / on and the timer function?
Yes you could.
incredible soldering skills at 14:00
I did this but by stringing three of the 50 multicolour sets together, and keeping the microcontroller. Unfortunately, whilst the greens and blues were bright, the reds and yellows/oranges were dim. Removing the resistors didn't help. On the plus side, the flash functionality still works wonderfully, and it's still somewhat beautiful, especially as I took the to ensure that the order of the colours was maintained.
For anyone trying this, use three sets of warm white (It'd work better). Remove the end lead and first LED to form a string of soldered and shrink-wrapped LEDs, with a single battery box at the end. Remove the metal terminals from the box, and drill a hole at the bottom (or melt your way through with a nail heated on top of the stove). Remove the battery separators either with a Dremel, or by cutting them out with snips and cleaning them up with a chisel. Feed through a stripped USB cable and solder it to the microcontroller (black to where the metal negative was, red to where the positive wire was. Add strain relief with hot glue, and screw the box back together.
Voila!
Is it usual for cheap USB cables not to have the data connections wired?
Does anyone know if and where these might be purchased in the US?
Thank you so much for doing this video. I've had a good look at the battery box on my line of LEDs but it doesn't have a circuit board on it. There's a metal strip from the positive battery terminal into the switch then a resistor coming out of the switch which is connected to one of the wires to the LEDs, the other wire coming from the LEDs is anchored at the negative terminal of the battery box. Ok, I think I know how to do this. I don't have a soldering iron or solder so I'll just have to use electrical tape. Cheers, Poo
We have incorporated the self-timed mode (we call it SIFI - Set-It-Forget-It) for years in filipino parols, but we implemented 7 hours on - 17 hours off. We use a MicroChip PIC16F628A, which has horrible drift using the internal oscillator - so we added a 4Mhz crystal and 2 20pf caps. There's still drift, but it's seconds per month, not minutes.
We make our own sequencer PCB for our parols - we are all +12VDC inside, using an AC-to-12V adaptor. No mains voltages into the body of the parol.
I simply tacked the usb cables onto the + and - battery tabs. it works now off usb or normal cells, and still has the timer feature!
Good to see auto ranging Fluke, bet it's more accurate than Amecal despite it's years. Did the Amecal crap out ?
Good video, you are the master of led gadgets.
What if you rigged it to run the pack off of an outlet would you still get drift?
is it possable to mod the board with the ubs lead to keep the timer function?
Yes. It could be connected in place of the batteries.
i can't find where to buy in the U.S.? can you provide a link please?
HI Clive, Quick question in a previous video you told use which wire you buy from rapid but what solder do you use.
Standard 60/40 tin/lead also from Rapid. (RVFM)
Cheers Clive Do you happen to know the order code
Clive, would you know how to disable the timer function? I have a set of lights which run from 3 AA batteries, only my set is multi-coloured 120 led set, only the two wires going out to the leds, so i am guessing they are simply reversing the polarity in order to switch the colours. I am running it from an old 4.5v charger i had laying around, but the auto-switch off is annoying me, 6 hours is too short a time for me, so would like to have them on constantly. Obviously i can't do what you have done and simply remove the control box because of the multi-colours being controlled by just two wires. Is it possible to disable the timer do you know? Thanks.
I had the same issue recently. I used a time switch to turn the lights off after 6 hours and on again 1 minute later. The timing function was integrated into the control chip.
@@bigclivedotcom Sadly the sneaky Chinese have thought of that work around with my set - after disconnecting and reconnecting the power i have to push the select button to turn the leds back on manually. So no quick timer switch option for me. But thanks for the suggestion, i shall remember that idea for other sets i may get in the future seeing that i have a couple of timers kicking about.
Just saw in my local Pound Stretcher that they have very similar LED light strings, in boxes with the 24-hour timer cycle advertised on the front. They're £5.99 though (it's not a single-price Pound Shop).
13:43 did you mean to say "spread the heat dissipation"? Because you'd have to put resistors in parallel to share the load between them, not in series.
It works both ways. By using two quarter watt resistors with half the desired resistance value you get the full value but spread across two quarter watt resistors giving a half watt rating.
I love this time of year on bigclivedotcom. ..time to break out the xmas lights...cheers sir. ..keep up the good work. ..
Mike Whitson
4 days ago
Good video as usual, but I was expecting that you'd power the control board with usb and not the lights directly so that you would still have the functionality that the board offers. I didn't read the comments before I posted, I should have lol.
I wonder... can you put a christal on the board and the capaciters and so on and does it work with better timing then? Especially if you run it then from USB-power (5 Volt, more constant)
Well no, not without reprogramming the µController to use the different oscillator... (or do some auto-sense a crystal?)
That was what I was wondering. Maybe some auto-sense ? I mean when it is prepaired on the board, maybe it is also programmed for it (and normally sold for a higher price with an official timer-function)
Interesting that the LEDs were previously drawing 50mA. Isn't that about as much as you'd typically want to draw from an MCU's gpio pin? I guess they saved the few pennies of a transistor to make the LEDs brighter.
2K7 could be PWM drive ratio for current limiting. different R values for different number or LEDs. what is the continuity voltage of the fluke 23 ? my fluke is 7.0 volts !!!
It's a disappointing 2.6V which is just enough to make LEDs glow.
Hi Clive is it possible you can do a video about different voltages on old vintage fairy lamps?
I have a huge selection of old vintage fairy spare bulbs and they are not all mark with their voltages on then, I'm like to know if the is a way I can find out the voltages of my spare bulbs?
Sorry if this comment is in the wrong area I couldn't find a way to contact you other Wise.
I know of 1.8V, 2.5V, 3V, 3.3V, 6V, 12V types...
i have a set from last year. i wired in a usb cable and use them around my tv at Christmas
Karma Electronics Why did he use two 10 Ohm resistors rather than one 21 Ohm in one of the leads ?
Two strange effects in that video......both times you replaced the heat gun in its cradle, there was interference on screen. Was it electrical or just you bumping things?
Gonna have to get some of those leds - pretty nice to have strung around the place.
It was me disturbing the shelf the camera is mounted on.
Really liked this. Thanks Clive
How much do you spend on ink and paper over the course of the year?
Not much. Glossy printer paper from Poundland and a printer that uses bulk ink in tanks.
Why not put USB sticking out of the battery box then you use USB power but still have the control of the circuit board of the original with the timer and switch control?
that certainly would work, if you do this mod you can do this. you can also use the box to provide a little string relief for your usb power cord and your resistors would not require heat shrink tubeing.
I suspect Big Clive just didn't want the extra bulk, it is a bit of a cleaner looking without it.
I have one of those soldering stations guess i need to check it
It would be interesting to install a 32KHz crystall, and see if the micro see's it and if it then improves the timing acuracy.
R will be current setting?
BC - whatever happened to the other larger-display Amecal multimeter you used to use? I rather miss the giant display!
Phil S The big display Amical died some time ago.
@@johnfrancisdoe1563 if I remember correctly the rotating switch just feel apart
I've got a replacement mechanism for it. It'll be back soon.
@@bigclivedotcom an escuse to make a video about a multimeter teardown?
@@alfoncejean8826 BOLTR?
Until recently the strings of multi-coloured LEDs you can buy (from China) with SMD LEDs soldered straight to copper wire, were really rich and warm in colour.
Sadly all of the sellers I've seen now have a very cool colour version instead. It also has silver coloured wire, rather than the visibly copper from before.
Hopefully they'll change back at some point...
I can't wait for a Dutch store called 'Action' to come over to the islands. They're pretty similar to poundland/shop in concept, but they seem to have much higher quality stuff. It'd be very interesting to see your thoughts on their stuff.
yeah Action (coming from the Deen family in Hoorn) already has branches in other countries but I fear Brexit will not make it work for them to go to the UK
For some things, yes, but a vast majority is less than a pound.
Saw in Poundland today strings of 100 of those chip on wire LEDS that flashed to music beats.
Also they are now doing 4,000mAh battery banks for £5
I've made a video about the 4000mAh charger (actually 3000mAh). Not come across the sound activated lights yet.
Oh yes, forgot about the charger vid, could have sworn it was a smaller one. They also do a QI charger in the same range.
Another option, if you want the blinking/timer features without dealing with batteries, would be to connect the USB lead directly to the positive/negative terminals of the battery compartment. Usually works fine with anything requiring 3 AA or AAA cells.
I've done a similar project, with some of the tiny "pinpoint" lights with tiny solder-mount LEDs connected between two thin metallic wires. I combined 16 of those light chains in parallel, and connected the combined chain to a USB power supply like Clive did here, as I wanted them to stay always-on. I then stuffed the lights inside of some old wine bottles on a shelf in my kitchen as decoration and as a dim light at night. I opted to use a single LED in place of the two resistors, which should split the voltage to about 2.5 volts for a dim glow, without a lot of trial-and-error on exact resistor values.
Now I have 16 of those battery packs and circuit boards lying around. Anyone have any ideas for what to do with them?
Easy log trick; 32768 = 2^15, if you calculate log(32768)/log(2) you get 15. Handy trick!
@bigclivedotcom I would have liked to see you power the circuit board so that we could maintain the blinking and such functions.
The timer you mentioned drifting by 8 minutes, perhaps it's temperature sensitive and caused by the room temperature not being what the designers expected, you often mention that you like a colder enviroment than most people prefer?
The timer drift is most likely down to the lower voltage of the rechargeable batteries.
I expect it would run faster if Alkaline batteries had been use instead.
So originally there was the 2.7k resistor in series with leds? It seems too much to me.
No. I'm not sure what that resistor was for.
100mA, but that's for all the LEDs in parallel, with 120 of them, that means each LED consumes just 0.83mA. Is that right? That seems very low.
It is low. But for a string of lights like this it's surprisingly bright.
The resistor is probably series with led- and 2 top left-most pins are probably shorted
Can you tweak the frequency the crystal generates. I made one of those clocks like you made a while back and the drift is quite bad.
You could try swapping the crystal for a more accurate one.
@@bigclivedotcom I honestly didn't realize they varied. I'll have to try that.