To manufacturers: 1. If you don't want people to reveal what's inside, simply POT THE THING IN BLACK RESIN! 2. Counterfeiters buy things THEN reverse engineer them, they don't rely on UA-cam videos. 3. If you are confident about your product, don't pull someone's video down. 4. Awesome factor of your product relies on your public actions.
Reverse engineering and counterfeiting are two different things. There are no good design engineers who have not reverse engineered extensively. Its part of the process. In fact the very first step when given the task to design a widget it a study of the available widgets. It much cheaper to copy than it is to start from scratch. People who have issues with this have hang ups that are not compatible with design engineering. There is absolutely nothing illegal or immoral about copying another person's design. The did not reinvent the wheel to get to the moon. This is the first thing I teach new engineers when I break them in.
To the company: Thanks for allowing the full teardown video. Being able to see what this device is made of and it's quality internally makes me want to purchase it!
I would guess they did not use a random generator for the effect because a flame needs to have a heavy weighting to the bottom over the top. Future lamps can have cool near never repeating loops but for good flame you would want a repeating loop at some point. Maybe v2 could have 10 or 20 seconds of repeat. The pattern would be rather small in memory size.
You're right, you can't just display random noise and expect it to look like a flame - but back in the days of assembly demo/compos flame generator code was like digital clocks are for electronics amateurs: everyone wrote one. You could use one of the better ones feeding off the shift random generator and it would be a truly random flame; the code size involved is _tiny_...
I'm finding a couple of sellers on Amazon (searching from the U.S.) that are selling these for $26.99. Searching "LED Flame Bulb" will find two different sellers, plus a lot of other products that aren't these. These are quite neat! Thanks for making us all aware, Big Clive!
I've procured four flame effect LED bulbs over the last couple months from aliexpress. Two are the same size as the one in the video. However, they offer two modes, flame, and all-on. On these, the complex array of PCBs, connectors and cables seems to have been tidied up quite a bit. The flexible circuit board holding the LEDs also holds what appears to be a single chip as it folds through a slot on the aluminum tube and extends inside. Only two wires connect it to the power supply board coming up from the base. I haven't further disassembled the bulbs since it appears further disassembly would possibly be destructive. The other two bulbs are smaller, approximately 2"/50mm in diameter. Same height as the others. These are single mode only-flame effect. These also eliminate all the connectors and wires. The LEDs are mounted on the flexible board as before, wrapped into a cylindrical shape, but not an aluminum tube. The PCB tube is smaller in diameter, approx 1.25"/ 32mm. Same number of LEDs as the larger one, but more closely spaced. The PCB tube is mounted on one end to a circular double sided rigid PCB, which forms a base, and contains the brains of the bulb. It has a mystery 18 pin chip and some passives on the out-facing side, and what appears to be 18 transistors and passives on the in-facing side (the bottom of the tube). Again, only two wires (red positive, white negative) connect the whole assembly to the power supply in the base. The light assembly is powered by about 5V, which I verified by powering from a bench supply. Works down to about 3.1V at reasonable brightness. Below that, you can see that it does function, but the LEDs get very dim. According the the power supply, draw at 5V is about 500mA max. At 4V it drops to about 150mA. Not sure how accurate that is, but could make for a neat battery powered hand held lantern effect. Curiously, my dumb Kill-A-Watt says the smaller bulb is about 3W, the larger bulb 1W in flame mode. The large bulbs were less than $12USD, the smaller bulbs less than $8USD when I bought them. The larger ones have been on continuously for about a month, still seem to function fine. I've seen some sheet plastic at the local home improvement center that might be good for further diffusing the LEDs. It's clear, but textured so that it looks like rain rivulets on glass, designed to allow maximum light transmission, but highly and randomly distorted, the sort of thing one might use for a shower stall or bathroom to offer a degree of privacy. Really neat bulbs. We'll see how long they last.
If I was going to copy a design I wouldn't rely on BIGCLIVE. I would get one in the shop. I think you probably did them a great service but publicizing their product . Most of the time I don't really understand what you are explaining but I truly enjoy every video. thank you.
I wonder if it would look even better with some of the leds around the bottom edge being cold-white to simulate the hotter part of the flame. Maybe even warmer ones near the top.
That's a good idea for more realism - I'm probably weird but I also think unrealistic flame colours (purple, green etc.) would also be a terrific option.
I think it would look a bit better if it had a better, more random-ish flame effect. Like, here, you can tell that it is a pattern that repeats. Maybe over the course of a few seconds to a few minutes, it would speed up/slow down, and the flames would "lick" more randomly as well.
I spray painted one red and put it in a Himalayan salt lamp, chunks of salt in a wire basket. I had to do some tweeks and set in in a black bowel. It looks awesome! I love this kind of thing.
Thanks for this review. I've now purchased several of these and it was very "illuminating" (sorry) to be shown the difference between complex display patterns and lesser, simpler displays. Very happy with these and ordering more. BTW, they offer base up or base down versions which made hanging strings very cool to watch.
I'm glad the company relaxed their stance,so lets cut them slack since they made the right decision. I'm definitely going to be contacting them since I'd like to try a few out for the holidays.If they're as well built as they appear I also have a idea they might be able to do for me in the future.
Seems line their site is down. also they didn't turn off PHP warnings/errors and they get fed straight back to the user. People with malicious intents will probably be really happy about that.
+Not Your Everyday Timelord --> I still would like to see him purchase one himself to test. Most times manufacturers when asked to send you an item for review they send you one from a special "high quality batch" reserved for reviewers. Perhaps have it sent to his brother's house so they don't know it's him.
At the local makers fair last year (July 2015) a torchlight somewhat similar to this was demonstrated. That torch uses strips of addressable LED RGB tape running vertical long the cylinder replicated around the outside of the cylinder. The led flame pattern was driven by an arduino. There was also a mode which displayed scrolling text. Easy project for the hobby crowd. Just use the outside of a beer can for the cylinder. :)
Interesting tear-down video. I'm considering getting a couple of these to replace the noisy mechanism in our flame-effect fire, but I'd have to find a way of disabling the switching between modes on sequential power cycles
Wow! That one has a lot inside it. I bought one, for near the cheapest price, and took it apart. It had no wires inside. It had a board at the base teed with the LED panel and a transformer stuffed into the screw base. That simple design was fine with me, because all I wanted to do was to try a cheap one inside my salt lamp. I stripped the globe, and base off, hooked up a old night-light cord with switch attached directly to the lead power wires, then stuffed it inside my salt lamp. The animation of my bulb is probably bottom rank, but the effect inside the salt lamp is pretty satisfying. Your bulb - I bet - has a much better realistic flame. Looks sophisticated.
I'll get one when it has the randomizer you mentioned. Repeating patterns in stuff like this is one of my pet peeves. It's really cool how nice the flame looks though.
The animation reminds me of a cylindrically wrapped representation of one of the audio spectrum visualisers available on some of the PlayStation 1 consoles when playing CD music from it - cycling through various schemes as well as color ranges on the visualiser for viewing on TV. There was one scheme that looked like licking flames across the screen once the color option was cycled to the orange-yellow spectrum.
The little power module is a current driver, actually, since LED intensity is linear with current, not voltage. Sinking I/O to 3 LED's each per line on each section. Artistically well done. "Echoed" is a good word! 5V/360 Ohms = 14 mA per LED. Probably PWM'ed for efficiency.
I think that this is the lamp that I purchased and it worked great for many weeks. We had a power outage and now it just blinks (strobes) after just a few minutes of being in the flicker mode.
FWIW, I've done LED sequencing and tried randomizing via feedback shift registers, and I've found that I always started getting recognizable patterns. I experimented with a few different methods, and wound up using a Mercenne twister algorithm. Implementing that for 32 bits even on a small microcontroller is very quick, there are integer versions available easily online. I got lovely results using that.
The fade-on/fade-off looks like a handy flashing beacon (if you change out the LEDs for red ones) like those seen on the tops of radio towers to warn low-flying aircraft.
hi clive. on the strength of your breakdown, i ordered a couple of warmoon bulbs from amazon. i have to say absolutely fantastic fire effects! i'm going to install them into a couple of clear glass, large storm lanterns i have laying about and see how they go. many thanks.
Amazing design! I can see these being all over ebay very soon. I expect they will get the design down to one chip, maybe multiplexed, once production is stepped up. I don't like the mode switching by power cycling, what if you want it on a timer? Maybe hackable to fix that.
Hi, so you mentioned it the transformer supplies 9 & 12 volt. Do you reckon it would work okay if the transformer was removed and it just runs directly from 12v? There would be prefect to be used for awning lights on my 12v campervan
it would be all the funnier if it mostly does something nice , like the candle effect, and randomly says a rude word, and people will be all like 'that candle swore' and it would be just a candle....
1000 views in 30 minutes is nothing. 1,000 views a *second* would be vaguely DDOS-like, but lots of sites would weather that storm. You don't start calling something a DDOS until it's in the 10,000 to 100,000 views a second level.
I would have liked to have seen a bit more analysis of the safety features (since that is what so many of these videos highlight). Was that an isolation slot I saw under the transformer?
Hey clive could you try to put black car window tint on the lamp i think it would improve on the flame effect. it would eliminate the glow of that cover and make it look really realistic
Just suggested this to friends who do Live action role playing I think its perfect for lanterns torches and even to top wizards staff should be a good market for them in that area
Not read all the comments, if someone has already suggested it, but could you adjust the clock speed of the lamp slightly to change she speed of the "flame effect"? Or would it not work due to the way the animation is?
That's a really neat one, Clive. There are some really gorgeous real gas lamps outside a few brownstones here in NYC, and while these wouldn't be a perfect replacement, since the flame is visible, they're a great idea.
Poking around on their products page they do have some really nice variations on this basic lamp. I especially like the ones that look like old kerosene lanterns.
Using a screen from a dead flat screen tv and laying the led strips flat and you could do the fireplace screen I suggested. I may buy one of these. It would be a fun project.
These things don't look as good on their website as they do on your video, the individual LEDs on the site are quite visible. I wonder if they changed the plastic cover.
If you buy one be sure to test it right away. Mine has the LED's up the wrong way. The pictures the seller uses show the Flame the right way up but the Bulb has the flame going to the base.
I bought one. I put it in a IKEA GRÖNÖ Table lamp Frosted glass white. It looks fantastic. One late nght i had it by my kitchen window and my neighbour banged at my door thinking my flat was on fire. Its very realistic.
I believe this is the same unit, judging especially from the one pic of the interior of the bulb, on Amazon in the US: www.amazon.com/Advanced-Flickering-Multi-function-Emulation-Breathing/dp/B01LD167WO
My local (Warwick) branch of City Electrical Factors showed me one of these last week which they reckon is coming out under their Fusion brand name at around the £40 ex VAT price point. I immediately went out and bought one off Amazon for £25, but it died after five minutes. I noticed afterwards there was another on Amazon at £35 which had better reviews. Like all other LED lamps, it seems there are good and bad variants.
This was five years ago! 3 years ago I was walking down my town street looking at the lighting they put up for the holidays going I know it's an electric light I see the wiring and yet my brain could not comprehend the fact that it looks like a gas lamp. We have Lantern style lights hang from pole suspended from the power poles. I just picked myself up one of those bulbs last week. I paid retail at my local hardware store, unfortunately the website link is dead.
hi Clive I see you are rocking the ZZ Top look lol ... WOW this looks fantastic it's nice to see someone actually using ribbon cable than single stranded cable . another fantastic tear down from you keep up the great work you do 😎
I am TOTALLY buying this for my haunted house! I have a set of 'tortured torchieres' with a standard incandescent lamp on one of several flicker flame units. It is semi OK but never had the POP I wanted.
Looks like a nice lamp. I do wonder, though, whether it's overly complicated - would it not be easier (and cheaper?) to use one microcontroller and a string of WS2812b LEDs?
Thanks very much for this! Your manner of doing this is perfect. No trying to charm us into purchasing something nor pushing us into subscribing and becoming your fans. It is appealing because it is the information and your enthusiasm about it and itself. It makes me curious about a lot of things I don't know, and now I have a great flame bulb to purchase lol!
I think that might only happen if its off for less than a few seconds? Just like those flashlights that change the mode when you turn them off and on rapidly.
Question @bigclivedotcom about the proposed random sequence idea. Presumably they have designed the 4 second pattern to look like a realistic flame, with the top leds lighting with a gap below to give the effect of flame separating as it rises before then extinguishing. This is a significant aspect which makes the flame look realistic IMO (only having seen it on video!). would a random pattern be able to create a similar effect? I'm guessing not.
I found on their website the photos reveal that the diffuser did not seem to blend the led dots well enough. They are clearly defined. What do you actually see? videos can be deceiving since the camera aperture and shutter speed can blend the image you see in real time.
It appears to be a very complicated way of achieving the effect. Once you've worked out the sequence, couldn't you just program it into NVRAM and just run it through the standard driver hardware? Wish I had time to look at this and find a simpler way... I think your shift register "showman's ride" idea would work very well.
Do those LEDs have orange phosphor ? Seen that once before in an automotive lamp. I wonder if the mystery chip is a SPI flash chip with the data - could make for some interesting hacks.
It's a deep golden white. I think the mystery chip is just a serial to parallel converter for driving the ULN2803's, although the CPU has 32 pins, so I would have thought there would be 16 digital lines already available.
+Kyôdai Ken Those golden white LEDs seem to be this year's colour for Xmas lights here in the UK. I first came across them in a Halloween toy three or four years back.
Graham Langley Makes sense for Europe. I'm from Germany and don't like warm white that much. I don't like the freaking hot summers here. So I prefere colder colors. Occasionaly in winter I turn on dim warm white lighting.
This has to be the best flame effect i've ever seen. Without setting anything on flames.
Gives me tons of ideas for applications.
To manufacturers:
1. If you don't want people to reveal what's inside, simply POT THE THING IN BLACK RESIN!
2. Counterfeiters buy things THEN reverse engineer them, they don't rely on UA-cam videos.
3. If you are confident about your product, don't pull someone's video down.
4. Awesome factor of your product relies on your public actions.
Angry bro?
@@curtmaas68 Claiming fakely a video will make anyone angry
@@mystcat3 Nice English 👌
@@curtmaas68 What about the meaning of my comment, nothing? It seems you lose a lot of discussions
Reverse engineering and counterfeiting are two different things. There are no good design engineers who have not reverse engineered extensively. Its part of the process. In fact the very first step when given the task to design a widget it a study of the available widgets. It much cheaper to copy than it is to start from scratch. People who have issues with this have hang ups that are not compatible with design engineering. There is absolutely nothing illegal or immoral about copying another person's design. The did not reinvent the wheel to get to the moon. This is the first thing I teach new engineers when I break them in.
I'm literally 7 seconds into the video and can't help think you look like a mix of Dumbledore and Gandalf, that lamp is awesome though :D
More like a mix of Dumbledore/Hagrid Gandalf/Gimli
TheCynicalJedi
I thought Gandalf too.
I'm really out of touch with the kids' Pokemon lingo these days. 😕
In case you are not joking those are Harry Poter characters. Else, you got me a small chucle. Edit: To me he looks more like hagrid!
TheCynicalJedi Yeah, he looks like Dumbledore and Gandalf but he sounds like Stoik from How to Train your dragon
To the company: Thanks for allowing the full teardown video. Being able to see what this device is made of and it's quality internally makes me want to purchase it!
So simple from a design perspective. Smart use of a micro to produce a very cool effect.
I would guess they did not use a random generator for the effect because a flame needs to have a heavy weighting to the bottom over the top. Future lamps can have cool near never repeating loops but for good flame you would want a repeating loop at some point. Maybe v2 could have 10 or 20 seconds of repeat. The pattern would be rather small in memory size.
You're right, you can't just display random noise and expect it to look like a flame - but back in the days of assembly demo/compos flame generator code was like digital clocks are for electronics amateurs: everyone wrote one. You could use one of the better ones feeding off the shift random generator and it would be a truly random flame; the code size involved is _tiny_...
I bought one of these when Clive first made this video and put it in my Porch light fitting ...so far two years later its still working.
I'm finding a couple of sellers on Amazon (searching from the U.S.) that are selling these for $26.99. Searching "LED Flame Bulb" will find two different sellers, plus a lot of other products that aren't these. These are quite neat! Thanks for making us all aware, Big Clive!
I've procured four flame effect LED bulbs over the last couple months from aliexpress. Two are the same size as the one in the video. However, they offer two modes, flame, and all-on. On these, the complex array of PCBs, connectors and cables seems to have been tidied up quite a bit. The flexible circuit board holding the LEDs also holds what appears to be a single chip as it folds through a slot on the aluminum tube and extends inside. Only two wires connect it to the power supply board coming up from the base. I haven't further disassembled the bulbs since it appears further disassembly would possibly be destructive. The other two bulbs are smaller, approximately 2"/50mm in diameter. Same height as the others. These are single mode only-flame effect. These also eliminate all the connectors and wires. The LEDs are mounted on the flexible board as before, wrapped into a cylindrical shape, but not an aluminum tube. The PCB tube is smaller in diameter, approx 1.25"/ 32mm. Same number of LEDs as the larger one, but more closely spaced. The PCB tube is mounted on one end to a circular double sided rigid PCB, which forms a base, and contains the brains of the bulb. It has a mystery 18 pin chip and some passives on the out-facing side, and what appears to be 18 transistors and passives on the in-facing side (the bottom of the tube). Again, only two wires (red positive, white negative) connect the whole assembly to the power supply in the base. The light assembly is powered by about 5V, which I verified by powering from a bench supply. Works down to about 3.1V at reasonable brightness. Below that, you can see that it does function, but the LEDs get very dim. According the the power supply, draw at 5V is about 500mA max. At 4V it drops to about 150mA. Not sure how accurate that is, but could make for a neat battery powered hand held lantern effect. Curiously, my dumb Kill-A-Watt says the smaller bulb is about 3W, the larger bulb 1W in flame mode. The large bulbs were less than $12USD, the smaller bulbs less than $8USD when I bought them. The larger ones have been on continuously for about a month, still seem to function fine. I've seen some sheet plastic at the local home improvement center that might be good for further diffusing the LEDs. It's clear, but textured so that it looks like rain rivulets on glass, designed to allow maximum light transmission, but highly and randomly distorted, the sort of thing one might use for a shower stall or bathroom to offer a degree of privacy. Really neat bulbs. We'll see how long they last.
Good real lamp. According to the above advice, I bought for myself the same for homemade products. Only my controller is directly on the matrix.
It's bizarre... there was nothing terrible revealed in the video, it looks like a pretty honest product to viewers of this channel...
If I was going to copy a design I wouldn't rely on BIGCLIVE. I would get one in the shop. I think you probably did them a great service but publicizing their product . Most of the time I don't really understand what you are explaining but I truly enjoy every video. thank you.
10/10 for the flame effect on that lamp.
I wonder if it would look even better with some of the leds around the bottom edge being cold-white to simulate the hotter part of the flame. Maybe even warmer ones near the top.
That's a good idea for more realism - I'm probably weird but I also think unrealistic flame colours (purple, green etc.) would also be a terrific option.
nah that would be cool. Maybe an rgb one too?
Eden Townsend If I'm not mistaken, iron is used for the red color
potassium= purple, Sodium=yellow, Barium= green, copper=blue, Strontium= red.
I think it would look a bit better if it had a better, more random-ish flame effect. Like, here, you can tell that it is a pattern that repeats. Maybe over the course of a few seconds to a few minutes, it would speed up/slow down, and the flames would "lick" more randomly as well.
Just purchased one of these yesterday for the wife, so really glad you did this.
I spray painted one red and put it in a Himalayan salt lamp, chunks of salt in a wire basket. I had to do some tweeks and set in in a black bowel. It looks awesome! I love this kind of thing.
Thanks for this review. I've now purchased several of these and it was very "illuminating" (sorry) to be shown the difference between complex display patterns and lesser, simpler displays. Very happy with these and ordering more. BTW, they offer base up or base down versions which made hanging strings very cool to watch.
I'm glad the company relaxed their stance,so lets cut them slack since they made the right decision.
I'm definitely going to be contacting them since I'd like to try a few out for the holidays.If they're as well built as they appear I also have a idea they might be able to do for me in the future.
Seems line their site is down. also they didn't turn off PHP warnings/errors and they get fed straight back to the user. People with malicious intents will probably be really happy about that.
Kudos for listening to your fanbase and reactivated the full vid.
I didn't understand half of what was going on here, but I still enjoyed seeing it get taken to bits and the accent is great
Wait what? A Chinese seller on this channel that wasn't bogus AND sent an original product of their? unbelievable.
+Not Your Everyday Timelord --> I still would like to see him purchase one himself to test. Most times manufacturers when asked to send you an item for review they send you one from a special "high quality batch" reserved for reviewers. Perhaps have it sent to his brother's house so they don't know it's him.
Ya look like an evil wizard at the start of the vid. But then your velvet tones reassure all your concerned followers. Cool light muka
At the local makers fair last year (July 2015) a torchlight somewhat similar to this was demonstrated. That torch uses strips of addressable LED RGB tape running vertical long the cylinder replicated around the outside of the cylinder. The led flame pattern was driven by an arduino. There was also a mode which displayed scrolling text. Easy project for the hobby crowd. Just use the outside of a beer can for the cylinder. :)
Interesting tear-down video. I'm considering getting a couple of these to replace the noisy mechanism in our flame-effect fire, but I'd have to find a way of disabling the switching between modes on sequential power cycles
I think, just removing the third wire should suffice.
These are great. The one I've seen before still burns upwards even if you turn it upside down. Very clever.
Wow! That one has a lot inside it. I bought one, for near the cheapest price, and took it apart. It had no wires inside. It had a board at the base teed with the LED panel and a transformer stuffed into the screw base. That simple design was fine with me, because all I wanted to do was to try a cheap one inside my salt lamp. I stripped the globe, and base off, hooked up a old night-light cord with switch attached directly to the lead power wires, then stuffed it inside my salt lamp. The animation of my bulb is probably bottom rank, but the effect inside the salt lamp is pretty satisfying. Your bulb - I bet - has a much better realistic flame. Looks sophisticated.
+Wookiemonsterfreak This was one of the first versions. Yours may actually have a more complicated flame pattern. They've evolved a lot in a year.
With a bit of reprogramming you could use it as a rotary hazard light.
SpudHead WHY? Fire is so much more fun
I like how it can either be a mood lighting effect, or when you want a bright constant light the isn't flickering, it can do that too.
A lot of bits and reasonable IC complexity here maybe even more advanced than a LED bar graph IC thanks for posting
I'll get one when it has the randomizer you mentioned. Repeating patterns in stuff like this is one of my pet peeves. It's really cool how nice the flame looks though.
Pretty sure from the intro that you are in fact a wizard.
I'll accept that judgement if you own a flying motorbike.
good to see the full version available. manufacturers must know that if they send their product to bigclive its going to be taken to bits :)
Better looking and considerably brighter than the old style neon type!
The animation reminds me of a cylindrically wrapped representation of one of the audio spectrum visualisers available on some of the PlayStation 1 consoles when playing CD music from it - cycling through various schemes as well as color ranges on the visualiser for viewing on TV. There was one scheme that looked like licking flames across the screen once the color option was cycled to the orange-yellow spectrum.
The one I have also detects which way up it is so you can use it cap up or down and the flames still go upward
The little power module is a current driver, actually, since LED intensity is linear with current, not voltage. Sinking I/O to 3 LED's each per line on each section. Artistically well done. "Echoed" is a good word! 5V/360 Ohms = 14 mA per LED. Probably PWM'ed for efficiency.
I think that this is the lamp that I purchased and it worked great for many weeks. We had a power outage and now it just blinks (strobes) after just a few minutes of being in the flicker mode.
that company's site has some fantastic Engrish
Indeed.
Yea I had to laugh when at the bottom right of the website I saw this "We believe we will have a won-won cooperation with a bright future!"
Chinglish in fact.
that's funny
FWIW, I've done LED sequencing and tried randomizing via feedback shift registers, and I've found that I always started getting recognizable patterns. I experimented with a few different methods, and wound up using a Mercenne twister algorithm. Implementing that for 32 bits even on a small microcontroller is very quick, there are integer versions available easily online. I got lovely results using that.
If you want random patterns out of an n-bit LFSR, use every nth cycle of the LFSR.
The fade-on/fade-off looks like a handy flashing beacon (if you change out the LEDs for red ones) like those seen on the tops of radio towers to warn low-flying aircraft.
I like these bulbs better than the flicker bulbs I bought 2 years ago. Going to look into getting a couple.
hi clive. on the strength of your breakdown, i ordered a couple of warmoon bulbs from amazon. i have to say absolutely fantastic fire effects!
i'm going to install them into a couple of clear glass, large storm lanterns i have laying about and see how they go.
many thanks.
superb technical breakdown clive! please keep doing them. many thanks
I have four lamps simular to the one you are using now on solar cell. working none stop for the last four years. Tony of Liverpool UK
You are very articulated and look like a wizard holding that bulb up to your beard. Subscribed.
Amazing design! I can see these being all over ebay very soon. I expect they will get the design down to one chip, maybe multiplexed, once production is stepped up. I don't like the mode switching by power cycling, what if you want it on a timer? Maybe hackable to fix that.
Damn, I've been dreaming about getting that flame effect right forever...
Very nice. These are so much better that the old neon flame bulbs.
Hi, so you mentioned it the transformer supplies 9 & 12 volt. Do you reckon it would work okay if the transformer was removed and it just runs directly from 12v?
There would be prefect to be used for awning lights on my 12v campervan
I bought a lot of these flame simulation bulbs online and used them they are pretty good
clive make a rotating text led lamp similar to this, one that says random rude words!
LOL yep clive does programming :-D
"KNOB" :)
zx8401ztv
well not on video, he has done pic stuff before! :P
"BUM"
"BUM"
"BUM"
"ARSE"
"BUM"
I'd buy it
it would be all the funnier if it mostly does something nice , like the candle effect, and randomly says a rude word, and people will be all like 'that candle swore' and it would be just a candle....
I would buy it
1000 people just DOS'D their website, just now (1000 views in 30 minutes)
That would explain why their site is currently unavailable...well, unless "fatal error" messages count. ;-)
That's a tiny bit over 1 visit every 2 seconds. It's not low but not really high.
it's china, with the great firewall of china in the middle,
1000 views in 30 minutes is nothing. 1,000 views a *second* would be vaguely DDOS-like, but lots of sites would weather that storm. You don't start calling something a DDOS until it's in the 10,000 to 100,000 views a second level.
I can't help thinking that if that is "I'm not going to go into too much detail" What you left out must be really spectacular Good video though 8-)
Yeah, I did perhaps leave little to the imagination.
I would have liked to have seen a bit more analysis of the safety features (since that is what so many of these videos highlight). Was that an isolation slot I saw under the transformer?
Can't wait to see one opened up into miniature Christmas fireplace 😂
Hey clive could you try to put black car window tint on the lamp i think it would improve on the flame effect. it would eliminate the glow of that cover and make it look really realistic
The person who invented it
Deserves a Noble prize in physics
🤠
Just suggested this to friends who do Live action role playing I think its perfect for lanterns torches and even to top wizards staff should be a good market for them in that area
Not read all the comments, if someone has already suggested it, but could you adjust the clock speed of the lamp slightly to change she speed of the "flame effect"? Or would it not work due to the way the animation is?
That's a really neat one, Clive. There are some really gorgeous real gas lamps outside a few brownstones here in NYC, and while these wouldn't be a perfect replacement, since the flame is visible, they're a great idea.
Poking around on their products page they do have some really nice variations on this basic lamp. I especially like the ones that look like old kerosene lanterns.
I thought the manufacturer asked you to pull the video and here it's back again :-) Did they change their mind?
Using a screen from a dead flat screen tv and laying the led strips flat and you could do the fireplace screen I suggested. I may buy one of these. It would be a fun project.
These things don't look as good on their website as they do on your video, the individual LEDs on the site are quite visible. I wonder if they changed the plastic cover.
Matt Tester £36.99 amazon.uk
I think it has to do with the exposure settings of the camera only.
Also the animation is too fast and loops too often to really fool anyone who stares at it for more than a few seconds.
Would love one of these for a haunted house, old style haunted dining room aesthetic :)
Cnerde these inside Halloween 🎃 :s!
If you buy one be sure to test it right away. Mine has the LED's up the wrong way. The pictures the seller uses show the Flame the right way up but the Bulb has the flame going to the base.
Pretty cool! Looks just like a flicking torch!
the most realistic flame effect i have ever seen was on the protected extension cord you took apart a few months ago. :P
I bought one. I put it in a IKEA GRÖNÖ Table lamp Frosted glass white. It looks fantastic. One late nght i had it by my kitchen window and my neighbour banged at my door thinking my flat was on fire. Its very realistic.
something to take to bits and hook up to a lead acid in the garden then. or does the voltage detect prevent that?
You've hit the big time now Clive - You can take down a website with a single post...
Clive, I absolutely love the lamp and feel sorry to hear the company got mad at you.
Good to get to see the full version :) They got to feel the "cliveeffect" on their webpage for shure hehe
Hmmm... Imagining a row of those in wall sconces leading down the hallway toward my lair.
Nice vid, Clive!
I believe this is the same unit, judging especially from the one pic of the interior of the bulb, on Amazon in the US:
www.amazon.com/Advanced-Flickering-Multi-function-Emulation-Breathing/dp/B01LD167WO
That definitely looks like the right one! $26.99 right now on Amazon.
My local (Warwick) branch of City Electrical Factors showed me one of these last week which they reckon is coming out under their Fusion brand name at around the £40 ex VAT price point. I immediately went out and bought one off Amazon for £25, but it died after five minutes. I noticed afterwards there was another on Amazon at £35 which had better reviews. Like all other LED lamps, it seems there are good and bad variants.
Thanks for the original version, I JUST missed it the first time.
This was five years ago! 3 years ago I was walking down my town street looking at the lighting they put up for the holidays going I know it's an electric light I see the wiring and yet my brain could not comprehend the fact that it looks like a gas lamp. We have Lantern style lights hang from pole suspended from the power poles. I just picked myself up one of those bulbs last week.
I paid retail at my local hardware store, unfortunately the website link is dead.
So glad you got your soul back.
Keep up the great job
Do they use something like this in the newer electric fireplaces? But laid out flat.
Nice build quality - the website doesn't seem to work though :(
hi Clive I see you are rocking the ZZ Top look lol ... WOW this looks fantastic it's nice to see someone actually using ribbon cable than single stranded cable . another fantastic tear down from you keep up the great work you do 😎
I am TOTALLY buying this for my haunted house! I have a set of 'tortured torchieres' with a standard incandescent lamp on one of several flicker flame units. It is semi OK but never had the POP I wanted.
Check eBay for flame lamps. They have a huge range.
That unknown chip is probably a serial to parallel latching shift register or similar, like a CMOS version of the 74LS673.
Looks like a nice lamp. I do wonder, though, whether it's overly complicated - would it not be easier (and cheaper?) to use one microcontroller and a string of WS2812b LEDs?
Thanks very much for this! Your manner of doing this is perfect.
No trying to charm us into purchasing something nor pushing us into subscribing and becoming your fans. It is appealing because it is the information and your enthusiasm about it and itself. It makes me curious about a lot of things I don't know, and now I have a great flame bulb to purchase lol!
TLC5947/TLC3940 would be a proper candidate for the driver ic. these chips are very neat for DIY LED projects.
I'm still surprised that a company sent you a product and expected you to NOT take it apart haha
Matthew McLaren they never did Google to see what his show was about when they sent it to him they thought he just does reviews only on products.
Wouldn't it be slightly annoying that it changes mode each time its turned off if you do intend to use it as an outside coach light?
I think that might only happen if its off for less than a few seconds?
Just like those flashlights that change the mode when you turn them off and on rapidly.
Question @bigclivedotcom about the proposed random sequence idea. Presumably they have designed the 4 second pattern to look like a realistic flame, with the top leds lighting with a gap below to give the effect of flame separating as it rises before then extinguishing. This is a significant aspect which makes the flame look realistic IMO (only having seen it on video!). would a random pattern be able to create a similar effect? I'm guessing not.
I just got one and I'm going to try it out. I'll let everybody know how it is. I'm so excited can't wait. Thank you for your video.
I found on their website the photos reveal that the diffuser did not seem to blend the led dots well enough. They are clearly defined. What do you actually see? videos can be deceiving since the camera aperture and shutter speed can blend the image you see in real time.
Really beautiful lamp and a really interesting teardown! Thanks for sharing =)
I for one would love a tour of your storage/bench/work area. ive been trying to come up with a storage solution that makes sense, sofar to no avail.
It appears to be a very complicated way of achieving the effect. Once you've worked out the sequence, couldn't you just program it into NVRAM and just run it through the standard driver hardware? Wish I had time to look at this and find a simpler way... I think your shift register "showman's ride" idea would work very well.
Did you realize at 5:55 you grabbed the PSU circuit whilst it was still powered up from the mains?
When the lid is up on the tester it fully disconnects the power.
slm60uk what a noob.
Evil from evilution Doh!
You don't eat and don't sleep, you are powered by electric shocks, don't mess with with Big Clive!
I bet you could recreate this with those spiral led strip lights some people on youtube have been making.
Mute the video and set playback speed to 0.25 to get a sneak peek of Rob Zombie's next movie.
What do you think the possibility is that you can unroll the LED tube and create a flat flaming light?
+Michael Meisman You could, but the pattern repeats around it.
I did see their website. And they are writing "villa farden", must be "villa garden" of course (unless "farden" is a good US-English word).
Do those LEDs have orange phosphor ? Seen that once before in an automotive lamp.
I wonder if the mystery chip is a SPI flash chip with the data - could make for some interesting hacks.
enough pixels to have rotating words?
Orange phosphor is typical for golden warm white LEDs.
It's a deep golden white. I think the mystery chip is just a serial to parallel converter for driving the ULN2803's, although the CPU has 32 pins, so I would have thought there would be 16 digital lines already available.
+Kyôdai Ken Those golden white LEDs seem to be this year's colour for Xmas lights here in the UK. I first came across them in a Halloween toy three or four years back.
Graham Langley
Makes sense for Europe. I'm from Germany and don't like warm white that much. I don't like the freaking hot summers here. So I prefere colder colors. Occasionaly in winter I turn on dim warm white lighting.
hi clive, a random no repeat pattern would be great. also i think a multicolour option would be well received. many thanks