Don't be so utterly ridiculous!!! 9.9M is obviously the absolute maximum. You are living in some fantasy world if you think they could achieve 10M... Some people are never happy!!! Lol😅😅😅😅
Ten million lumens is considered military-grade in some countries, owning one might get you mistaken for the sun, which is technically illegal without a permit. Just kidding! I actually have no idea. Great question, how hard can it be?
I have an older version of this that is 4" x 8" over 5 years old and still going strong, which give the usual build quality of these lights is nothing short of miraculous!
I think solar lights tend to be less hard on the LEDs, but I'm surprised the batteries are still holding a charge and that the insides haven't been reduced to rusty sludge.
@@jamescollins6085 It could be that I checked it and sealed it properly before mounting the thing. at an angle to get the best of the sun year round, and its in a low traffic area so the battery has a decent charge even in winter,
There's a whole industry in You Know Where, where they take boatloads of cells that are "recycled", and put 'em through a process. Anything that doesn't show voltage at all is dumped. Anything that shows a smidgen of voltage is charged. If it holds any charge at all, it's rewrapped in Generic Unmarked HeatShrink Tubing, and sold off to places like that which just want any garbage-cell to toss into a (usually) garbage-product. Other times, they're offered as add-ons to a with/without cells option for the same doodad. So you actually pay for a potential pipeboemb to stick in your goodies.
I was about to say that, now I cant submit the message because you said it first. but I wonder how good the LED boards are and if I can make them run on 5Volts
Stadium Lighting: Large stadium floodlights are designed to illuminate huge outdoor areas, typically emitting around 100,000-200,000 lumens each. 9.9 million lumens is roughly the output of 50-100 stadium floodlights.
There's a trick fishermen do to make fish we catch look bigger in photos. You use a camera with a wide angle lens, and hold the fish up as far in front of you as you can. That way the fish is closer to the camera than you, making it look bigger. It's like how if you hold your thumb up right i front of your eye, you can make your thumb look bigger than a car parked on the street.
It's great that they always go completely bonkers with the numbers in the marketing. It makes it really easy to pick out the scams as long as you just understand the bare minimum about the item 😂
I like way China rates lithium cells in mAH as a product of the number of all the times the cell will ever be charged times the capacity. You wind up with a ridiculous number like a 4,000,000 mAH cell. In a way it is a truthful number, yet it is still deceptive.
i got a cheap £12 laser pen a while ago and in the advert it said the light would travel for 50 miles. i have no way of verifying if this true or not because apparently the earth is round. they didn't even mention how many moomins it has though, i'd say at a guess probably several hundred thousand kilo million nanofarage at least.
@ Some of the US Apollo landings on the moon carried corner reflector mirrors which they left on the surface. The corner reflectors are something like 100 times as reflective as natural planetary albedo, suggesting that humans left them, or at least some helpful alien beings had been there. It is possible to launch a ~50 Watt green laser beam toward the Apollo landing site and get back something like six photons of the correct energy per second. That is close to 500,000 miles round trip. If the laser is aimed somewhere else on the lunar surface, too few matching photons are returned to measure (with existing technology at that power level). Under the correct conditions a laser pointer might make it to the moon and back but measuring that it happened is the tricky part.
@ The earth rotates about 0.0125 degree in the time it takes a light pulse to return from the moon, so Earth curvature could factor into a precision measurement. I’ve not done the experiment myself, so I don’t have a feeling how sensitive the setup is. Probably beam divergence is enough to make rotation not a factor. For surface microwave links we use the back of the envelope approximation that there is an elevation drop of about eight inches per mile on “level” ground due to Earth Curvature. To be on boresight to a distant antenna, you’ve got to depress the aim of your link end below horizontal. I’ll save the Fresnel zone clearance discussion, etc. for later. Suffice it to say, a microwave beam width is widest mid link and that is where the greatest above ground clearance is needed.
I picked up one of these same ones to light my driveway. Being a connoisseur of street lithiums I checked the 18650 first - it was 620 mAh on an XTar VP9+ charger. It now has around 7,000 mAh of lithium in it and does a fairly okay job strapped to a maple tree.
I now have 24 working solar lamps scattered around my house, mostly floodlights and some for decoration. It’s always fun to discover more variations every time I watch your videos.
9.9 Million lumens now down to 8000 lumens! While stocks last - HURRY!!! last few left, DON'T miss out this bargain; a must for the whole family! 'I'm so glad I waited for the lumens to come down' said Mrs Nobody of Nowheretown. Get yours TODAY!!
I bought a twin pack of these on offer from Amazon but only used one. Always dead by morning. After watching this knowing there is space for 2 cells, I stripped the battery out of the spare and added it. So far it has stayed powered up and lighting up 4 days in a row
9.9m lumens/130 lumens per watt ~76.15kw. Edit: The back/forward adjustment of the bracket may be to allow corner-mounting on a building or onto misaligned square poles.
I love the thumbnail. At first I thought "huh, Clive doesn't normally pose like that for a thumbnail. That's a little different" but then I saw the packaging and had a good chuckle.
I actually missed the bit where it was on because its barely any brighter than the reflected light. I have some single led emergency lights that use the same battery and barely put out any light for upto 2 hours when the power goes off
They're just using I/O lines to power the sensors it looks like. Very cute. Directly powered from the battery / solar cell... MCU clearly has a wide voltage range. MCU could be a 8-pin PIC chip (like a PIC12F* or PIC16F* series chip, or something like that). Roughly a 2.5V to 5.5V supply range. Probably no need for a current limit on the LED string. In a low-voltage (parallel) configuration, LEDs can actually be under-powered or over-powered by around +/- 20% just by using a voltage source without taking any damage, as long as the resulting heat isn't too bad. The light (and heat) output generally scales lineary with the voltage. You could measure the I-V curve of the LEDs using a current-limited power supply to see how it behaves across the battery's full voltage range. The LEDs are clearly under-powered with the low battery so I expect they were shooting for 90% to 110% at 4.2V. -Matt
@@RaffyMaBoi funny thing is, I opened mine and it had two 18650s, I replaced them with one tested (2900mah) good 18650, I would imagine going by experience that the light will run flawless for my needs ,many years, with or without solar. The two cells that came out tested at a paultry 300-400 mah,
You could cut the solar panel free, then use the light itself to test the panel. Just with the light output being almost on par with the sun.☀😎 🤣 interesting video 2x👍
I have 4 smaller versions of these purchased 7 years ago. 3 of them still work and work fairly well. The dim light provides enough light to guide you closer. Only one of these is south facing and unobstructed, yet all work in almost arctic conditions for twice as long as the light they are exposed to. These might be my most successful vheap purchase to date.
wow my eyes are getting better and better, i can barely look at 2600 lumens last i checked but i can see all 9.9 million lumens as if they were 300 or less! edit: no sunlight in the isle o man? you mean you dont have random metal halide lamps just laying on shelves to simulate sun?
Good idea, metal halide lamps are actually quite nice (when they work), my university used to have some of them. I might just get a metal halide light fitting or two someday.
I bought two of these around a year ago as backup lighting (the ldr in this unit keeps the unit off when normal outdoor night lighting is on). They work really well, the panels go milky after a time but they still work fine…
What I have found is that the resin covering goes white and needs polishing with chrome cleaner every Spring. They come in during the winter to get them out of the Canadian winters. And yes they only work properly in clear sky sunlight for 8 hours.
Here's how I imagined this XKCD style assuming that the iPad was live streaming: Connects light to suitable 1MW power supply, flicks switch on bench, iPad camera sensor burns out immediately at best capturing a single frame while the light is ramping up , irreversible damage to cornea occurs while extreme pain travels via optical nerve to brain as hair and beard catch fire instantly and skin is warmed to boiling point within a second as the first scream begins to come out. Aluminum iPad reflects much of the heat and manages to transmit sound for several more seconds before it starts to overheat as the rest of the house starts burning.
Thanks Big Clive. Love the HUGE pictures. I've got several of these things, not exactly the same but of course similar. It get's pretty sunny here where I live so they're sort of okay. Some of them are better than others. Some have decent batteries in them. The resin solar panels on many of these degrade dramatically from UV I suppose. I've tried polishing out the haze but really haven't had much success with that. Panels that are glass hold up much better. Some of the cheap Dollar Tree 2 volt panels are still going strong after years of use, only replacing the NiMh batteries now and then. They definitely are fun to play with but I've cut myself off from ordering more. At some point, you have to say enough is enough I guess. Next I might try to upgrade them but then again, there might be "The Next New Thing" right?
Micro cracks in solar cells is the main reason that they degrade so fast. I worked in lighting for years but streetlights were very much a dark art (pun intended) there were specifications like “must be able to see a brick in silhouette at 350 yards”
having a picture of clive holding a solar street light on my phone lock screen really big just made my day 😂 (laughing with you) you just standing there awkwardly holding it need to do that more often it took me off guard 🤣
wonder if some clear uv resistant car paint would prolong the life of that solar cell. and worst case, for a tenner, its worth it for the led assembly alone. that you can swap in better li-ion cells is a sweet bonus. most of these cheaper units have soldered in cells instead of the holders.
I remember buying a similar light but with a glass solar panel for 4-5usd but the uC failed in a week in all the units I bought. Had to spend another 2usd each for a new pcb with PIR sensor.
First i had a streeetlight like in this video, it worked fine but the plastic mounting bracket broke after 2 months on a windy day (it fell on the ground, just missing me...). The i bought an Alpha 1080X and that is still working after 2 years. The IR sensor of the Alpha 1080X was too sensitive, every time a car drove by the light turned on, the light is about 12m from the road. To prevent that i glued a small piece of plastic close tot the IR sensor to shield it in the direction of the road, and now it works perfect without turning on with each passing car.
I got one like this for Amazon Vine review, where I mounted it it was away from the sun, but even when I took it down in full sun it never could charge back up. The motion sensor would detect us moving inside the house and kept waking up the full brightness through a small window with no direct view of people sitting in the living room. I have gotten other solar lights with all the connections not soldered to the battery or just never working. The first solar lights I got 5+ years ago still work despite the solar panels looking like crap.
When solar panels get any crack, dirt, or shadow, it's like choking the entire panel down to the worst performing segment (depending on parallel/series wiring within the panels and array). On the flipside, there have been some advancements in fully diffusing light before passing it to a solar cell to even the production out, with some efficiency gains. You make more full use of the panel by "averaging" the light.
The only solar thing I've ever gotten to work reliably for more than 10-15 years was a 50 year old hot water system. It eventually exploded. The tank did, though, not the panel. The blow off valve must have corroded over time. But 50 years is pretty decent! NO other solar ANYTHING has lasted more than 10 years for me.
The "3 for 2.99" system on Aliexpress lets you find similar shapped lamps with "108 cob" for under €4 that are actually good. Simple but plenty of light and an 18650 on spring contacts.
Have had many issues with resin coated solar panels. The all break. Cracks or delaminate and leak and once the water gets in they corrode. My work around on some is cutting a piece of gorilla glass from a tablet and silicone it over the resin panel. The silicone is supposed to last 20 years according to Corning but never get any more than 5 years on most. Sunshine is brutal on the lights and so is road salt and hail in Canada
I have smaller LED floodlights in England in my back and front garden, and they work very well in the summertime, but this time of the year, they don't work for very long, go flat in no time. Thinking of putting bigger capacitor batteries in them.
I had an LED lamp that probably achieved that brightness for a fraction of a second when the Switch Mode Power Supply that it contained decided that its output was not high enough when the optocoupler failed.
I bought Philips branded (but China made) units and mounted them around the outer walls of my house. It has been about a few months now, and they are still working fine. Wish they are brighter. But given the low price, you really can't expect much.
I have seen ebay listings like this a lot recently. They seem to not know what a Lumen is....... I've seen those white cracks, to the extent that it was a complete white haze over the whole solar panel. It did limit the ability for the panel to charge the quite under-performing battery
Great video. I am mystified by the charge control transistor. With the 100R resistor, the controller might have to sink 10s of mA to get the base down to the battery voltage and turn off the transistor, if direct bright Sun. At least the BE diode will protect the controller from too high a voltage.
I haven't had the problem of panel cracking, instead the resin breaks away from the housing allowing water through. Considering this is the ventilator for my van I end up with a pool of water in the van after a heavy downpour.
If I wanted to light my garden, I'd buy the LV from mains system from Wickes as suggested by Proper DIY. But thank you for confirming my choice - yet again 🙂
Solar Cell test idea! I picked up a luminosity meter... quite a good one can be gotten for $150 USD. I got one at a furniture auction for $10 cdn which was kinda a score since it is a scientific meter manufacturer. The idea i had was to use a standard light source at a standard distance. Checking the lumens with the meter. Then apply light to the solar panel. This way the input can be easily quantified (although not the spectrum of the light source). Then using a dead short for amps and maybe rig an MPPT test rig to give the panel its best chance. In areas with poor light are such a pain. The meter allows you to check the light levels of your area in summer and winter so you can see how bad/good a cloudy day really is.
I'm in Canada and the cheap resin s/p's we get here, for walkway lights etc, seldom last 2 full seasons before the surface turns cloudy white. So, 8 - 10 Chinadian summer months. Cheers.
So it is advertised as being as bright as the sun at noon at the equator on the clearest of days. Or just maybe they're referring to the amount of sunlight the solar panel will receive at noon at the equator on the brightest of days.
curious how bad a british winter would impact a lithium battery in an outdoor device like this. would frosts & winter tempratures kill it over a single winter? if so it might only be worth using the cheapest possible battery as it would need to be replaced regularly.
I have fixed similar ones, removing the dead EV cells, and replacing them with 6 18650 cells salvaged from dead laptop packs. New front glass, because the silicone used did not let go at all, and after a week of charging in summer it now lasts the whole night long, even in winter. Solar panel was a proper glass type, seems to be surviving well.
We have one of these we keep off but charging in the sun full time indoors in a window. When there is severe weather we take it to the basement with us, turned on. While the power is on, the regular house lights suppress the dusk detection so the LED light maintains charge, but if the power goes out, these act like an emergency backup light while we get other lanterns going. Not the intended/advertised use, but a have gimmick nonetheless.
I have 5 "normal" sized ones exactly the same board. One of them recently decided to turn on much earlier. I checked the solar panel power output and it puts out 1 volt less than the others: 4.5 volts. I can't find anything wrong on the surface of the solar panel but clearly, it messes with the chip's function. Yours looked like it could fit 2 cells. Those little 14500 batts are really crap. I changed them all for 18650 with some work.
Almost ten MILLION Lumens is quite a light output. Going by the rough conversion of 100 Lumens / watt (LED power conversion), the power consumption would be around the 100kW level! Nevertheless a nice little light for very localised, and short - duration use (such as passageways).
The model “holding” the panel in the illustration would have to be about three years old. I live in Washington state, USA, which gets a similar amount of sunlight hours as you do, so I certainly wouldn’t bother trying to use one of those things. I used to live in Arizona which gets useful amounts of sunlight, but I would have to divert some of the output power to a heater of some kind to mitigate temperature cycling and failure of the solar panel. The free air temperature there can vary by a hundred degrees F from day to night. I agree that the thing could be upgraded with a higher capacity battery etc. but why bother? Also, what to do with that puny cell? We have plenty of e-waste as it is and afaik it’s still not cost effective to recycle Li-ion cells. You would think so what with the rising cost of lithium.
fair to point out, many folk will choose to replace the 18650 with a higher capacity, however not to be tempted to add another cell in parallel without a protection fuse and possibly a BMS.
Cells in parallel is fine. My solar accumulator project uses 3 S 15 P configuration, it's absolutely fine, although it does have a BMS, but only because the series string needs to remain in balance.
@@puckcat22679 if one cell in a parallel battery goes short(and they can), the entire balance passes through it, admittedly with quality cells is unlikely. In my case I have this exact unit, I would not be happy to leave it operating unattended etc if paralleled. Regardless I am just going to replace the cell with a new 18650, one moment please
It's a reasonable housing (for the money) so could be modified with a TP4056 board and external connection for charging either from a better solar panel or PSU. Another use for a couple of street cells! 😎
I have one on my shed in New England, different model but as you say all this Chinese junk is basically the same. While we don't get as much rain as real England, it is more often than not cloudy here. I think this summer we got less than 5 sunny days a month. That said, it does work. It isn't bright illumination like the flood lights on my house that use mains power, but it's bright enough to see and not run into anything. Those little path lights though, those things are completely worthless. They make enough light to let you know they're "on" but it isn't even enough to see by.
If only they could've squeezed the extra 0.1M lumens out for the full !!! 10M lumen ultra POWER !!!
And at £10, that would make it £1 per million lumens!
Don't be so utterly ridiculous!!! 9.9M is obviously the absolute maximum. You are living in some fantasy world if you think they could achieve 10M... Some people are never happy!!! Lol😅😅😅😅
@@NiddNetworks If it had been listed at 10Million, no one would ever believe them! Got to keep the numbers believable!
Ten million lumens is considered military-grade in some countries, owning one might get you mistaken for the sun, which is technically illegal without a permit. Just kidding! I actually have no idea. Great question, how hard can it be?
@@NiddNetworks Mine goes up to 11.
I have an older version of this that is 4" x 8" over 5 years old and still going strong, which give the usual build quality of these lights is nothing short of miraculous!
I think solar lights tend to be less hard on the LEDs, but I'm surprised the batteries are still holding a charge and that the insides haven't been reduced to rusty sludge.
That's high intelligence for you: getting the most out of the least.
@@jamescollins6085 It could be that I checked it and sealed it properly before mounting the thing. at an angle to get the best of the sun year round, and its in a low traffic area so the battery has a decent charge even in winter,
There's a whole industry in You Know Where, where they take boatloads of cells that are "recycled", and put 'em through a process. Anything that doesn't show voltage at all is dumped. Anything that shows a smidgen of voltage is charged. If it holds any charge at all, it's rewrapped in Generic Unmarked HeatShrink Tubing, and sold off to places like that which just want any garbage-cell to toss into a (usually) garbage-product. Other times, they're offered as add-ons to a with/without cells option for the same doodad. So you actually pay for a potential pipeboemb to stick in your goodies.
Some poor country in Africa that gets all our other garbage shipped to it as well?
I was about to say that, now I cant submit the message because you said it first.
but I wonder how good the LED boards are and if I can make them run on 5Volts
@@rolfs2165 Nope, Zhongguo.
also high self discharge ones because of over discharge damage
i also did this exact same thing so i know
Stadium Lighting: Large stadium floodlights are designed to illuminate huge outdoor areas, typically emitting around 100,000-200,000 lumens each. 9.9 million lumens is roughly the output of 50-100 stadium floodlights.
It reminds me of the Torque Test Channel that tested car horns with dB ratings that were several times higher than when Krakatoa blew.
Tell the FTC
A couple of these could make a death-star like weapon 😅
It's a typo.It should read "glumens."
@@strehlowgluttens! gluttons!
"Check for those telltale white crack lines."
Good advice on many contexts!
Hunter Biden has entered the chat.
Yes, the drugs don't work 😊
The flashlight scam, coming to a streetlight near you.
Recently our city replaced street lights with LEDs and some low-lumen value, for energy saving. They were right, can't see sh*t under them.
@dave161141 Bean counters hard at work.
Those resin solar panels go hazy after sometime in sun as the epoxy degrades
Can be restored with car headlight renewal compound or cutting polish. For a few months, anyway...
Does the frosting actually affect the performance?
@@mySeaPrince_ nothing from nothing leaves nothing
@@gregvanpaassen Clear silicone seems to also work
Designed obsolescence.
"I buy these things so you don't have to."
I don't bloody want to! 🤣
Somebody's got to do it!
"He's not big" - Big Clive
Imagine the size of his knob.
@@eadweard. Gulp!
@@eadweard. he'll be very popular
Oout of context Clive
"THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID" - Michael Scott
big Clive, your review of that flamethrower queef doll changed the trajectory of my life. Glad to still be watching
That's a quote for the ages
That's the vid that made me subscribe.
The person in the picture is, in fact, a Hobbit.
A leprichaun he is.
dwarf
One of Santa's helpers moonlighting on QVC.
There's a trick fishermen do to make fish we catch look bigger in photos. You use a camera with a wide angle lens, and hold the fish up as far in front of you as you can. That way the fish is closer to the camera than you, making it look bigger.
It's like how if you hold your thumb up right i front of your eye, you can make your thumb look bigger than a car parked on the street.
They prefer to be called Kanye's ex-wife.
It's great that they always go completely bonkers with the numbers in the marketing. It makes it really easy to pick out the scams as long as you just understand the bare minimum about the item 😂
I like way China rates lithium cells in mAH as a product of the number of all the times the cell will ever be charged times the capacity. You wind up with a ridiculous number like a 4,000,000 mAH cell. In a way it is a truthful number, yet it is still deceptive.
i got a cheap £12 laser pen a while ago and in the advert it said the light would travel for 50 miles. i have no way of verifying if this true or not because apparently the earth is round. they didn't even mention how many moomins it has though, i'd say at a guess probably several hundred thousand kilo million nanofarage at least.
@ Some of the US Apollo landings on the moon carried corner reflector mirrors which they left on the surface. The corner reflectors are something like 100 times as reflective as natural planetary albedo, suggesting that humans left them, or at least some helpful alien beings had been there. It is possible to launch a ~50 Watt green laser beam toward the Apollo landing site and get back something like six photons of the correct energy per second. That is close to 500,000 miles round trip. If the laser is aimed somewhere else on the lunar surface, too few matching photons are returned to measure (with existing technology at that power level).
Under the correct conditions a laser pointer might make it to the moon and back but measuring that it happened is the tricky part.
@@wtmayhewReally? I thought you had to put in the circumference of the earth into the maths somewhere too. 🤣
@ The earth rotates about 0.0125 degree in the time it takes a light pulse to return from the moon, so Earth curvature could factor into a precision measurement. I’ve not done the experiment myself, so I don’t have a feeling how sensitive the setup is. Probably beam divergence is enough to make rotation not a factor.
For surface microwave links we use the back of the envelope approximation that there is an elevation drop of about eight inches per mile on “level” ground due to Earth Curvature. To be on boresight to a distant antenna, you’ve got to depress the aim of your link end below horizontal. I’ll save the Fresnel zone clearance discussion, etc. for later. Suffice it to say, a microwave beam width is widest mid link and that is where the greatest above ground clearance is needed.
I picked up one of these same ones to light my driveway. Being a connoisseur of street lithiums I checked the 18650 first - it was 620 mAh on an XTar VP9+ charger. It now has around 7,000 mAh of lithium in it and does a fairly okay job strapped to a maple tree.
How does it perform when strapped to a different type of tree?
@@nickryan3417 yeah, I only have european oak trees, how well would it perform on one of those?
I now have 24 working solar lamps scattered around my house, mostly floodlights and some for decoration. It’s always fun to discover more variations every time I watch your videos.
9.9 Million lumens now down to 8000 lumens! While stocks last - HURRY!!! last few left, DON'T miss out this bargain; a must for the whole family! 'I'm so glad I waited for the lumens to come down' said Mrs Nobody of Nowheretown. Get yours TODAY!!
Should be/is illegal
Somebody light-fingered stole the correct parts
8000 lumens will take about 35 watts if the LEDs are good. The cell holds less than 1 watt-hour. Running time less than 2 minutes?
I bought a twin pack of these on offer from Amazon but only used one. Always dead by morning. After watching this knowing there is space for 2 cells, I stripped the battery out of the spare and added it. So far it has stayed powered up and lighting up 4 days in a row
Street light? More like a Street Liquefier at 9.0 million lumens!!
I am so glad you didn't go blind testing it! Sarc.
When you turned that on for the first time did you wear a welding facemask _just in case_ it was telling the truth about 9.9M Lumens?
9.9m lumens/130 lumens per watt ~76.15kw.
Edit: The back/forward adjustment of the bracket may be to allow corner-mounting on a building or onto misaligned square poles.
Stadium lighting on a budget lol
Put some LED strips on the goal and paint the ball in phosphorus, I'd watch that
I don't think there's anything wrong with having a wee nightlight
Perfect for the stadium you just bought from Temu.
I love the thumbnail. At first I thought "huh, Clive doesn't normally pose like that for a thumbnail. That's a little different" but then I saw the packaging and had a good chuckle.
You took a big risk by pointing it at your face without wearing a welding mask 😁
"I'm melting! Argh!"....😮
@@Dankmangolion I know, but if that light was actually 9.9 million lumens it would be the other way around 😅
@@Dankmangolionwhoosh!!
I actually missed the bit where it was on because its barely any brighter than the reflected light. I have some single led emergency lights that use the same battery and barely put out any light for upto 2 hours when the power goes off
They're just using I/O lines to power the sensors it looks like. Very cute. Directly powered from the battery / solar cell... MCU clearly has a wide voltage range. MCU could be a 8-pin PIC chip (like a PIC12F* or PIC16F* series chip, or something like that). Roughly a 2.5V to 5.5V supply range.
Probably no need for a current limit on the LED string. In a low-voltage (parallel) configuration, LEDs can actually be under-powered or over-powered by around +/- 20% just by using a voltage source without taking any damage, as long as the resulting heat isn't too bad. The light (and heat) output generally scales lineary with the voltage. You could measure the I-V curve of the LEDs using a current-limited power supply to see how it behaves across the battery's full voltage range. The LEDs are clearly under-powered with the low battery so I expect they were shooting for 90% to 110% at 4.2V.
-Matt
Imagine the the size of the heat sink it would need 🥵
correct
I read 9.9 million Lumens😳 and thought Clive has finally pulled the trigger and had an electric substation placed next to his home.😊
can't wait for the teardown video!
Lmao, i LOLd when he opened it and its just a single 18650🤣🤣
Welcome to Made in China stuffs
With space for 2.....
@@RaffyMaBoi funny thing is, I opened mine and it had two 18650s, I replaced them with one tested (2900mah) good 18650, I would imagine going by experience that the light will run flawless for my needs ,many years, with or without solar. The two cells that came out tested at a paultry 300-400 mah,
You could cut the solar panel free, then use the light itself to test the panel. Just with the light output being almost on par with the sun.☀😎 🤣
interesting video 2x👍
Use a complicated arrangement of mirrors and you can generate limitless power.
9 million lumens is like 10 times brighter than the sun appears on Earth.
I want high beams like that... that will teach the next idiot who forgets to switch to low beams when he sees me.
You would probably melt his vehicle,but he should have dipped so hey ho
Saw the listing and thought it would be too bright, so went for the 9.8m lumen version.
I have 4 smaller versions of these purchased 7 years ago. 3 of them still work and work fairly well. The dim light provides enough light to guide you closer.
Only one of these is south facing and unobstructed, yet all work in almost arctic conditions for twice as long as the light they are exposed to.
These might be my most successful vheap purchase to date.
these are getting better and better
wow my eyes are getting better and better, i can barely look at 2600 lumens last i checked but i can see all 9.9 million lumens as if they were 300 or less!
edit: no sunlight in the isle o man? you mean you dont have random metal halide lamps just laying on shelves to simulate sun?
Good idea, metal halide lamps are actually quite nice (when they work), my university used to have some of them. I might just get a metal halide light fitting or two someday.
I bought two of these around a year ago as backup lighting (the ldr in this unit keeps the unit off when normal outdoor night lighting is on). They work really well, the panels go milky after a time but they still work fine…
What I have found is that the resin covering goes white and needs polishing with chrome cleaner every Spring. They come in during the winter to get them out of the Canadian winters. And yes they only work properly in clear sky sunlight for 8 hours.
Here's how I imagined this XKCD style assuming that the iPad was live streaming:
Connects light to suitable 1MW power supply, flicks switch on bench, iPad camera sensor burns out immediately at best capturing a single frame while the light is ramping up , irreversible damage to cornea occurs while extreme pain travels via optical nerve to brain as hair and beard catch fire instantly and skin is warmed to boiling point within a second as the first scream begins to come out. Aluminum iPad reflects much of the heat and manages to transmit sound for several more seconds before it starts to overheat as the rest of the house starts burning.
The reflector pattern looks super cool, like when old games had a 3d graphic of entering a doorway.
I use those on my homestead in vermont for the last year. Awesome. They work and provide all night light.
Thanks Big Clive. Love the HUGE pictures. I've got several of these things, not exactly the same but of course similar. It get's pretty sunny here where I live so they're sort of okay. Some of them are better than others. Some have decent batteries in them. The resin solar panels on many of these degrade dramatically from UV I suppose. I've tried polishing out the haze but really haven't had much success with that. Panels that are glass hold up much better. Some of the cheap Dollar Tree 2 volt panels are still going strong after years of use, only replacing the NiMh batteries now and then.
They definitely are fun to play with but I've cut myself off from ordering more. At some point, you have to say enough is enough I guess.
Next I might try to upgrade them but then again, there might be "The Next New Thing" right?
They did the currency conversion on the lumen rating. 9.9M Chinese Lumens converts to approximately 400 International Lumens.
congratz on 1,000,000
Micro cracks in solar cells is the main reason that they degrade so fast.
I worked in lighting for years but streetlights were very much a dark art (pun intended) there were specifications like “must be able to see a brick in silhouette at 350 yards”
having a picture of clive holding a solar street light on my phone lock screen really big just made my day 😂
(laughing with you) you just standing there awkwardly holding it need to do that more often it took me off guard 🤣
wonder if some clear uv resistant car paint would prolong the life of that solar cell. and worst case, for a tenner, its worth it for the led assembly alone. that you can swap in better li-ion cells is a sweet bonus. most of these cheaper units have soldered in cells instead of the holders.
A street light for exclusive indoor use!
Thanks you Clive...
You called it disappointing, but I wasn't disappointed. In order to be disappointed, one must first have expectations
Wise words
00:51 Is he related to Dennis Waterman?
I remember buying a similar light but with a glass solar panel for 4-5usd but the uC failed in a week in all the units I bought. Had to spend another 2usd each for a new pcb with PIR sensor.
I bought an Alpha 1080X streetlight a few years ago. It's really great. Very bright, made of metal and still works without any problems.
First i had a streeetlight like in this video, it worked fine but the plastic mounting bracket broke after 2 months on a windy day (it fell on the ground, just missing me...). The i bought an Alpha 1080X and that is still working after 2 years. The IR sensor of the Alpha 1080X was too sensitive, every time a car drove by the light turned on, the light is about 12m from the road. To prevent that i glued a small piece of plastic close tot the IR sensor to shield it in the direction of the road, and now it works perfect without turning on with each passing car.
i love when you print the listing images out!
it's kind of funny seeing the insane claims on a piece of paper
support for 2 cells is pretty nice, but allowing battery replacement is always a bonus for me.
I got one like this for Amazon Vine review, where I mounted it it was away from the sun, but even when I took it down in full sun it never could charge back up. The motion sensor would detect us moving inside the house and kept waking up the full brightness through a small window with no direct view of people sitting in the living room. I have gotten other solar lights with all the connections not soldered to the battery or just never working. The first solar lights I got 5+ years ago still work despite the solar panels looking like crap.
When solar panels get any crack, dirt, or shadow, it's like choking the entire panel down to the worst performing segment (depending on parallel/series wiring within the panels and array).
On the flipside, there have been some advancements in fully diffusing light before passing it to a solar cell to even the production out, with some efficiency gains. You make more full use of the panel by "averaging" the light.
I wondered last week what was that bright light source in the north (I was in Spain). I guess now it was you switching it on before disassembling it.
The only solar thing I've ever gotten to work reliably for more than 10-15 years was a 50 year old hot water system. It eventually exploded. The tank did, though, not the panel. The blow off valve must have corroded over time. But 50 years is pretty decent! NO other solar ANYTHING has lasted more than 10 years for me.
The "3 for 2.99" system on Aliexpress lets you find similar shapped lamps with "108 cob" for under €4 that are actually good. Simple but plenty of light and an 18650 on spring contacts.
Have had many issues with resin coated solar panels. The all break. Cracks or delaminate and leak and once the water gets in they corrode. My work around on some is cutting a piece of gorilla glass from a tablet and silicone it over the resin panel. The silicone is supposed to last 20 years according to Corning but never get any more than 5 years on most. Sunshine is brutal on the lights and so is road salt and hail in Canada
I have smaller LED floodlights in England in my back and front garden, and they work very well in the summertime, but this time of the year, they don't work for very long, go flat in no time. Thinking of putting bigger capacitor batteries in them.
I haven't had any crack as you describe it though I have had some where the epoxy goes cloudy which hampers things a bit as you might well imagine.
I had an LED lamp that probably achieved that brightness for a fraction of a second when the Switch Mode Power Supply that it contained decided that its output was not high enough when the optocoupler failed.
7:27 Oh, seems the factory made a decimal error with that cell. 10x multiplier still wouldn't make it 18650 leader, not even close, but decent.
I bought Philips branded (but China made) units and mounted them around the outer walls of my house. It has been about a few months now, and they are still working fine. Wish they are brighter. But given the low price, you really can't expect much.
I have seen ebay listings like this a lot recently. They seem to not know what a Lumen is.......
I've seen those white cracks, to the extent that it was a complete white haze over the whole solar panel. It did limit the ability for the panel to charge the quite under-performing battery
Great video. I am mystified by the charge control transistor. With the 100R resistor, the controller might have to sink 10s of mA to get the base down to the battery voltage and turn off the transistor, if direct bright Sun. At least the BE diode will protect the controller from too high a voltage.
I haven't had the problem of panel cracking, instead the resin breaks away from the housing allowing water through. Considering this is the ventilator for my van I end up with a pool of water in the van after a heavy downpour.
What is even the point of a 224mAh 18650? Is it 90% sand in there or something?
The package cover picture must have been taken in Texas, where everything is bigger.
How many lumens in fact?
It would be nice if Amazon, eBay etc would call a halt to the hyperinflation of lamp outputs.
If I wanted to light my garden, I'd buy the LV from mains system from Wickes as suggested by Proper DIY. But thank you for confirming my choice - yet again 🙂
Solar Cell test idea! I picked up a luminosity meter... quite a good one can be gotten for $150 USD. I got one at a furniture auction for $10 cdn which was kinda a score since it is a scientific meter manufacturer. The idea i had was to use a standard light source at a standard distance. Checking the lumens with the meter. Then apply light to the solar panel. This way the input can be easily quantified (although not the spectrum of the light source). Then using a dead short for amps and maybe rig an MPPT test rig to give the panel its best chance.
In areas with poor light are such a pain. The meter allows you to check the light levels of your area in summer and winter so you can see how bad/good a cloudy day really is.
I'm in Canada and the cheap resin s/p's we get here, for walkway lights etc, seldom last 2 full seasons before the surface turns cloudy white. So, 8 - 10 Chinadian summer months. Cheers.
May not see it on my backporch but absolutely useful stuff for my junk box!
finally, a light I can safely stare into for 14 hours.
So it is advertised as being as bright as the sun at noon at the equator on the clearest of days. Or just maybe they're referring to the amount of sunlight the solar panel will receive at noon at the equator on the brightest of days.
I wonder how many remote control devices use the same circuit
Should keep a range in a drawer to check
curious how bad a british winter would impact a lithium battery in an outdoor device like this.
would frosts & winter tempratures kill it over a single winter? if so it might only be worth using the cheapest possible battery as it would need to be replaced regularly.
I have fixed similar ones, removing the dead EV cells, and replacing them with 6 18650 cells salvaged from dead laptop packs. New front glass, because the silicone used did not let go at all, and after a week of charging in summer it now lasts the whole night long, even in winter. Solar panel was a proper glass type, seems to be surviving well.
Where did they find that classic GI Joe to hold the light in the photo?
Hang on a minute, I'm thinking, where's the watch your eyes warning. Oh!
Do you have a video on how you check the batterys?
One of my chargers has a test function, but I also have other testers.
I have one of these lights. It has been running continuously for 11 years on a single 99,999,999 mAh 18650 from ailiexpress
We need a mock horror film someday; "It came from eBay..."
We have one of these we keep off but charging in the sun full time indoors in a window. When there is severe weather we take it to the basement with us, turned on. While the power is on, the regular house lights suppress the dusk detection so the LED light maintains charge, but if the power goes out, these act like an emergency backup light while we get other lanterns going.
Not the intended/advertised use, but a have gimmick nonetheless.
I strongly recommend the USB rechargeable PIR detector lights for areas with regular power loss.
That's a nice light, Big Clive! ... I could use it as a 9.9 million lumen bedside lamp! 💡👍🤣
A 224 mAh 18650? I didn't even know that was possible!
Even the cheapest China 18650's for under a buck per piece on eBay are around 1000mAh!
Should have had a SETI setting for flashing messages to aliens... 🤔😉
i supper glued a tape measure to my pc desk
and only online shop with vernier calipers for reference before clicking buy on flea bay
Could this be converted to run off a power adapter, would be useful above a front/ back door etc. . great Vid as always.
It could, but you'd need to add a suitable resistor to limit LED current.
That thumbnail is diabolical, about to murder us with light
Bought 6, after a week in operation 3 of them had the battery failing/ leaking a black substans
I have 5 "normal" sized ones exactly the same board. One of them recently decided to turn on much earlier. I checked the solar panel power output and it puts out 1 volt less than the others: 4.5 volts. I can't find anything wrong on the surface of the solar panel but clearly, it messes with the chip's function. Yours looked like it could fit 2 cells. Those little 14500 batts are really crap. I changed them all for 18650 with some work.
Clive doesn't have an artificial sun? Sounds like a project
He's working on props for the new bond movie.
That beard is still majestic AF
Almost ten MILLION Lumens is quite a light output. Going by the rough conversion of 100 Lumens / watt (LED power conversion), the power consumption would be around the 100kW level! Nevertheless a nice little light for very localised, and short - duration use (such as passageways).
The model “holding” the panel in the illustration would have to be about three years old.
I live in Washington state, USA, which gets a similar amount of sunlight hours as you do, so I certainly wouldn’t bother trying to use one of those things. I used to live in Arizona which gets useful amounts of sunlight, but I would have to divert some of the output power to a heater of some kind to mitigate temperature cycling and failure of the solar panel. The free air temperature there can vary by a hundred degrees F from day to night.
I agree that the thing could be upgraded with a higher capacity battery etc. but why bother? Also, what to do with that puny cell? We have plenty of e-waste as it is and afaik it’s still not cost effective to recycle Li-ion cells. You would think so what with the rising cost of lithium.
It's not a bad price for the led pcb's and the case.
fair to point out, many folk will choose to replace the 18650 with a higher capacity, however not to be tempted to add another cell in parallel without a protection fuse and possibly a BMS.
Parallel isn't really an issue. Series is where you run into charge balancing and similar problems.
@puckcat22679 it is unsafe to run lithium either series or parallel without a bms.
Cells in parallel is fine. My solar accumulator project uses 3 S 15 P configuration, it's absolutely fine, although it does have a BMS, but only because the series string needs to remain in balance.
@@puckcat22679 if one cell in a parallel battery goes short(and they can), the entire balance passes through it, admittedly with quality cells is unlikely. In my case I have this exact unit, I would not be happy to leave it operating unattended etc if paralleled. Regardless I am just going to replace the cell with a new 18650, one moment please
It's a reasonable housing (for the money) so could be modified with a TP4056 board and external connection for charging either from a better solar panel or PSU. Another use for a couple of street cells! 😎
I have one on my shed in New England, different model but as you say all this Chinese junk is basically the same. While we don't get as much rain as real England, it is more often than not cloudy here. I think this summer we got less than 5 sunny days a month. That said, it does work. It isn't bright illumination like the flood lights on my house that use mains power, but it's bright enough to see and not run into anything.
Those little path lights though, those things are completely worthless. They make enough light to let you know they're "on" but it isn't even enough to see by.
The least overstated specs on Ali