It is hard to get quality children to build lights these days.

@RS-Amsterdam

9 ай бұрын

They will learn when they turn 7

@hornetIIkite3

9 ай бұрын

​@@RS-Amsterdam most don't survive that long

@stillraven9415

9 ай бұрын

@@RS-Amsterdam 🤣🤣🤣

@dabyd64

9 ай бұрын

They work in factories illuminated using the same leds they produce. Originally they were top quality stuff, but when the first one failed it caused an unstoppable chain reaction, the lucky ones are working with candles now.

@MichaelBeeny

9 ай бұрын

Yes, the 2 minuets of training seem to have been completely waisted.

Ooh, these are lovely. So short lifespan, dry joints (don't think I didn't notice that lead) on the incoming wires, and every now and again you'll have a free explosion. So nice!

@SnabbKassa

8 ай бұрын

Free fireworks from the Chinese Communist Party. Coming to an ocean near you?

So much for LEDs being the great long lasting low energy alternative to the old incandescent bulbs.

@Onequietvoice

9 ай бұрын

They are - from my experience. I have had no failures and have not had to buy a bulb for replacement in years.

@MLX1401

9 ай бұрын

I live in a old, 6-store apartment building. The staircase was lit with incandescent lamps that now have been replaced with E27 led bulbs. Unsurprisingly, the landlord buys the cheapest they can find; a single bulb rarely lasts more than a couple of months. When covid restrictions hit I got annoyed by constant "blackouts" and fitted the fixture from my floor with a German brand bulb. It has been going ever since. The "cheap" bulbs are a total scam 😆

@Onequietvoice

9 ай бұрын

@@MLX1401 I too was a landlord - I replaced all the incandescet bulbs in both my buildings because I knew the tenants could not afford to. The compact flourescents I bought were disappointing - they were fragile and did not last as long as advertised. As they failed I replaced them with LEDs which were at that time getting cheaper and better. I left LEDs with tenants whose compact flourescents had survived. They (the LED's) never failed.

@MLX1401

9 ай бұрын

@@Onequietvoice Nice to hear that ☺Indeed led bulbs are way better than CFLs, and generally do last a long time! My point was, that if the intent is to save money, cheap bulbs (like shown here on this video) are a poor choice as they're made to fail and need to be constantly replaced.

@Onequietvoice

9 ай бұрын

Agreed - just sharing my experience.@@MLX1401

I am really unhappy with the current (pun intended) trend of bare-bones LED lamps...low voltage light strings...fairy lights...are one thing but running mains power like this is uncool.

@maxcady7136

9 ай бұрын

Non-dimmable LED lamps are the worst.

@shanejohns7901

8 ай бұрын

Absolutely. I know that's the name of the game -- cost cutting. But there should be a 'best practices' level that they're not supposed to go below, because it is dangerous to either the life of the product (eg. 'Planned Obsolescence'...don't get me started on that one...) or to humans or pets. Whoever made the decision to import that shoddy work into the UK should be told about it. If it has an agency's name stamped on it, contact them. For example, "UL" might mean 'Underwriters Laboratories'. They can put pressure on the manufacturers to improve their standards, or they can let the government know to disallow it when it comes in through customs. Too many people would settle for an increased risk of a fire hazard if it just means that they can get their bulb for 30% cheaper. And fires spread to responsible people too. So it becomes an issue that needs to be addressed, rather than this 'buyer beware' mentality.

- _It's quite a fun watching it evolve._ Said Clive with distinguishable pain in his voice.

3:50 What a nice way for Clive to tell us without telling us which brand to avoid at all costs 😂

An EXTREMELY good point made by Clive of typical cost-cutting that results in dangerous products being sold by companies with no safety checking of the goods they sell and probably no recourse if anyone is hurt by any of the goods they sell!! KW.

@paulblitz

9 ай бұрын

I don't see any safety issue, it's all well enclosed. Definitely going to potentially reduce product lifetime though

@hanifarroisimukhlis5989

9 ай бұрын

@@paulblitz Yeah until it's time to replace it. Hope you got the mains fuse open.

@309electronics5

9 ай бұрын

They usualy also just put a Qc sticker on it and call it a day usualy

It would be interesting to see those dangling components prodded with a non-conductive probe to see how little jostling could move the leads into shorting range

Thanks for this Clive. I really appreciate the effort you go to to keep uploading even when you're away from home. You'll get to 1 million subscribers soon, you deserve it!

Oh BigClive, you’ve outdone yourself on this one-this really did live up to the title, you never fail to impress with the trashiest electronics available. It’s hard to tell how this legitimately gets away with being sold in this country!

i recently bought a 4foot strip light from toolstation, 14 quid with samsung led strip light. its flipping awesome for hte price point. been left on in me shed for last week continuously and no heat and working as it did day i wired it in. bloody excellent value and quality for 14 quid

I just did a test of all the bestselling bulbs on Amazon and the filament LED style bulbs were standouts as far as quality (low flicker, good CRI, good dimming curves). It seems strange that we are so focused on shaving a few cents off the cost of something that's supposed to have a long lifespan and rarely be replaced. There has to be a happy medium between the Dubai bulbs and junk like the bulb in this video.

@ulwur

9 ай бұрын

That'll be the IKEA Lamps. kzread.info/dash/bejne/f2WlxsSfk9jPhqQ.html

@linuxranch

9 ай бұрын

May be Dubai lights should be the standard "everywhere"!

@teresashinkansen9402

9 ай бұрын

Is the chinese way. The irony is that in the long run it ends up being more expensive uses more resources and produces so much e-waste.

@Lizlodude

9 ай бұрын

I've recently been reminded of the same thing with clocks. We've had quite cheap clock chips with accuracy far beyond anything a normal user needs, you'll almost certainly have a power outage or just accidentally unplug it before it drifts by a measurable amount. But do we see those in basically any consumer clocks? Nope. All still the cheapest possible oscillators and they drift by far too much.

@greentjmtl

9 ай бұрын

@@teresashinkansen9402 Yes the evil Chinese brainwashed all the consumers into picking the $1.95 bulb over the $2 bulb on the shelf, no blame on the consumer at all, zero, nada.

1:54 Notice he doesn't say "reverse engineer" since this thing isn't really "engineered." He just says "reverse this lamp" as it's a horrible thing meant to be undone

IKEA makes good LED bulbs and lamps. Have many for years and no problems. 2xPack for $2 Canadian is pretty nice too.

The evolution of the LED lamp has indeed been amazing. I'm wondering how much further they can go? LED chips with built in voltage regulators and rectifiers so all you need is a string of LEDs? Or even one large chip... but that would probably get too hot unless the efficiency can be improved to get rid of the heat.

@Scodiddly

9 ай бұрын

A "blob chip" covered with clear goop?

@CraftMine1000

9 ай бұрын

​@@Scodiddlyi can imagine clear COB led strips being one of the first uses

@5umyn0n4

9 ай бұрын

yeah it is pretty amazing. i can remember when they banned regular light bulbs in the eu and it was a real problem as the old energy saving lamps were just toxic trash and leds were just flickery and unpleasant... and then leds just became good and the problem was solved. kinda worried though this is beeing misinterpreted by some as a surefire way of how electric cars are gonna go...just pretty sure banning stuff and getting a miracle isnt going to happen again

@fredfred2363

9 ай бұрын

@scodiddly... Good idea. Quicker assembly too.

@SeanBZA

9 ай бұрын

You already get led drivers with the built in bridge rectifier and the buck regulator all in one package. 2 pins for mains, 2 for the capacitor and then 2 for the coil and sense resistor. Only problem is it is a SO8 package, with the mains inputs 0.8mm apart

Dollar Tree here in the USA, which now sells most items at US$1.25, has not had LEDs at any location I’ve visited in the past three or four months. If they start selling them again I fear they’ll be horrible ones.

@ben--

9 ай бұрын

My local Dollar Tree still stocks LED bulbs, though only in 60w eq A19 and BR30 and 40w eq G30 and C17). I haven't bought one from them in a while, I may get one now just to see how bad they've gotten, especially now that incandescent bulbs are fully banned in the USA. My local 99 Cent store also has LEDs, including 100w eq LEDs for only $2 each.

Glad to see they didn't cost-cut the fusible resistor. You're gonna need that.

@SeanBZA

9 ай бұрын

Soon enough they will go with a fake fusible resistor, with a regular 0.25W film resistor in the shrink sleeve. After all, got to save that 0.1c cost between fusible and non fusible paint.

@309electronics5

9 ай бұрын

Shhh dont give them any ideas!!

@andygozzo72

9 ай бұрын

@@SeanBZA i have a cheapo usb 'charger' that has no form of fuse on the mains input at all, apart from the thin wires going to the plug pins,, theres a place on the pcb for a fuse but not fitted, linked across 😁

@ben--

9 ай бұрын

@@SeanBZA Or they'll just do what the cheap power adaptor manufacturers do and put a thin, squiggly PCB trace between the incoming line connection and the circuit. That way, they shave an entire component off the BOM.

@SeanBZA

9 ай бұрын

@@ben-- Cheaper is to simply use thinner wire, 3 strands will act like a fuse anyway, saving precious copper on the PCB, and also saving on that very expensive wire as well, as you cut the copper cost to a quarter.

Oh well, "Minim" should be anyone's Don't Buy List. Never thought I'd see mains-powered turds that you can hang from a ceiling.

Nice video as always, but I was hoping to see some extra fine Sharpie lines on the schematic to accurately represent those dodgy input connections. 😁🔥

"This is the future of LED lightings"....and the future is NOW..haha..thanks Clive.

Thinking about it, in the house the key lighting is incandescent, hall, bathroom, living room, lounge, main areas on dimmers, intermittent dwell time not so. The back-up lighting, wall lights, bedrooms, porch lights, are LED. The bedroom lobby has a PAR 38 armoured spot which throws down a lot of heat for winter dressing on cold mornings. The kitchen has a 40W fluorescent strip which is over 40 years old. Edit: the point being that the main lighting is seldom used so there was less incentive to go to the expense of changing to CF or now LED for the sake of it. EditEdit: don’t get me started on ‘smart’…

i saw that cutout "wtf. NOoh!" like, upset a very upset "no" with a "please" on top.

Hi Clive!! Highly entertaining video, as ever. Would be hilarious if you offered the manufacturers a right to reply channel on youtube :) Sending much love X

Wow. 😢 So disappointing. They've eliminated the capacitive dropper capacitor, which cuts a substantial amount of parts cost, and substituted a silicon chip in its place. There's no current limiting resistor, just the chip. And then they cut corners and compromised safety. The only thing I can think of that's worse are those 'corn cob' lights where the LEDs are exposed so they and their leads can be touched with the fingers. If you look at the good side, these lights have a built-in spark gap for overvoltage protection. It's just kind of unknown how big the spark gap might be, and consequently how much that overvoltage is.

@johndododoe1411

9 ай бұрын

The simplistic capacitive dropper design with no smoothing capacitor was such a nice low cost idea, it was even dimmable as there was no counteracting regulator . It had a bad power factor though, but getting the LED count near maximum would improve that while allowing a cheaper capacitor . The fusible resistor would need to be replaced by an NTC or induction inrush limiter .

@andygozzo72

9 ай бұрын

@@johndododoe1411maybe the chips have become cheaper than suitably rated capacitors, now... of course if the chip fails short, 350v ish dc shoved into a line of leds with no current limiting apart from hopefully a fuse or fusible resistor, something will go bang well ... maybe 'cause the power factor was poor, regulations have banned them? like its now almost impossible to get 'plug sized' and even small 'brick' linear psus due to 'energy inefficiency' .. i heard the EU banned them ...

What a coincidence. The main LED lamp in my room just blew off a couple of minutes ago lmao.

C'mon! Don't keep us hangin'! Make it go *BOOM*! As always, great video. Love your channel, never miss a video.

You are providing a public service Clive. Another one to avoid buying. Hope the IOM is treating you well. My brother is coming back to the Big Island after 30 years, fortunately I still have another relative who lives there, for when I come over for the TT.

I've had good luck with Bell's GU10s, the glass ones. I like the 3000K ones in the kitchen

And on top of all that, such a nice cold solder joint vaguely attaching that neutral lead directly beside the AL PCB lol

Depending on the retailer selling these cheapo lamps, they could go "Bang!good"

My first thought was 'electroBOOM', then I thought, "No, it's more like 'electroKABOOM'."

One-use light bulb. What a time to be alive 😂

I fear that this is only going to get worse.

@Slovenec5

9 ай бұрын

Fortunately there's not much left to cut off

One of the incoming wires looks like a cold solder as well. I wonder how long that is going to last before the resistance, thus the heat coming from it, of it will melt the solder?

When I remodeled my kitchen 8 years ago, I put some led lights like the one in this video (the type, not the quality), and haven't had the need to change them yet. On the other hand some other led lights around the house bought on recent years have failed more than once

@bigclivedotcom

6 ай бұрын

The older LED bulbs were more reliable than recent ones.

When i first switched from incandescents the only alternatives were compact flourescents, they were expensive, fragile and did not last as long as advertised. Then LED's started to appear- again very expensive at first but tough, gave good light and lasted ... well I do not know how long. I have not bought a replacement bulb in 4 years and I still have unopened boxes. They were still quite expensive when I bought them but they were and are good value.

it's been absolutely brill to see you, BC, bring a number of vids that weren't just "off the stack" from the archive. Thanks man. Sincerely. :) Aside, the led lamps..whilst they are mega prevalent... how can we, without taking them home to test, avoid these shoddy money wasters? is there anything on the packaging which we might be able to get a hint from? Thanks again :)

@mikepanchaud1

9 ай бұрын

The low price and the unknown brand is your warning.

@idjtoal

9 ай бұрын

Where it says "Made in China" ?

@mikepanchaud1

9 ай бұрын

@@idjtoal Good quality brands such as Phillips are made in China.

Yay For "Brun my House Down LEDs & Null Void your House insurance "

I was in the Imperial War Museum in Manchester today and I was quite surprised, and pleased to see halogen MR16 lamps still being used in 2023! They were decent GE ones to.

@manolisgledsodakis873

9 ай бұрын

To what?

@quantumleap359

9 ай бұрын

@@manolisgledsodakis873 I suppose "decent GE ones to boot". Hahahaha

That silicone glue over the LED diode is an intentional design decision. It is a physical dimmer!

When I saw the socketed capacitors and input connections on the previous LED bulbs, I thought "that's probably going to disappear sometime"... and unfortunately I was right.

I'm waiting for the version where they only have LEDs and a capacitor in series to limit the current.

@stalkerfromvoronezh4493

9 ай бұрын

Already exists.

@andygozzo72

9 ай бұрын

@@stalkerfromvoronezh4493 earlier leds lamps did use this idea and worked ok, just they had poor power factor, maybe they got 'banned' because of this?

When everything had gone to shit we'll just have to make our own. Get the features they should already have from the get go then: No flicker, No ghosting, Extraordinarily long life, Good colour rendering, Efficiency, Low temperature, Quality components, Sturdy build, No EMI emission, No shitty cold solder joints, Sound electrical design, Pricing that doesn't represent greed or corner cutting. In some respects once it has gone to a pile of jobbies anybody can takeover the market by not putting out instatrash grade bulbs. Awesome!

@andygozzo72

9 ай бұрын

no emi emission would be very difficult as for best power efficiency it'd have to be a switching regulator , low temperature also difficult as watts are watts, all these would make it extremely expensive and not a viable business if people only buy it once!

@ianphilip6281

9 ай бұрын

@@andygozzo72 harsh reality spoils my fun daydream again. Fair points though.

A few years from now, consumer electronics will be so cost cutted and atrociously low quality that you'll have to buy a new led lamp, fridge, freezer, microwave, stove, stereo, radio, amplifier, speaker, car, everything on basically a daily basis. And electronic components will likely be made impossible to get for the individual to prevent you from building somethijng higher quality yourself.

@idjtoal

9 ай бұрын

With everything on subscription, and relying on "cloud" servers that are shut off after a few years, bricking entire product lines.

@andygozzo72

9 ай бұрын

its already coming harder to get traditional wire ended components , many newer chips only available in smt packages although can sometimes get smd to dil adaptor pcbs

while not related directly to the video, I found googles auto-generated subtitles for this one to be hilarious. They translated "Bridge Rectifier" to "Bridge Wrecked In Fire". I wonder if it was a fire started by one of these bulbs...

MAXIM factory executive meeting next day: The beatings will commence until morale improves.

Awesome Video Big Clive🙂

Thanks Big Clive. Dang. That sure is some real cost cutting and "not caring" in this example. I mean, the little sockets that the capacitor and line wires would go into must cost like a couple cents on the mass produced scale if that? Wow. Scary.

I see a pattern here. It appears that many products have components such as earths that have been omitted in manufacturing. My guess is that either a design was copied or a proper model was presented to get UL, CSA approval then upon production safeguards were omitted to save pennies...at the cost of safety.

Do you think that the manufacturer is aware of the really shoddy assembly of the light ? It would not take much to make the lamp conform to a sensible standard, it just seems so short sighted. Good post, thank you 👍

the RAB stuff is quite good

Who here has ever had an LED house lamp last anywhere near even half of the rated 50,000 hours? Heck even a quarter of the 50,000 hours? I know I certainly haven’t. All the lights in my house are brand name LED bulbs and all except for the Hue lights get changed due to failure every 2 or 3 years. The Hue might be the only ones that get close to that rating but add they’re only 12 years old, they’ve got to last another 18 or so years to even be considered close to that many hours.

@mernokallat645

9 ай бұрын

I know about several people who lave 1980s fluorescent tubes in 1960s fixtures wtill working. They will outlive any cheap chinese lamp made these days.

Ahh yes, progress.

I'd love it if you had a look at some of IKEA's LED bulbs. I've had very good experience with them myself, as I'm using quite a few of them and not a single one has gone bad for many years now, while at the same time they actually tend to be cheaper than the competition.

If THIS is the future of lighting, then we are in line for another Dark Age!

Saw the title card wrong... seriously thought for a moment that you had wired a slice of banana into a flood light 😂

Clive can you help with looking at higher wattage bulbs? I'm coming across designs that seem to feature multiple smaller current limiting chips, each with their own resistor. One of the 100w bulbs I currently have apart on my bench, for example, has 30+ SMD LED chips and 3 small 3 pin current limiting devices, each with it's own current sensing resistor. How does this all work together?

I'd like to see it go boom if you could bend one of those leads just ever so much?

Is the aluminium core bonded to anything or floating? If it's floating it should be fine if only one wire shorts to it?

The moment I saw the folded over mains wires I thought "bang!", not a good design decision. On the other hand I've had an IKEA Solhetta LED bulb fail with proabably less than 30mins of use on it, only brought a couple of weeks ago and used as a landing light in a property we have not moved into yet.

Especially with that dry joint on the mains supply wire.

Next short: "Dirty cheap lamp goes bang!"

We bought some walmart brand led lights and they were terrible, one lasted a few hours and the others died with in weeks. Should have saved them and sent them in for dissection. What's weird is some of the led bulbs we bought 8 years ago are still working in other fixtures, seems they are designing them now to fail as quickly as possible.

@bigclivedotcom

9 ай бұрын

They are. They've genuinely engineered them to fail fast.

@mernokallat645

9 ай бұрын

Many people in Central and Eastern European countries have 1980s fluorescent tubes in 1960s fixtures still working. As long as I can but fluorescent lamps I will not replace them with LED.

i just modified my LEDs a few days ago, The 7W COB LEDs failed so I bought 10W COB LEDS and soldered them in instead. The 10W COB LEDs run a little bit cooler than the 7W so I hope they will last longer by limiting the 10W Chips to 7W

Last year, I finally purchased some LED lamps that matched my long standing vision of what form these things should take. So disappointing, for so long.

Those holes through the circuit board are a sort of unintentional plated through-hole 🙂

Diggin' the bench.

@bigclivedotcom

9 ай бұрын

Table in digs while traveling with work.

I was hoping you were going to show us it going boom :D

Another step in the devolution of LED lamps lol

I've never heard of maxim before and looking at this product, I can see why

@dogwalker666

9 ай бұрын

Actually they have been around for a very long time, However like most companies the build quality has gone down the toilet recently.

@Mark1024MAK

9 ай бұрын

Maxim used to make reasonable cost and reasonable quality filament lamps.

@phonotical

9 ай бұрын

@@Mark1024MAK let's be fair though, it's pretty hard to fuck up a filament lamp

@Mark1024MAK

9 ай бұрын

@@phonotical - not having a gas tight seal makes the illumination “interesting” for a few seconds… 🤣 Also, it’s been known before for the weld that attaches the filament to the support and supply wires not to be properly done, resulting in the filament falling off… Although both of these faults were seen in other manufacturers lamps.

@user-dl6pn9kp8m

9 ай бұрын

I believe they're the same company that made the maxim machine gun used in the first world war.

And i am sticking with Ikea for the foreseeable future. While their furniture is just cheap paper crap and will not last, most other things they sell is surprisingly good quality, specially for the low price. With LEDs i had some Philips and Osram with "7 year warranty" and yeah of course they didn't last. Sadly back then i didn't keep the check of small things like lamps - NEVER again.

Suggestion: I'd like to see what's inside a rechargeable battery backup LED light bulb. They work like normal bulbs but if the power goes out they run from their internal batteries for several hours. What's really neat is that during a power outage you can turn the light on & off from the wall switch or unscrew bulb, screw it into the provided base (with switch) to use as a portable light.

@bigclivedotcom

9 ай бұрын

I've featured a few of the intelligent bulbs.

Im sure this has been asked before in some way, but could you do a reccomendation for an inexpensive and accessible ionizer for the home? I have not had much luck with the cheapy wall plug ones and am looking for one that is a robust design that doesnt need too much deeply involved maintenance like my last one. Thanks!

Which power rating resistor should I use to hack the bulbs? There’s 1/2w and 1/4w.

Are you sure it isn't counterfeit? I doubt that would pass safety regulations.

Video idea: LEDARE GX53 600 lm (dimming/adjustable beam angle) teardown. Some people say the dimming fails mechnically or electrically and that they don't last. They go in the Stockholm lamps.

Oh jeez, that's horrid It'd be a tiny bit better if they made the pads not near the edge of the PCB and ran the insulated part of the wires up onto the top But that'd be too much spent on wire, can't do that

Cost cutting to meet a profit point, because money makes the world go round the u-bend... :P

I had a couple of LED gu10s go within a short time of eachother, each with a bang. Took them apart and both had blown capacitors and lots of soot in them from the bang. Not sure on the cause but i bought better bulbs to replace them and all the remaining ones

Is/was Maxim a reputable brand in the UK? In the US the primary reputable brands are Sylvania/OSRAM, Phillips, and Cree, while the large disreputable brands are GE and Feit. I track lifespan of bulbs by simply writing the installation date on the back of the bulb with a marker. GE and Feit rarely last more than six months, while the other three typically last at least five years.

@bigclivedotcom

9 ай бұрын

It's a cheap brand here.

does that really meet the requirement to be CE marked? did not notice if it had UKCA on it, got to think twice about the safety of everything else if this passed.

@marcogenovesi8570

9 ай бұрын

CE marking is a self-certification (i.e. the manufacturer saying "trust me bro"), so it's not a guarantee of anything these days. You must look only for actual electrical certification done from third parties and hope the manufacturer didn't just print the symbol on the box/product, as chinese manufacturers often do

@samuelchamberlain2584

9 ай бұрын

I thought ukca was just rebadged ce mark

fun watching it evolve, wow, deadly bulb adding to the global landfill, magnificent

Part of the 'green' rating for a product should be associated with its quality and expected lifespan. Cheap junk like this clogs the waste stream.

should the bad soldering point represent a kind of fuse?

Gotta love how they're still marketing these on the branding of efficiency and long life when both of those traits have long ago been destroyed by overcheapening. How much more before an older CFL (you know, the ones they're banning) is both longer lasting and more efficient due to the LEDs being pushed so far past their peak efficiency territory?

@mernokallat645

9 ай бұрын

A lot of fluorescent lamps can have over 80 lm/W, some special ones probably more. LEDs are around 100 lm/W. The efficiency of the low pressure sodium lamps is still unbeatable, with some lab samples being around 300 lm/W.

@GERALD_786

Ай бұрын

@@mernokallat645 the theoritical limit of yellow phosphor led efficiency is 250 lumen per watt, 300 lumen per watt is just crazy

@mernokallat645

Ай бұрын

@@GERALD_786 I was talking about low pressure sodium lamps, not LEDs.

@GERALD_786

Ай бұрын

@@mernokallat645 i know, im just saying that lps is far more efficient than the limit of led efficiency

I just have two prongs wired to the grid and if it's dark, I throw an eco warrior on them.

Seeing them evolve? It seems more like seeing them devolve.... I have quite a few "old" first-gen LED lamps around the house (they're fairly horrible - cold white, not the brightest) after all this time, they still work. I've had much newer bulbs fail after a few months to a year.

It feels safe to set the box on fire to get some light. It might even last longer... PS: have you ever made a list/video of LEDs actually worth buying?

@bigclivedotcom

9 ай бұрын

The best bulbs are the ones you hack to reduce their power and extend their life.

So if a fixture doesnt fully turn off you can put a resistor across the output of the bridge rectifier? I have a PIR fixture and one one a remote relay that dont turn off fully.

@bigclivedotcom

9 ай бұрын

That may be due to a snubber network across contacts. Ghost-glow with LEDs is not usually an issue, and doesn't use significant power.

At least it has a rectifier 😂

@CNCmachiningisfun

9 ай бұрын

I wouldn't be surprised if it suddenly diode!

@debochch

9 ай бұрын

According to the sub titles, it has a bridge wrecked in fire!

Having just one resistor doesn't make it more easier to hack but shouldn't make it more flexible if hacked? a variable resistor would work to make it dimmable? could you show?

This has me wonder how this Maxim lamp compares to a similar one from Ikea.

At the break-neck speed of development, soon we can buy pre-discarded bulbs! Saves a ton on shipping, they just toss it in the trash rite after production! Green* future* ...by Maxim.

1:58 Of course I now want to see one go bang…

What was the smoothing capacitor temperature rating? Usually they use 105°C rated but if they are trying to save every last fraction of a penny then they could use slightly cheaper 85°C capacitors.

@andygozzo72

9 ай бұрын

doesnt always mean they'll last , google 'capacitor plague', and they're miniaturising them too far

@mernokallat645

9 ай бұрын

@@andygozzo72 DiodeGoneWild opened a brand new power supply which has reused scrap capacitors and they even tried to hide the dents with wax and put a new fake heat shrink over it.

@andygozzo72

9 ай бұрын

@@mernokallat645 😲 sacre merde! that said i do have a plug type 12v psu that looks if its been 'repurposed' as it has input and output wires cut off and the new ones soldered to pads on the track side 😲 or maybe the cutoffs were for testing?

@mernokallat645

9 ай бұрын

@@andygozzo72 Dont use cheap noname brand chinese power supplies including phone chargers. Sometimes there is no isolation except the enamel on the magnet wire between primary and secondary of the transformer. You have a few micrometers of enamel separating the output from mains input.

@andygozzo72

9 ай бұрын

@@mernokallat645 i know, thing is not everyone can afford the 'top' brand ones, the ones sold 'fairly low price' by UK shops are usually ok, luckily,

I wish you would do a collab with your local trading standards guys (or building regs !!)

Have you checked out any Airam bulbs yet?

There's nothing quite so much fun as a lamp that goes bang.......

Now have a supermarket own-brand 2w LED candle bulb (£5!) running 24/7 - it replaces an old Thorn 15w Pygmy in a dark corridor - but how long will it 'chooch'? (Dramatic chord : )

"Are we not LED? We are DEVO."

@ymirthefrostgiant

9 ай бұрын

We are not LED anywhere! Life hangs but by a filament of imagination.