I have no idea what Clive is talking about but I know what is saying!! Does that make sense? I would for sure hire him to rewire my house. 'Clive just do you think is best' happy to pay to leave him to it.
Pifco (described as "UK housewares and personal care", I suppose the latter is the vibrator department) was bought by an American company, Salton Inc. in 2001. Salton changed their name to Russell Hobbs Inc (they acquired that British brand at the same time they bought Pifco) in 2009, and were bought by Spectrum Brands (which was originally Rayovac) in 2010. So it hasn't really been a British company in nearly twenty years... (though it appears to still be registered in the UK.)
Till NEXT TIME! Buuhuahahahaaa! At least, he doesn't deliberately stick his fingers in a 7kV television flyback transformer like Shango066 does. "That tingled my bottom!" No, that's Svengoolie...
I like how you can tell about the effects of the dark & stormy on Clive, especially in the second half of the video. He even messes up by picking the wrong lamp to modify and somehow gets super hyped up. Really fun video. Welcome back home Clive, missed you shenanegans!
Clive could you do a video talking more about apparent power factor / power factor and the implications of new smart meters? I've been holding off from having one installed, and want to know what knew charging schemes they might enable negatives / positives etc. And how much there in the interest of consumers v providers.
for a standard home installation you get billed for active power in most countries. You are billed for KWh, not for KVAh. A smart meter probably doesnt change anything on that
As consumers it allows you to see what you are using. We rely on ours to tell when our oven reaches temperature. For providers it avoids needing to send someone to read the meter and let's them see what actual load you are putting on the grid (apparent power) vs what you are actually using. Also gives them a clear picture of exactly who us using what and where which could potentially help target where to put micro generation sites. Its unclear if they will ever switch to billing by apparent power but it means they could which is the worry.
@@alexatkin i would understand it somehow if the electricity companies would billing their customers for apparent power. sure, you get nothing out of it, but on the other hand, the electricity company has to burn something to "compensate" for the phase offset. if you power, say for example an oldschool lightbulb, with an efficiency with say 10%, you have also to pay for the whole power consumtion of the bulb, not just for the light you get out of it. simmilar principle applys to apparant power...just saying luckily out appliances are getting better and better and modern SMPS come with real good PFCs
beingatliberty - the so called advantages of so called “smart” meters are oversold. Yes, you can monitor your electricity consumption. But after a couple of weeks, most people will get bored of this. And if you already switch off devices and appliances, it will *NOT* save you any money whatsoever. It also won’t save you any money if you are too lazy to switch off devices and appliances. The first generation of “smart” meters often will no longer work as smart meters if you change your electricity supply company (at least in the mainland U.K.). The second generation smart meters are supposed to be better in this regard, but it’s too early to tell. The cheapest electricity deals are often from electricity supply companies that don’t require smart meters. Smart meters are not free, the money for the smart meter programme comes from charging bill payers more. How good is the data security? With smart meters transmitting consumption data, at some point enterprising criminals are going to figure out that you can tell if no one is at home using smart meter data... The national grid already has a very good understanding of the mainland U.K. power requirements, so I’m not sure smart meter data is going to make any significant difference in this regard. I strongly recommend instead of wasting time on a smart meter, instead look at turning off unnecessary electrical devices and appliances. And when you need to buy replacements, look at the efficiency figures. Also cheap items may not last as long as better quality items. So also take into account lifespan and quality.
@@jhsevs Louis roseman is an obnoxious prick and has allot to hide I have had personal experience with the little turd and he is simply just not to be trusted.
Louis may come across as obnoxious to some, but I felt dirty for installing QT back in the day (work PC, never at home). Apple policy is the issue, and he's doing a great job for pointing out how they rip customers off.
I have 2,5kg of lead based solder stashed away. Multicore brand. Smells so good! I think that it'll last the rest of my life, if i use it for repairs. Maybe when it starts running out, i'll switch to lead free for new homebrew projects so i can work on lead based products with lead based solder.
"Open electronics and alcohol! It's a splendid combination!" And yet- you still shock yourself less than Electroboom, who does this stuff sober. ;) Maybe if he had a couple stiff drinks... (=D
According to WikiPedia: "The Pifco brand is no longer used by Russell Hobbs, but was licensed for use by KB (Import and Export) Ltd in 2007 who went on to market a range of electrical items under the brand, from LED Christmas lights and lighting to heating and cooling appliances."
I have a couple night lights running off a 12 volt power supply that runs a bunch of gadgets around the house. I use a 12V LED strip but put an extra LED in series, so it's much dimmer. Overdriving & overheating LEDs is a sure way to reduce their lifespan.
I'm a sucker for *really bright* E27 LEDs. In 2015 I bought an Osram 17W bulb which supposedly had around 1500lm (or even more, I don't remember). But now it has failed me, after the warranty has run out and after an estimated run time of 15.000h, so about what they predicted. Still, this isn't very satisfying, because an LED wouldn't need to fail. In this case, it is the power supply that failed (at least I suppose so), since the LED starts flickering as a whole. However, it is so badly glued shut that there is no hope of opening it in a nondestructive way in order to repair it or replace the shoddy component. But the worst thing about it is that I haven't even learned from that experience, and I bought another Osram bulb, because they are the brightest with their 21.5W and around 2400lm. While my Phillips LED from 2011 (back then it was an 11W high power LED with around 800lm, ridiculous for today's standards, but it made good light) still works no problem. Oh well, I've also bought some new 18.5W Phillips LEDs with 2100lm. If they happen to last longer than the Osram does, then it'll be Phillips all the way from that point on. If the postage to the isle of man weren't as expensive as it is, I'd send the dead or dying Osram LED to you for a post mortem, Clive. But since it is a one way street anyways (as in: once you're in, you'll never get it back together), I'm not even sure it would be worth it.
Funny, I was just repairing an LED bulb as this appeared in my subscription feed. In the end I couldn't remove any good LED's from the donor board without breaking them so I've just shorted the blown one out, the string now see's an extra 15mA so goodness knows how long my hack will last. I'm hoping my liberal application of thermal paste will balance it out!
good tear down. Does anyone know when PhotonicInduction is coming back. I like BigClive's vids for sanity and PhotonicInduction's vids for insanity :-)
UA-cam as the single income source hasn't worked for a long time now and setting up sidebusinesses is a hassle that many hobby Tubers don't want to go trough, so they have just stopped creating content because it's time, effort and money wasted. Andy is one of them, apparently - which is no surprise considering all the things happening in his life.
Kreosan from Russia is filling in for Photonicinduction while he's away. Look up his channel, they just released a vid this week involving an 8kw Tesla coil and an electrified watermelon helmet.
About 4 months ago, he said that he was coming back with a new series, however, nothing has come from that so far. ua-cam.com/users/Photonvidscommunity
In the US military we fluoroscope all circuitry to eliminate lead free soldered components. After analysis of equipment failure using lead free solder we discovered whiskers growing on the solder which shorted out components.
As one who's read some of the scientific papers covering dendrite formation in lead-free solders, I have to say I was surprised when I first learned about this phenomenon. Tin is an all-around weird metal.
I got my dad a 5W poundland lamp of that style when you first featured them (to replace a cfl in a landing light that was doing the annoying flickering thing cfls on long wires do) and it's still working fine in an open lampshade... if you want to investigate a LED lamp with problems I've had 2 threepacks of 6W Hyundai branded bulbs (BC and ES) from poundstretcher that all got very hot and died in a week or two in open lightshades. (iirc paid £3.99 per 3pack) I even tried sticking heatsink fins made of beercan aluminium to the outside to see if it would help (didn't seem to make any difference - the fins got hot but the bulb died anyway)
An always dark wedding lense well allow you to look directly at the leds,I have found if you make a way for it to hover over them is the best that way you can still see what you are doing
Clive you can buy PIFCO B22 and E27 Lamps from Home and Bargin for £2.99 pack of 4. There rated at 5 Watt 425 Lumen and the Colour temp is 6000K. I measured the current at 30mA
Colour temp may be OK, but the cheap LED lamps have a shitty spectrum. None of them are going to match the full spectrum of an incandescent lamp, but the cheap ones have one red peak, one green peak and one blue peak. Colours will look wrong. Even wronger than with a more expensive LED lamp. Which still makes colours look wrong compared to an incandescent.
@BigCliveDotCom - You mention Louis Rossmann @21:50 who has OBS software by Paul Daniels (not the magician, which reminds me of the Mrs.Merton question to Debbie McGee - "What first attracted you to millionaire Paul Daniels?") which renders a virtual multimeter inset. Just for Chips'n'Pickles, can we have a BigCliveDotCom virtual Hopi Meter, complete with a flicker option to make it unreadable? ;-)
Firstly, welcome back home Clive... It would be somewhat _wrong_ (tm) to use anything less than a 400V capacitor for the small electrolytic. One of the common failure modes of an LED is to fail open circuit (and keep in mind there's around 60 LEDs in series). In this case, there is almost no load on the output of the bridge rectifier leading to 340V+ across this capacitor. (If it were a 250V capacitor, the magic smoke would leak out in a hurry) Edit: Also, when you 'hacked' a lamp by replacing the capacitor with resistors, you're power factor would still be rather ordinary. The LEDs would not START to conduct until they reach their forward voltage and with such a SMALL smoothing capacitor at the bridge output, I would expect the PF would remain fairly poor
This makes me think. Although that causes head aches. But, anyways. Decent light from a quarter watt. I wonder how long it's going to take before we get light from the static electricity that's around us all the time. Free lighting. Sort of.
Thank you, Big Clive, for your fun discoveries and analysis. I suggest you examine a 4-ft LED tube which replaces a fluorescentube. Called "Plug-n-Play", you install it just as a fluorescentube and it gets its power from the ballast. Would love to know how it does that. (Recently I installed 4-ft. LED tubes which allow removal of the ballast and simple rewiring of the fixture to connect 120 VAC to the correct end of the LED tubes.
Can you show how you would measure the power factor of such a low current device? Would you use a 'scope and some sort of shunt? And an isolation transformer, perhaps?
In your enlarged photo. The LED at the 5 o'clock position is mounted in the center of a pad and there is a circuit break the the Gap at the 6 o'clock position. But very good video. I think I'll stop by the dollar store and see what's in stock.
bigclivedotcom - I see! Or hear, more like! It doesn’t sound bad, but I did pick up on it. There’s worse things, like a high noise floor, poor audio quality, etc. You sound fine.
Pifco used to be a good company - they made some really good christmas lights in the 70's and 80's and various household gadgets ...... im not sure if pifco is the same company now though ?
So if you wanted to improve the pf on all led lamps throughout your house how would you do it? Replace the caps with resistors? Just thinking ahead when they do start charging.
The resistors are only suitable for where the combined LED voltage is high. Proper power factor correction requires quite complex circuitry. The LED filament lamps with simple linear current regulators are probably one of the best lamps for power factor.
Your videos are always better with a little dark & stormy. I prefer a girder personally though. If my soldering iron worked I’d do that to my lights. Talking of soldering iron, how come Americans can’t say that word?
Clive I just seen something on LEP it’s a new lighting technology that’s supposed to be the end-all and be-all I think the LEP stands for laser energized phosphorus seen a video of a flashlight that used one of these modules that looks a lot like a regular LED it actually was able to illuminate objects over 4600 meters away on a single 18650 battery is this for real. Do you think it’ll ever be practical?
I bought a couple of the 5W PIFCO LED bulbs shortly after Poundland dropped that style for the Electrek brand in favour of the later ones, one cold white, one warm, nether of which I liked so they're languishing somewhere in my bedroom in a box of junk... :P
What is your opinion of these compared to more expensive tesco branded or other brands like osram? It would be in the gu10 flavour. Do they output similar light levels watt for watt, I've tried poundland bayonet led lights and they have been ok (electrek branded) but a bit of pot luck on how long they last, I've got two which have been going for about a year and a half but have had a few which have died in just a couple of months! Whilst tesco lamps are more expensive, I've got bulbs from them which are heavily used and 4 years old so far and output a decent amount of light for the wattage drawn.
i have one of those lamps in my 6 lamp fixture and i hate it. my light switch has one of those neon indicators and it provides some power for this lamp, which annoyingly glows even when the lights are off
I am in the US. I have bought so many different types of LED lights from different brands and different sources. I didn't find a single one that uses a capacitor dropper, even the Dollar store ones.
Clive, at work our offices and some of our labs use a redundant power system called something like electrax (not sure on the spelling). You push the plug in and twist and isn't like any sort of plug I've seen before. Was wondering if you could do a video doing a bit of an explanation of how it works, the idea behind it etc. Cheers!
If the plugs are shaped like keys it uses a set of bus bars that run the full length of the strip. The plugs have contacts that engage with the bus bars when rotated.
@bigclivedotcom Do you think there would be a way to add some kind of backup electronics, that when one circuit fails, the other takes the command and the lamp still works?
If the power factor is low when using capacitive dropper, doesn't it only compensate for low power factor from electric motors ? So you get lower apparent power.
I've done the mod, seems to work (lights up ,no adjustments) on a dimmer switch. Bulb is quiet. Before the mod it buzzed angrily while lighting up, be nice if the bayonet fitting ones were more prominent on the shelves. Not really sure why they are selling Edison type in the first place,it can't all be due to the stubbornness of IKEA.
Nice video, glad to see that those LEDs are hackable to control the intensity and increase lifespan :) On the subject of apparent power, do you know which (if any) electricity companies are charging their customers for apparent power?
@@bigclivedotcom So no energy supplier in the UK as far as you know? Also I just saw those PIFCO bulbs in Poundland today, but the power equivalence is quite low. They only rate the 5W bulb as equivalent to 32W, and the 3W is equivalent to 23W... Why don't they sell a 60W or 100W equivalent?
Hi Clive another great upload 😄. Just going back to the 6000LM LED Deformable Radar Garage Light Motion Activated Ceiling Lamp, can you recommend a driver to make it dimmable - or is it not possible? 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
Can't wait to see the look on the electric providers faces when they switch everyone over to apparent power. There's going to be lots of houses that won't register on their systems. Thanks Clive.
I just saw these things in my local Dollar General store. I knew I should have bought one... (but I already replaced all my light bulbs--so I can't justify it!) Also, if they start charging for "apparent power" wouldn't those things that correct the power factor suddenly, start being useful rather than junk?
Pifco brand is owned by RKW Ltd, who also own Tower, Elgento and Akai brands. I'd guess the bulbs have always been supplied by them, previously as a Poundland brand but now Pifco, probably just a contract change.
Those lamps may well outlast Human Civilisation! You'll certainly get better than the 50,000 hours we were promised with LEDs when they first came out!
Triple 5 K subscribers. Congrats Clive you've won a timer.
The only timer!. Brilliant 😂
I thought you meant he had 15k subscribers and did NOT get that joke. I need to go to bed.
Martin Muehlhaeuser Another K and he'll get two for the price of one.
You MUST CT scan a 555 timer IC and ASMR it to decent music. Nobody Does It Better.....
@@ethanpschwartz Me too, it's 12:37AM here :l
Clive back home and full of ginger beer, the world is again at peace and ready for hacking LEDs.
And on the 2nd try, hack the correct one! I am still laughing...
Big Clive I think you have a buzz going! :-)
I have no idea what Clive is talking about but I know what is saying!! Does that make sense? I would for sure hire him to rewire my house. 'Clive just do you think is best' happy to pay to leave him to it.
Just don't make my house look like Edinburgh tattoo!!
Fortified ginger beer..
Pifco (described as "UK housewares and personal care", I suppose the latter is the vibrator department) was bought by an American company, Salton Inc. in 2001. Salton changed their name to Russell Hobbs Inc (they acquired that British brand at the same time they bought Pifco) in 2009, and were bought by Spectrum Brands (which was originally Rayovac) in 2010.
So it hasn't really been a British company in nearly twenty years... (though it appears to still be registered in the UK.)
Nice to see that the practice of measuring flux in pauls is spreading
Glad to see your hands are recovered.
Absolutely. Wish you the (dermal) best!
Till NEXT TIME! Buuhuahahahaaa! At least, he doesn't deliberately stick his fingers in a 7kV television flyback transformer like Shango066 does. "That tingled my bottom!" No, that's Svengoolie...
I like how you can tell about the effects of the dark & stormy on Clive, especially in the second half of the video. He even messes up by picking the wrong lamp to modify and somehow gets super hyped up. Really fun video.
Welcome back home Clive, missed you shenanegans!
Clive could you do a video talking more about apparent power factor / power factor and the implications of new smart meters? I've been holding off from having one installed, and want to know what knew charging schemes they might enable negatives / positives etc. And how much there in the interest of consumers v providers.
for a standard home installation you get billed for active power in most countries. You are billed for KWh, not for KVAh. A smart meter probably doesnt change anything on that
As consumers it allows you to see what you are using. We rely on ours to tell when our oven reaches temperature.
For providers it avoids needing to send someone to read the meter and let's them see what actual load you are putting on the grid (apparent power) vs what you are actually using. Also gives them a clear picture of exactly who us using what and where which could potentially help target where to put micro generation sites.
Its unclear if they will ever switch to billing by apparent power but it means they could which is the worry.
@@alexatkin i would understand it somehow if the electricity companies would billing their customers for apparent power. sure, you get nothing out of it, but on the other hand, the electricity company has to burn something to "compensate" for the phase offset. if you power, say for example an oldschool lightbulb, with an efficiency with say 10%, you have also to pay for the whole power consumtion of the bulb, not just for the light you get out of it. simmilar principle applys to apparant power...just saying
luckily out appliances are getting better and better and modern SMPS come with real good PFCs
beingatliberty - the so called advantages of so called “smart” meters are oversold. Yes, you can monitor your electricity consumption. But after a couple of weeks, most people will get bored of this. And if you already switch off devices and appliances, it will *NOT* save you any money whatsoever. It also won’t save you any money if you are too lazy to switch off devices and appliances.
The first generation of “smart” meters often will no longer work as smart meters if you change your electricity supply company (at least in the mainland U.K.). The second generation smart meters are supposed to be better in this regard, but it’s too early to tell.
The cheapest electricity deals are often from electricity supply companies that don’t require smart meters.
Smart meters are not free, the money for the smart meter programme comes from charging bill payers more.
How good is the data security? With smart meters transmitting consumption data, at some point enterprising criminals are going to figure out that you can tell if no one is at home using smart meter data...
The national grid already has a very good understanding of the mainland U.K. power requirements, so I’m not sure smart meter data is going to make any significant difference in this regard.
I strongly recommend instead of wasting time on a smart meter, instead look at turning off unnecessary electrical devices and appliances. And when you need to buy replacements, look at the efficiency figures. Also cheap items may not last as long as better quality items. So also take into account lifespan and quality.
This video explains it ua-cam.com/video/XCtYNNDslJk/v-deo.html
I liked the older design of Poundland lamps. I've had a few (3w) in use for the last couple of years, and none of them have failed. Excellent value.
Louis isn’t a repair channel anymore. It’s a NYC real estate channel!
And a cat channel.
Can't stand the man, to be honest. This is probably an unpopular opinion
@@jhsevs Louis roseman is an obnoxious prick and has allot to hide I have had personal experience with the little turd and he is simply just not to be trusted.
Louis may come across as obnoxious to some, but I felt dirty for installing QT back in the day (work PC, never at home). Apple policy is the issue, and he's doing a great job for pointing out how they rip customers off.
That's the little fellow that can't keep a women because he's a vegan and wont eat tuna , and to busy shopping for real estate for cats
I love your idea of a party, vibrators and fairy lights! Just what you need on a dark and stormy night.
Ah Pifco... brings back memories from the 1970s and cheap, very cheap, torches and battery powered fans
I have 2,5kg of lead based solder stashed away. Multicore brand. Smells so good!
I think that it'll last the rest of my life, if i use it for repairs. Maybe when it starts running out, i'll switch to lead free for new homebrew projects so i can work on lead based products with lead based solder.
Oh, how I have missed this type of videos. Excellent video, sir! Made my morning way better!
Welcome back home. Your hands healed nicely! 👍🏻
Vibrators and Fairy Lights is, incidentally, the name of my upcoming band.
Buzzcocks?.... Oh, that's taken too.
That's ironically the name wrote on my first comunion tape.
"Open electronics and alcohol! It's a splendid combination!"
And yet- you still shock yourself less than Electroboom, who does this stuff sober. ;) Maybe if he had a couple stiff drinks... (=D
Mehdi knows exactly what he's doing, sorry not sorry 😉
@@georgeprout42 he does. Sometimes I wish he would actually get serious with his content, but he's very entertaining so I don't really care
@@Zipppyart He had a series where he was serious but he stopped :(
@@The2Coolest2 A serious series... seriously ? 😬
Glad to have you back home Clive!
I think that around the 20 minute mark Big Clive really gives into the Dark and Stormy. It's great!
Vibrators and Fairy lights sounds like a complete party!
aaahh...pifco the patron god of bicycle lights !!!
Yeah, torches. Dildos and fairy lights?.. Scarey childhood Clive musta had!
@@stevewatts3502 and hairdryers, As for vibrators, he means "Massagers" just like the Hitachi Magic Wand :-)
Back at the bench, stormy and fun. Saw those lamps last week-end. Now I will get some for playing.
"Open electric connections and alcohol, splendid combination" BigClive 2019
ntm, high voltage :3
ntm, high voltage :3
ntm, high voltage :3
Great to see you back at the bench Clive!
Vibrators and fairy lights to make a party...you have totally made my day, Clive!
Kudos, Clive. And extra kudos for the ElectroBoom reference!
Thanks Clive, nice poundland screwdriver set, worth every penny. Off down in the morning to get some lamps.
"That is so unprofessional... Welcome home"
Thank you. I've never been happier.
Not enough flux :'(
no fluxs were given during this vijeo . femtopauls of flux.
According to WikiPedia: "The Pifco brand is no longer used by Russell Hobbs, but was licensed for use by KB (Import and Export) Ltd in 2007 who went on to market a range of electrical items under the brand, from LED Christmas lights and lighting to heating and cooling appliances."
I've been looking for an equivalent bulb in our Dollar Stores.
Good hackage!
could measure it in place, or go with the destructive method...
Destructive it is!
(have a thumbs up for the destructive method :))
🎵 Clive wears his sun glasses at night
so he can
So he can
Watch things as he tests LED lights🎵
perfect!
Has a nice ring to it
wot is choon ?
Corey Hart - Sandstorm ;)
I have a couple night lights running off a 12 volt power supply that runs a bunch of gadgets around the house. I use a 12V LED strip but put an extra LED in series, so it's much dimmer.
Overdriving & overheating LEDs is a sure way to reduce their lifespan.
I'm a sucker for *really bright* E27 LEDs. In 2015 I bought an Osram 17W bulb which supposedly had around 1500lm (or even more, I don't remember). But now it has failed me, after the warranty has run out and after an estimated run time of 15.000h, so about what they predicted. Still, this isn't very satisfying, because an LED wouldn't need to fail. In this case, it is the power supply that failed (at least I suppose so), since the LED starts flickering as a whole. However, it is so badly glued shut that there is no hope of opening it in a nondestructive way in order to repair it or replace the shoddy component. But the worst thing about it is that I haven't even learned from that experience, and I bought another Osram bulb, because they are the brightest with their 21.5W and around 2400lm.
While my Phillips LED from 2011 (back then it was an 11W high power LED with around 800lm, ridiculous for today's standards, but it made good light) still works no problem. Oh well, I've also bought some new 18.5W Phillips LEDs with 2100lm. If they happen to last longer than the Osram does, then it'll be Phillips all the way from that point on.
If the postage to the isle of man weren't as expensive as it is, I'd send the dead or dying Osram LED to you for a post mortem, Clive. But since it is a one way street anyways (as in: once you're in, you'll never get it back together), I'm not even sure it would be worth it.
Funny, I was just repairing an LED bulb as this appeared in my subscription feed. In the end I couldn't remove any good LED's from the donor board without breaking them so I've just shorted the blown one out, the string now see's an extra 15mA so goodness knows how long my hack will last. I'm hoping my liberal application of thermal paste will balance it out!
good tear down.
Does anyone know when PhotonicInduction is coming back.
I like BigClive's vids for sanity and PhotonicInduction's vids for insanity :-)
UA-cam as the single income source hasn't worked for a long time now and setting up sidebusinesses is a hassle that many hobby Tubers don't want to go trough, so they have just stopped creating content because it's time, effort and money wasted. Andy is one of them, apparently - which is no surprise considering all the things happening in his life.
Kreosan from Russia is filling in for Photonicinduction while he's away. Look up his channel, they just released a vid this week involving an 8kw Tesla coil and an electrified watermelon helmet.
About 4 months ago, he said that he was coming back with a new series, however, nothing has come from that so far. ua-cam.com/users/Photonvidscommunity
In the US military we fluoroscope all circuitry to eliminate lead free soldered components. After analysis of equipment failure using lead free solder we discovered whiskers growing on the solder which shorted out components.
7:14 "Fairly lights and vibrators, that sounds like a complete party." 😂😂😂😂😂😂👍👍👍👍👍👍 Clive, comments like that are part of why I love you so much.
I had a pifco battery powered clothes brush. I bought it at a jumble sale when I was a kid, no idea why.
As one who's read some of the scientific papers covering dendrite formation in lead-free solders, I have to say I was surprised when I first learned about this phenomenon. Tin is an all-around weird metal.
Congratulations on the 555k subscribers
I got my dad a 5W poundland lamp of that style when you first featured them (to replace a cfl in a landing light that was doing the annoying flickering thing cfls on long wires do) and it's still working fine in an open lampshade... if you want to investigate a LED lamp with problems I've had 2 threepacks of 6W Hyundai branded bulbs (BC and ES) from poundstretcher that all got very hot and died in a week or two in open lightshades. (iirc paid £3.99 per 3pack) I even tried sticking heatsink fins made of beercan aluminium to the outside to see if it would help (didn't seem to make any difference - the fins got hot but the bulb died anyway)
I really enjoy these hack videos. Good times. Cheers from kansas. Tungtangulation as AvE would say.
Pifco! Not heard of that brand since I was a kid.
The bike lamps on my Raleigh chopper were pifco.
@@blackcountryme Pifco and Raleigh were both part of the same company for a while.
@@tasherratt could be, buy the big Eveready lights were better... But Eveready batteries (card and paper wrapped) were rubbish.
It's always the ppbus or a capsitter! Mr Clinton wants some Greenies! 😄
Drop it like its G3 hot
An always dark wedding lense well allow you to look directly at the leds,I have found if you make a way for it to hover over them is the best that way you can still see what you are doing
I do envy Clive's finger dexterity. I used to be that skilled with a soldering iron. Maybe it's the ginger beer...
Clive, regarding the royal mail, is the removal of low value consignment relief going to impact the Isle of Man? Oh, and how are the floods?
Clive you can buy PIFCO B22 and E27 Lamps from Home and Bargin for £2.99 pack of 4. There rated at 5 Watt 425 Lumen and the Colour temp is 6000K. I measured the current at 30mA
Colour temp may be OK, but the cheap LED lamps have a shitty spectrum. None of them are going to match the full spectrum of an incandescent lamp, but the cheap ones have one red peak, one green peak and one blue peak. Colours will look wrong. Even wronger than with a more expensive LED lamp. Which still makes colours look wrong compared to an incandescent.
Twisted Resistor! Great band!
Gold or Silver?, Record!. Like it.
Clive your on one tonight brilliant keep the good work up
@BigCliveDotCom - You mention Louis Rossmann @21:50 who has OBS software by Paul Daniels (not the magician, which reminds me of the Mrs.Merton question to Debbie McGee - "What first attracted you to millionaire Paul Daniels?") which renders a virtual multimeter inset. Just for Chips'n'Pickles, can we have a BigCliveDotCom virtual Hopi Meter, complete with a flicker option to make it unreadable? ;-)
7:74 - "fairy light and vibrators, that sounds like a complete party"
bigclive 2019
Normal service has been resumed, flickering HOPI, pink lamp holder, and MDF :)
I like slightly intoxicated Clive XD
Firstly, welcome back home Clive...
It would be somewhat _wrong_ (tm) to use anything less than a 400V capacitor for the small electrolytic.
One of the common failure modes of an LED is to fail open circuit (and keep in mind there's around 60 LEDs in series).
In this case, there is almost no load on the output of the bridge rectifier leading to 340V+ across this capacitor. (If it were a 250V capacitor, the magic smoke would leak out in a hurry)
Edit: Also, when you 'hacked' a lamp by replacing the capacitor with resistors, you're power factor would still be rather ordinary. The LEDs would not START to conduct until they reach their forward voltage and with such a SMALL smoothing capacitor at the bridge output, I would expect the PF would remain fairly poor
This makes me think. Although that causes head aches. But, anyways. Decent light from a quarter watt. I wonder how long it's going to take before we get light from the static electricity that's around us all the time. Free lighting. Sort of.
Can you use a resending service? There has to be one in the UK that will serve IOM specifically,
Pifco used to be a good quality budget electronics company. I remember they made good kettles, toasters, irons and excellent radios many years ago
Landfill is normally acidic, so the metallic lead will become lead salts soon enough.
I keep some 60/40 in my tool kit, but I only use it for tricky repairs on crowded boards and the like...
Pisco is Chilean/Peruvian grape booze. And it's delicious (:
Did you leave the 1MOhm resistor (the one across the cap, that you removed) in the circuit on purpose?
The resistor is usually used to discharge the dropper capacitor when the lamp is unplugged so you don't get a tingle from the pins.
Thank you, Big Clive, for your fun discoveries and analysis.
I suggest you examine a 4-ft LED tube which replaces a fluorescentube. Called "Plug-n-Play", you install it just as a fluorescentube and it gets its power from the ballast. Would love to know how it does that. (Recently I installed 4-ft. LED tubes which allow removal of the ballast and simple rewiring of the fixture to connect 120 VAC to the correct end of the LED tubes.
I looked at a Samsung tube recently.
Can you show how you would measure the power factor of such a low current device? Would you use a 'scope and some sort of shunt? And an isolation transformer, perhaps?
Here's a thought... the 3W PIFCO's on 120V service?
It should work.
Clive, I love your LED videos sir!!
In your enlarged photo. The LED at the 5 o'clock position is mounted in the center of a pad and there is a circuit break the the Gap at the 6 o'clock position.
But very good video. I think I'll stop by the dollar store and see what's in stock.
Are you using a noise gate, Clive? It sounds like there’s one muting the ‘silences’.
Unwanted feature baked into firmware.
bigclivedotcom - I see! Or hear, more like! It doesn’t sound bad, but I did pick up on it. There’s worse things, like a high noise floor, poor audio quality, etc. You sound fine.
Pifco used to be a good company - they made some really good christmas lights in the 70's and 80's and various household gadgets ...... im not sure if pifco is the same company now though ?
Speaking of playing with LEDs, I've always wanted my LEDs to fade in and out like an incandescent bulb. Can't we do that using an inductor?
In this case it could be done with a larger value electrolytic capacitor.
So if you wanted to improve the pf on all led lamps throughout your house how would you do it? Replace the caps with resistors? Just thinking ahead when they do start charging.
The resistors are only suitable for where the combined LED voltage is high. Proper power factor correction requires quite complex circuitry. The LED filament lamps with simple linear current regulators are probably one of the best lamps for power factor.
@@bigclivedotcom something we all need to think about in the future with a house full pos.
Your videos are always better with a little dark & stormy. I prefer a girder personally though. If my soldering iron worked I’d do that to my lights. Talking of soldering iron, how come Americans can’t say that word?
Clive I just seen something on LEP it’s a new lighting technology that’s supposed to be the end-all and be-all I think the LEP stands for laser energized phosphorus seen a video of a flashlight that used one of these modules that looks a lot like a regular LED it actually was able to illuminate objects over 4600 meters away on a single 18650 battery is this for real. Do you think it’ll ever be practical?
LEP has been around in various forms for a very long time. One form was the microwave stimulated sulfur lamp used at EPCOT.
I bought a couple of the 5W PIFCO LED bulbs shortly after Poundland dropped that style for the Electrek brand in favour of the later ones, one cold white, one warm, nether of which I liked so they're languishing somewhere in my bedroom in a box of junk... :P
Hey Clive my poundland has just had delivery of their Xmas led light range, there are some interesting designs.
Looking forward to the stock coming over to the local store.
What is your opinion of these compared to more expensive tesco branded or other brands like osram?
It would be in the gu10 flavour.
Do they output similar light levels watt for watt, I've tried poundland bayonet led lights and they have been ok (electrek branded) but a bit of pot luck on how long they last, I've got two which have been going for about a year and a half but have had a few which have died in just a couple of months!
Whilst tesco lamps are more expensive, I've got bulbs from them which are heavily used and 4 years old so far and output a decent amount of light for the wattage drawn.
The supermarket lamps tend to be from a common manufacturer. I use the ASDA glass version and it's fine.
i have one of those lamps in my 6 lamp fixture and i hate it. my light switch has one of those neon indicators and it provides some power for this lamp, which annoyingly glows even when the lights are off
"Always change you leads from amps to voltage setting"
Yeh guess who kept forgetting and blowing up fuses!
If you own a Fluke meter, you soon remember as the fuses are about 20quid a set!!
@@Cornz38 yeh, found that out after blowing 3 and the boss telling me!
I am in the US. I have bought so many different types of LED lights from different brands and different sources. I didn't find a single one that uses a capacitor dropper, even the Dollar store ones.
Clive, at work our offices and some of our labs use a redundant power system called something like electrax (not sure on the spelling). You push the plug in and twist and isn't like any sort of plug I've seen before. Was wondering if you could do a video doing a bit of an explanation of how it works, the idea behind it etc. Cheers!
If the plugs are shaped like keys it uses a set of bus bars that run the full length of the strip. The plugs have contacts that engage with the bus bars when rotated.
@bigclivedotcom
Do you think there would be a way to add some kind of backup electronics, that when one circuit fails, the other takes the command and the lamp still works?
Don't fit the dodgy stuff in the first place.
If the power factor is low when using capacitive dropper, doesn't it only compensate for low power factor from electric motors ? So you get lower apparent power.
I've done the mod, seems to work (lights up ,no adjustments) on a dimmer switch. Bulb is quiet. Before the mod it buzzed angrily while lighting up, be nice if the bayonet fitting ones were more prominent on the shelves. Not really sure why they are selling Edison type in the first place,it can't all be due to the stubbornness of IKEA.
Yay for the return of Clive's naked hands! 👐👍👏
Nice video, glad to see that those LEDs are hackable to control the intensity and increase lifespan :)
On the subject of apparent power, do you know which (if any) electricity companies are charging their customers for apparent power?
Some states in the USA are charging for apparent power.
@@bigclivedotcom So no energy supplier in the UK as far as you know?
Also I just saw those PIFCO bulbs in Poundland today, but the power equivalence is quite low. They only rate the 5W bulb as equivalent to 32W, and the 3W is equivalent to 23W... Why don't they sell a 60W or 100W equivalent?
Hi Clive another great upload 😄. Just going back to the 6000LM LED Deformable Radar Garage Light Motion Activated Ceiling Lamp, can you recommend a driver to make it dimmable - or is it not possible? 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
It's tricky finding proper dimmable drivers. Some are sold as dimmable when they aren't.
In Australia you have the choice to purchase a light bulb with either bc22 or es. What other countries still use the bc fitting?
I don't think it's too many countries. Possibly mainly Britain and Oz.
Thanks Clive. Did you happen to do tests to find out what is the most reason for failure?
Heat in enclosed fixtures.
Clive, use an unconnected batten holder to hold the lamp whilst soldering
I remember PIFCO hair Dryers in the late '80's - early '90's
Wow, 𝑷𝒊𝒇𝒄𝒐, now there's a blast fae the past . Every other thing in my hoos was from 𝑷𝒊𝒇𝒄𝒐. Thanks for the memory. Lol.
Extra points for the italics!
@@edgeeffect 𝓣𝓱𝓪𝓷𝓴𝓼
Can't wait to see the look on the electric providers faces when they switch everyone over to apparent power.
There's going to be lots of houses that won't register on their systems. Thanks Clive.
I just saw these things in my local Dollar General store. I knew I should have bought one... (but I already replaced all my light bulbs--so I can't justify it!)
Also, if they start charging for "apparent power" wouldn't those things that correct the power factor suddenly, start being useful rather than junk?
It's not easy to correct electronic power factors. It requires quite complex circuitry in each device.
I think I'm going to get some of those 5W jobbies (in the Glasgow sense) to mess about with.
Huh huh huh huh.... "jobbie"
@@edgeeffect was wondering how long it would take to get a laugh.
Watchout for the PIFCO ladyVibe in a poundland near you soon?
Pifco brand is owned by RKW Ltd, who also own Tower, Elgento and Akai brands. I'd guess the bulbs have always been supplied by them, previously as a Poundland brand but now Pifco, probably just a contract change.
Hopefully next vid will be the failed Asda bulb ?
Those lamps may well outlast Human Civilisation! You'll certainly get better than the 50,000 hours we were promised with LEDs when they first came out!
Welcome home, Clive.
Also, yes, lead-free solder IS rubbish, and it's not juicy at all!
You mentioned smart meter charging . can you do a video on this thanks .