Burnt battery contact head torch autopsy.
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- Опубліковано 26 сер 2024
- A look inside a chunky head torch that was sent for autopsy by Jamie. When he got it and put the batteries in a contact glowed red hot inside.
This video also has more camera setting experiments. I'm using open-camera on a Moto G with focus and exposure in auto, colour temperature locked and HDR (High Dynamic Range) enabled. The simple addition of autofocus to the mix means that the image quality is going to be a lot higher at the expense of slightly blurred moments.
If you enjoy this channel you can help support it with a dollar for coffee, cookies and intriguingly faulty electronic equipment at:-
www.bigclive.co...
The auto exposure is a bit distracting. I think it would have been better with a lighter background.
Agreed. Fixed exposure was much better.
It did lead to Bigclive's disembodied hands floating around the screen.
I thought the auto-focus was more distracting, didn't mind the auto-exposure.
I had the feeling it sometimes kinda flickered when he moved his hands up and down from the cam, little bit annoying indeed.
IdleGandalf
I guess he forgot to switch to fixed exposure and focus. He usually does it though.
I'd like to see a tear down of a " Tens " machine, I have been using one that runs off a 9V battery for the last 9 months. Really helps with pain management .
Keep up the good work Sir.
Tried my wife's when she was in labour, interesting sensation to say the least, helped my backache.
Couple things, first, for anyone wondering, this is the exact headlight www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00OISBBXA/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
To Clive: Grab yourself a bluetooth lapel mic and use that for the audio, IIRC, the best auto camera settings for benches like this are multi-point AF (if available), HDR, 4K (If available), then downsample in editing to 1080P, the video quality should be really nice, and the audio will be a lot more consistent and full, might want to put the treble down a touch, should be able to do that in the phone's audio settings. Could also get a Lytro camera if you've got the capitol, then you can worry about focus later. I can give you a couple basic editing pointers if you want, but I'm a computer tech by trade, so take any advice I give with a grain of salt, obviously. Cheers!
I have the exact same model of headtorch, and it has been my "daily use" light for at least a couple of years now, so they sometimes are perfectly fine. I also have another one by the same maker, but with only a single LED, and that one smoked it's control chip after about 2-3 hours use. It's random what you get
I also think the auto exposure adjustments (triggered from your hands infront of the dark background) are annoying. Would prefer it fixed and just suffer the exposure extremes.
Hmm. The battery contacts (cells) are in parallel? Seems like someone put a cell in backwards.
If it was 18650 - very likely, as many 18650 cells are poorly marked on their polarity (I had to mark them with permanent markers)
I have one of these torches (although it is difficult to be sure if one has the original or a copy). I found the 'two cells in the same way round because they are in parallel' thing hard to get used to. I'm sure that this wouldn't be the first torch to endure (enjoy?) the cells installed in the more usual 'alternating direction' way.
I think so too, people are used to getting the batteries in series, but this thinggy wants them in parallel
I agree. I have the same headlamp and had a look at it. Seems to me the most likely explanation is a cell in backwards and the spring terminal shorting out the pos and neg on the cell. On 18650s, there is little separation between pos and neg on the pos end.
Nope :P I definately put the cells in the correct way aka. In parallel (it was my headtorch)
"I've started so I'll finish" Clive that'll be on your gravestone...
No it will be: "Is this live, I'm not sure".
+Brian of Romsey Or even, "I wonder what this tastes like..."
what about "let's discharge this capacitor"
It should say: "That was shit"
"Life's transistor's base input got shorted"
You would need to look at the actual battery that was installed in the bay that shorted to the brass terminal. It seems that the short was between the Pos and Neg of the battery caused only by the brass terminal.
I don't know if others have mentioned this as I have not read all of the comments yet, but it would seem to me that the fault here was in the battery itself and not the headlight. The broken wire could have easily happened after the previous owner opened the unit to investigate. I have lost count of how many times I have broken fine connections like that one. Without the actual battery that was in that compartment being available to test we cannot know for sure but I agree with Clive. It is not likely that such a thin wire could pass such a current and not be burnt at all. It would have glowed like a bulb filament. I think the battery got hot, heated the contact, (possibly) melted the solder on the thin wire and parted it, but certainly fried the coiled spring contact. The only other thing I can think of that may make that thin wire survive is if it is PTFE wire.
I have been using this same lamp for about a year. The thing about these is the batteries go in the same way. If you put them in backwards they will short out. This is especially easy to do in the dark. The light will still work, its just the contact springs have lost their tempering. But at $9US I buy them in bulk.
I found somewhere on the web a datasheet for the chip. It's purposely designed for torch applications, there are 2 spare pins that by tieing either to ground or vcc you can disable the SOS mode.
Another interesting quirk with these torches is when you use a radio near them, the torch will turn on. I guess the track to the transistor is acting as an antenna and allowing the transistor to turn on a bit.
I have 3 of these at home, they are great value for the light output. Perfect for freeride skiing or mountainbiking in the night, never had a problem with them. With some good lipos they last over 2 hours, about 1 hour with the ones that came with them.
i have this exact headset. works great and is really comfortable but the battery doesn't last as long as i would like but its not too bad. i really like that i can either charge it via ac adaptor or i can remove the batteries and put them into the included charger (the ac adaptor is also included). thanks for doing this video
Your hands just look quite lovely with this camera setup.
I have been using 2 sets of these lights for dog walking over the last 4 years. No issues except one of the small lights lost its lens so the whole unit became difficult to use in wet weather. Yes it rains South of the Boarder too :)
Great lights with fantastic beams that go father than most none HID headlights on cars or motorcycles will do. :)
I have several of those lights and yes if you put one in backwards you get one terminal burnt I have done several times you get the battery out as soon as you notice it rarely gets left in long enough to heat both terminal's
I have an LED flashlight (torch), supposedly 1 W, in which its metallic reflector was shorting out the LED itself (because of the bare contacts on the side of the chip assembly). It intentionally screws in and out to focus the beam at different distances, but unfortunately allows the reflector to go too close to the LED. I ended up squirting some hotmelt glue on it for impromptu insulation.
Ugh, the heatsinking in this light is BAD! Thanks for opening it up! :) The plasticy thingy used to focus the light is a collimator, the metal, cup shaped thingy from the center LED is a reflector.
I had one of these fail on me 2 days ago. In my case it was the Elfeland version of this light. One of the 2 transistors blew up. And as you can see, there not much protection when that happens. I was using 2 fully charged 18650 with a bit higher capacity than the crap that came with the light. I'm glad the batteries I bought was with the protection circuit as there's no protection in the head light.
Thank you for this, Clive! Now I don't have to take mine to bits! Although, I did have the lamps apart to apply dielectric compound to act as waterproofing. Cheers on another great video!
The lighting seems to work quite well. I like that it is shadowless (your regular bench lighting is near to two point sources, which casts strong shadows, and can prove tricky to identify things in the video) - as you noted, it's almost like a ring flash in the effect this arrangement has. The long fluorescent tubes I have seen previously gave a diffuse light as well, but the flicker was noticeable. A suggestion for the background when doing this sort of close-up work would be a mid-to-dark grey or beige so that most of the image is mid-exposure and the highlights and shadows are evenly bracketed around that.
I've been looking for an ideal mid-colour surface. The grey is definitely too dark.
+bigclivedotcom auto exposure when you unscrew was messing it up.
18% grey is half way between white and black.
Get a watchmaker's mat. It's a matte green colour to prevent reflections.
i have this exact same light from amazon, have had no problems with it at all.... modified it to use a s a bicycle light ( its a bit too bright for a camp light, cant look at your friends without blinding them)... also added actual lighting gel, red filters to the side lights for better night viewing ( its still pretty bright after 2 layers of the darkest i had)
I have that same exact headlamp and when mine arrived the middle and left LEDs were loose. I took the whole thing apart and put some thermo compound on all the leds and have not had one issue yet.
Clive, the light reflecting off your hands is tricking the camera into underexposure and making it hard to see the headlamp: the proof is the final frame, where ond hand is in shot and the headlamp is much easier to view (two hands create more trickery than one). The solution is a camera setting called Exposure Compensation: you probably need to set it to +1.0, maybe +1.5. This isn't criticism, I'm just trying to help, since you mentioned the settings. I have a background in photography and I like your dry humour.
I have one of these head torchs and the wiring failed at the end where the cable goes into the main headlamp,just from fatigue of moving. I repaired it once and next time it failed I just stripped it down and now use it as a bench lamp and works very well off a 4V power supply.
I've had mine (you've shown it before the one with a single CREE LED with blue band) same box in the back. ) glow but only ones and only because the one cell wasn't making proper contact with the Positive end. The ones that are better came out of a laptop battery ( 9 cells = 9 batteries) and usually a bit of a shock at some point. :P more or less because Dell recalled my laptop and I was left with a brand new battery. Doesn't work so well with used Laptop batteries. The difference however is that the ones out of a laptop battery are much flatter on Positive than the Ultrafire etc brands that actually have a tip. All I did was pull on the negative end springs and problem solved.
I have one of these lights and i have put the battery in backwards twice and it gets real hot,but it still works , so when they are put on backwards it is a dead short, so i would assume it has no backwards protection!
Cool, just found this one, had to watch as I have had one of these headsets, well perhaps as long as this video has been out there. Strange how that works; perhaps I purchased it after seeing?? Probably not, usually if you find a fault, I won't buy the product, but I do have to say, it has worked great for me now for many years. I keep her fed with old 18650 cells removed from old laptops that I replace battery's on for my friends and family. Usually, I find that only one or perhaps 2 of the cells are really bad, the rest have just been disabled by the deathwatch IC.
I have had 2 of these. Sent the first one back as I assume the lead from the battery fell off. My current one i had to re solder the lead to the negative plate to make it work.
I've had a bikelight where the batterypack wire shorting out the battery. I replaced the cable, and after a ride it shorted again. It happens that the plastic wire insulator didn't like -5C (or lower I can't remember.. 6 years ago). No spectacular fire because of AA batteries not lithium. A silicone wire insulation would have been better.
Getting much better with the volumes! Yay!
I've got one of these head-torches. Nice and bright. I'll only use the chipped 18650s though, as its strapped to my head.
I brought a couple thru wish about a year ago, gave one to my friend and both of us have had good use from them. The 18650's mine came with are actually not too bad for a no name chinese cell. If the beam was adjustable it'd be a very good even if the 2 outer lights had a wider beam or weren't focused on exactly the same point as the central light. For the coin they're pretty good I think. I've seen headlamps going for 3 times the money that don't perform as well.
High dynamic range on your camera passively increases the contrast >> better picture in most cases
Love the videos. Resistance readings before disassembly might have been more revealing as to the problem.
This channel is probably the best place to ask;
My Kodak powerbank (model: KBP-S/5200mAh), that I use to top off my tablet while using it, has stopped recharging said tablet. In stead, it just maintains the current charge level.
The powerbank also used to emit a high pitched constant tone when it started running out of charge. It doesn't do that anymore.
Anyone know whats wrong with it?
A few years ago i had a 14500 cree flashlight and suddenly for no reason it gave me a sudden what felt like burning, and still don't know what happened because after quickly removing the battery the flashlight was fine and the battery still worked.
That actually looks rather well made, they didn't skimp on things like the glass lenses and machined aluminum housing.
Probably just an unfortunate unit, I thought the same.
A month or two ago, Google was pushing these in ads for Bang-good for not much money. Now that I've seen it's reasonably well made, I think I might pick one up. We like to poke fun at China for their at-times comically bad QC, but they also make a ton of fairly-good stuff for cheap.
TheJohn8765
I would buy it, but I think they look kinda stupid, so I'd never wear it. I would rather have a handheld flashlight. Just personal preference.
I actually have one of these, picked it up for super cheap and it's great. I take it camping all the time. it's survived drops, bumps and and many charge cycles and works great! very bright too.
there's almost no heatsink, no thermal compound even. Just crappy Chinese empty-pill light ;)
My working theory is that the contact pushed back some of the cell's insulation wrapping and effectively shorted the + terminal and the - terminal (the case wrapped around the cell).
Looks like a nice little head-torch. That's too bad it was brought down by either that loose wire or a cell inserted the wrong way round. But then, I think a lot of us who've done field work have seen simple things take down quite complex or expensive equipment. Those are the "horror stories" they like to tell in Engineering 101 classes.
Not convinced by the video quality on this. Any way to lock the exposure? Or it could be the HDR feature you mentioned. Or both even. An on the road setup but not as easy to watch and focus on the details for me
I've got the same type of light but in bike form factor. They're quite good... Though mine does get pretty hot when running all 3.
Hey Clive -- the camera was pretty distracting in this video. Wasn't "as easy" to watch as your other videos. Also, the audio sounded pretty muffled. Is it possible to not let the camera do the auto focus/exposure thing in the next vid? I'm guessing you can't do anything about the audio since you're kind of "on the move" at the moment for work, but I figured I'd at least ask re: the camera.
ive got one of these i use when exploring abandoned mines....its covered in mud but so far, no issues, i did waterproof it though :)
I'll guess you take at least one spare lightsource?
Not to mention someone else with you?
bigclivedotcom my dad bought one of these and IT came with a crappy car charger Just like the car charger in your recent worklight video and i told him to not use the car charger. later i disasembled the car charger and Just like i expected there where only two resistors in it
I bought one of these, and when I received one of the wires in the side lamps was disconnected, and I had to re-solder it. Seems that this particular one also had some bad or missing soldering, so perhaps that is a thing with these.
i was hoping for you to touch the loose wire again, to make it glow, and prove what happened
Mine's having sort of the same problem it won't turn on it won't charge or anything but when I put the charger in it I can turn the light on but it won't turn off
i'd hazard a guess that the batteries protection board went short circuit
funny thing is i've always wanted to get my hands on one of these lights
just out of curiosity what way around are the batteries? is it a 8.4 volt series or 4.2v parallel system?
The battery terminal spring in the device could of simply shorted out the + and - of the lithium cell if inserted backwards and if the battery plastic coating had been damaged or not sufficient to insulate the casing from the positive.
it was designed to take the two cells in parralell. My guess is he put the batteries in series. May explain the burnout
Experimental head warming feature for cold weather?
Does anyone know the sizes of the LED bulbs? Cree XML or Cree XML 2
The center large one is?
The 2 sides smaller ones are?
did you repair then test again ??
Is that DC jack a dead short?
The overall quality of the lamp doesn't look bad at all (although the pinched wire shows that quality control is crap). Do you know where he got the torch and how much it cost?
Btw. I'm with the others that thing the spring contact shorted one end of a cell (center nub to outer battery case).
I have one of these torches and it's fairly decent. I got it from a Chinese seller on ebay. Cost was less than ten quid.
I got it from Amazon for £17 during a lighting sale (normal price is over £30)
i got mine for €11 of AliExpress
Also got my one from AliExpress £10 in postage exactly the same build quality but no faults in my unit. only thing i would say is bin the stock UltraFire 18650's and throw in some nice Samsun 25r's. Good bit of kit and great value for money!
is there a way to buy the first xml t6nitself?
+bigclivedotcom can you do a video on current transformers. I'm curious why you have to short them out when not in use and what happens if you don't. Thanks
Because a current transformer has a single turn primary (the wire it's monitoring) and a high number of secondary turns (the sensing coil) it acts like a high voltage step-up transformer if left open circuit. That can result in a high voltage but low current output that can cause insulation damage.
Bigclive you nearly got a thumbs down. The Auto Focus was annoying. I could put up with the white balance changes but the hunting in focus was painful.
The auto exposure is rather distracting with the background changing brightness, but I didn't notice any problems as a result of auto focus.
I miss the old brown workbench, it was more pleasing to look at. Because it can contrast most colors, while this black background is hard to see some blacks on gadgets/electronics/etc.
It's just temporary while travelling.
Yey! Thanks!
Judging by the quality of the housings the LEDs are in, that very well may be a genuine Cree!
i have a couple of the zoomable single lamp ones of these Boruits. i love them, but i have had to upgrade the elasic as it stretches in no time. I use high quality expensive brand cells and they do run for ages. i would like to do some mods to the circuitry such as : fit a smoothing capacitor so that the low power mode doesn't strobe.. and also fit a variable resistor to control the brightness, how hard would that be? what's the best way of doing that? design a totally new driver board? What annoys me about these cheap Chinese things is they are nearly good. i mean i'dbe happy to pay for a higher quality version but they just produce them as cheap as poss. FOr only slightly more outlay they could make them much better.
Hi Clive. I've enjoyed your videos since the first one I saw, but I'm not that familiar with all the electric terms, so I was thinking if you could maybe sort of like "sum up" about the product, when reviewing/tearing a power supply or whatever? For example, I've watched the Ikea usb power supply vid, and it was a little unclear to me if you liked it or not? Same with led bulbs from ebay/amazon etc. Of course I can figure out what your opinion is when the title of the vid is "Led bulb equals death trap" or something like that, but could you explain it for us, not-so-technical? I'd be appreciated :)
oh god the auto settings are not great, it is kinda up and down and all over the gaf.
I need to replace the central LED. Can you help me? thanks
Ahh...to hear those lovely words: Let's take it to bits!
Please set the exposure to manual. With a black background, and your hands moving around, the exposure is changing all the time. :)
When I bought a genuine Apple iPhone charger cord, and reached to unplug it, I was rewarded with a burned finger and melted plastic. My previous Apple cord had worn out and failed prematurely. I have been using cheap gas-station cords for Apple products, and they never seem to give me any trouble at all, for about 1/10 of the price.
Some say that the stories circulating in the media about fires caused by "counterfeit" charger cords were started by Apple themselves. Who's zoomin' who?
I have to say i love the accent.
That's quite convenient since it's the only one he's got :-)
lol :P
Hey, I had one of those! I abused it for over a year in my garage before it finally crapped out!
I had one too and after some time of working one of the transistors burned out. It still works but main LED can't be turned off.
Shorting out is a common failure mode of transistors when they have overheated or been subjected to a high current flow.
I suggest please not using HDR.
You may try to use HDR either when you have such a strong point light source that either highlights are blown out, or shadows come out completely black, or midrange detail is lost; or when photographing subjects against the light.
What HDR will do, it will try to retain local detail while narrowing dynamic range by high-pass-filtering the image, so there will be a wandering shadow/halo on the video around light/dark objects. It may also try to photograph with more dynamic range, but i imagine, sensor limitations kick in rather swiftly.
I suggest trying auto exposure once again with HDR off, it might prove more workable. I think HDR amplifies the annoyance. But i'm not sure.
i fixed one of those at work, the wires from the battery pack and lamp had burned off the board i had to rewire it
Were you able to get it back together and working again? It looked like a really cool head torch!
edit.......the focus was a bit rough when you were looking at the main board - got a bit blurred at stages.
An especially interesting video Clive. I like your lighting set up - but auto exposure and focus look pretty horrible to me.
that's what happens when you try to sub ohm head vape.
Aaawwww and I was waiting to see if you soldered that wire back on and see if it got hot again after putting it on that lil what ever thing. xD
Run some current tests and see how much it takes to unsolder a joint.
Could u do a review of the Anker power banks? It could be cool to see if the well builded :) -Thanks
I own this very device, it does heat up a tad from the rear...
That happened to me before. I shorted wires by accident and the middle spring burnt and smoke came out too.
i own that head light the e-bay listing sayes it 10.000 lum it bright and get warm after a while
I had to start commenting before the video ends or reading other comments because of that auto exposure. Leave it not turned on or use some matteing powder for handmodels
you are the best, first time ever annoying thing. :D
you are the best, first time ever annoying thing. :D
I got this one too! I was got loose wire from center led and soldered two times back on heatsink. Shit aluminium and solder are not good.
Thank you
Informative and interesting as usual!
A question for Clive or anyone else who knows. What colour LED is best for attracting flies to their doom and how many kV do you need? There's a lot of them pesky varmints about this year.
Bug zappers use UV-A fluorescent tubes without the blue/green portion of the mercury spectrum filtered out, so I'd assume anything from blue to UV-A LEDs should work.
Thanks HeylonNHP, I'll try a mixture of UV and Blue perhaps with a touch of flickering thrown in. 395nm seems to be a popular wavelength, sometimes described a UV/purple.
Why is there a power connector in there, is it supposed to be rechargeable?
Yes, with a 4.2V capped charger.
the HDR mode does nothing to the video, it only works in photo mode, where it'll tell the camera to take three different exposures and merge them into a single photo. But the phone won't do it on video, if it does, it'll have to take three times frames/sec and processing time, only to look horrible and weird
source: I have moto x with open camera
No regulation or current control or anything? Using the internal resistance of a pair of 18650s doesn't seem like too great an idea.
Could the problem have arisen within a protected cell whose protection circuitry shorted.
The cells didn't have the protection circuit.
+AlpakaWhacker
I have one of these lamps too - I like it. Bizarre fault. Post if you ever discover the cause.
ADDED: Was that cell destroyed?
George Applegate I like it too, the body of it was a good quality product and I literally have no idea what the issue was. Neither of the cells were destroyed and I still use them daily in my hand torch.
AlpakaWhacker
Were the cells identical and equally charged?
George Applegate I believe so yes
Can you tear down something that's dead? It's more of an autopsy, right?
good
Wouldnt the snipped wire, cause more current to flow through the remaining battery? causing the contact heat up? plus bad design?
Nah these light will work just fine on a single cell. Designed to run on one cell or 2 cells for double the runtime.
+Randall Caulder have a link for this one? I want one of these, the design seems very nice
topher
Ebay, search for Boruit Headlamp. Don't get one that comes with batteries, they are garbage cells. Buy some Panasonics or Sanyos seperately.
Also it's not 9000 lumens as claimed, actually a little less than 1000. And the 18650 cells that claim 4000mah, there is no such thing. 3500 is the max on the best cells available. The ones that come with these lights are more like 800mah.
+Randall Caulder I've been flying RC planes for years I know all about lipos and lights just still searching for a good quality low cost light
maybe you should turn off auto exposure next time it's really weird. Or if the app has got an option to delay the adjustment a bit you could use that.
666 likes and 6 dislikes probably never going to see that again.
I have the exact same one
very interesting detective work :D
I have a so called cree xml t6 head lamp that uses 4 -18650
Oooh, I have one of those, different branding though. Same graphics.