One reason for a maintained OPEN light would be to indicate a route is accessible in an environment where "fail secure" has priority over "fail safe", this would be complemented with a "closed" sign
My first thought was for a door with access control that had failed open during a powercut, but in which case you'd want the sign to be off when power was available and only come on when it failed ..
It's definitely odd - I wouldn't put it past them to have just put different words in the same frame, but I can imagine that there are situations where workplaces need to notify you of that, much the same as 'ON AIR' signs in radio/TV! Perhaps if you want to warn someone that there's a portal to another dimension next door that hasn't been blocked off...
Simon Hollingshead oh that last one, thats gonna be useful. I hate it when people trip into the interdimensional portals I forget to block occasionally
I was thinking something similar, I can imagine a number of services that may need to indicate they're "open" in an "emergency". Even just a help desk or something at a hotel.
For 24 Hour shops in a power cut?.... but then who is going to go into a dark shop in a power cut? Then again I work in retail and the amount of people at the end of the day as we are leaving who still ask "are you closed?" is bothersome to say the least.... the urge to say "No we are still open, we just wanted to see if customers could still get in with the shutters down and lights off while we watch with our coats and bags outside..."
trustnoone81 use this simple component in every circuit to trick your power meter!! electric companies hate it!!! (insert imagination... red - green flashing text)
Meh, I can do it better. *MUST WATCH!!!! VERY WEIRD OPEN SIGN WITH DANGEROUS SCHEMATIC!!!! (SHOCKING!!), (GONE WRONG!!), (GONE SEXUAL!!) // FREE 200 FIDGET SPINNERS GIVEAWAY + RED HOT KNIFE VIDEOS AT THE END!!!! WATCH IT RIGHT NOW!!!!!!*
Look at 30s. They also have a CLOSE sign. Not CLOSED but CLOSE. So perhaps think in terms of there being something which you need to open or close even in a power-down situation. A door, a gate, a valve or similar.
Chinese manufacturers are getting smart. They made a weird emergency "open" sign so they could entice Clive to buy one for review of their circuitry. He probably wouldn't do it on a normal bases so this would get him to do so.
The capacitors across the LED string may be to reduce EMI from the boost oscillator and the peak current/voltage across the LEDs. For you to read a 9mA average current through the LEDs which total ~18V, the boost circuitry from the 1.25V NiCd cell must be pulling around 150mA through the inductor. Without capacitors to average the flyback's output current, the LEDs would be seeing those ~150mA peaks and might not live long.
Yeah, I don't think the results would be too good without the caps. I think the reason they use two is the small capacitor can handle the high-frequency part that would shorten the life of the bigger capacitor. That way you don't have to pay for expensive low-ESR caps.
My parents had a small snack bar (hot dog, hamburgers, fries and lunch special during the week) when I was young, all the cooking stuff was gas operated. This was before electronic payment, It stayed open during power outages. It was a small place so the two emergency lights and a few candles were enough to provide enough light to see.
"I could test that, I can test that, I will test that!" Big Clive 2017 Also if you put some of those colour changing LED's so people would know you're OPEN to party regardless of power or lack there of.
Customers who need this are probably used to buying things that are somewhat repurposed, and leaving it under "emergency lighting" foreshadows the feature set exactly; it is actually an emergency exit sign with different front paint. Real customers will understand, even if bigclive doesn't. He's just playing with it, he isn't the intended customer.
Getting plastic push pins off - It helps to have an assortment of ink pen tubes. You can cut or heat and expand them to various hole sizes so that they can be slipped over the push pin, retracting the tabs on it enough to fit through the holes of the panel they're mounting. You can also buy some aluminum rod and make holes in each piece with incrementally larger drill bits (on a drill press).
Maybe it's used in places where an exit door is usually kept closed but designed to fail open with power loss (perhaps an electromagnetically locked door)?
I would want to add N.O. momentary switch(es) connected across the transistors in the same way he shorted them, to add ON/OFF functionality to the sign though, as a mains-connected open sign that stays on for (at least) three hours after you unplug it is kind of a pain, you'd have to physically take it down each day. Just ditch the "test" board and add it in there, then this is a pretty functional product.
In remote areas, where power is intermittent, being open but lacking mains is a not uncommon situation. My Dad worked in a service station that had a couple of pumps that had crank handles for emergency use and some nasty petrol lamps in the window that gave enough light to pump and read the meters. Last fuel for, oh, quite some miles, in 1960s Australia. Late night power drop out were not uncommon. He very quickly rigged a couple of car batteries and some sealed beam headlights to give decent light, as he slept behind the counter on night call and the petrol lamps smelled and were too bright to sleep under. There was a bell on a chain for service, if the station was unmanned, the bell pull was hauled up out of reach and the "ring bell" sign turned around, very high tech.
John S i am thinking the same but EXIT might then be better...? Another guess: The manufacturer tricks everyone into buying these as (uncertified) emergency signs but still can say „it’s just an open sign“
I took apart a certified battery backed exit sign awhile back and interestingly the latch circuit was very very similar to this one. A good way to describe it is it has an SCR-like action, which can be modeled as two transistors (one NPN, one PNP) cross coupled back to back. The set in this sign is no exception. In the sign I took apart, it has two pads on the board which I presume were used in manufacturing to turn it off for shipping when shorted out.
I love the "Not quite compliant with UK Standards"! After all, who needs earth continuity (on a METAL cased item too!), reasonable isolation, etc!. "China Electronics - Thinning the Herd, one accident at a time" !!
Thank you for showing these "random" items from Ebay. Every video is like xmas you never know what you will get or find! I have been window shoping on ebay for a few weeks now and there is alot of stuff there. I like when you provide the seller's name and if its good or bad. Oh one more thing i noticed you roughly calculated how long the battery would last with the current load. I would love to see more of that "Detail" when it comes to battery charged things.
I enjoyed the technique you demonstrated for turning it off. If you're running a shop in an outdoor market with intermittent power then having a sign that stays on during the power cut could be a huge competitive advantage! If it is dark out and you're servicing tourists with oil lamps for light, the shop with this thing will be visible as open from hundreds of feet, whereas the people with only lamps people have to get right up close to the stall to see that it is actually open.
Proper emergency exits signs should be wired into a lighting circuit with an in-line fuse. Had to have two installed in our own small theatre here in France. A local electrician wired them into the mains circuit so we had to change them to conform. An emergency light must be tested periodically and a record kept, hence the test button. Quality emergency lights can be wired either always on or only on when power off (or if in the switch circuit when the house / auditorium lights are off.) They also have an end that opens to accept different signs / symbols i.e. arrow left / right or below sign to indicate where the emergency door is.
Same fucking shit mate. The only difference is the amount of stickers issued by government institutions and the massive tax stemming from it. Watch's AvE's video "BOLTR $500 industrial flashlight" about it.
debbie62140 Can't be set up for power fail only here in Australia anymore apparently. We had ours set up for manual switching plus power fail, but had to go always on when we needed new ones. Something to do with power not necessarily being out when you need to evacuate (like in a fire I guess).
Yup.. those notorious small plastic rounded nubs.. soft and sharpedged but a pain to get loose when hooked. The pliers will make it flat and even worse.
just a quick suggestion re. the mounting pillars that caused you so much trouble....... if you remove the ink refil from a BIC biro, pushing the empty plastic case over the pins releases them with ease.
Maybe it's for a shop that sells backup batteries and such for computers. What better advertisement that having your shop remain open during a power outage!
I wish I knew half of what you do about this stuff (as it is maybe 15% is in my knowledge at 62, but still learning). I have always loved to tear things apart to see how they work. The problem with that is, once I find out what I want to, that item never seems to get back together and/or even the parts get used for something else. Really enjoy what you are doing though, thanks for the share/info. Because of people like you I have started my own youtube page and can only hope to do half as much as you do to help others. Subed and thumbs up. Semper Fi
Seems obvious to me , you fix the sign on the outside of your door and it tells you when your door is open even in the event of a power fail ! GENIUS :-)
Hi Clive, big fan of all your videos. Thank you. On the matter of checking earth continuity you must have come across the fact that however metallic looking the frame might be, anodising does not conduct electricity. I found this out the head-scratching hard way when I used a scrap as the contact plate on a home-made cigarette lighter socket. Anodising is also ridiculously hard and a bugger to remove. Will
I have been in facilities that have doors that are locked with electric locks in case of a power failure a few doors have a emergency unlock and it has a sign that glows open above it when the power is cut. Mind you the signs on those doors are made up to code.
I would tend to think that the 100nf cap across the LEDs is to filter the transient spike from the choke so it doesn't damage them. I would equally assume the larger value cap is to reduce the flicker effect. At least that's my guess.
and my "WbAW" probably has an update to, i should go check. that is "Whiteboard Audio Workstation" instead of a DAW, I had to demonstrate audio editing to help explain something but I saw a whiteboard on the table. you can figure out what happened from there. P.S. I think DaveCAD is higher quality and doesn't crash as often. lol
One of those things that may well be worth the purchase for the frame work parts and perhaps the LED setup. Well lots of things to play with. I recently picked up the top part of one of those solar sidewalk illumination lights at a yard sale for a quarter. It works great when supplied with a AA battery, and is very bright to my surprise. Must be the same sort of setup, however when I took it apart it had very few components, I expected to see a sort of juele thief setup but not quite so, I guess because of the light sensor and solar cell but it is a very small board and very few components. Mostly run by an IC with a couple of transistors and a resistor or two as well as an inducter in the guise of a resistor type case. These things are great to tear down and reuse, not sure what I am going to do with the little light, right now it lays on my end table and when the mood strikes me, I put a cell in it and play around. Doesn't take much to entertain an old man who grew up in the Kerosene lamp age, and ushered in the dawn on the electronic world.
Oh ya, man I still recall looking over my fathers shoulder as he poked around in our old AM radio. I ran on a large battery pack, almost identical to the ones I used in the old AN/PRC77 radios in Nam. He would tell me to look for the glow in the tube to try and decide which one was going bad when the old radio misbehaved. That radio was the entertainment center for us back in the 1950's, and my love for electricity grew from those days. When we moved off the farm and into town, where we had electricity, I began tearing apart every electronic thing I could find, regular trips to the dump ground found me tons of things to tear down, and rebuild into HI-FI sets, this was before Stereo came along. Yes it was a wonderful time indeed, I was in the US Army as a communicator for 8 years during, well the first 8 years of 1970 beginning working with field phones and wire, and ending up running my own communications section at an infantry company level , with cross-training in land line teletype, and radio teletype, those early RATT rigs were huge and needed a deuce and a half to haul, the latter versions were on 5 quarter trucks and much more compact, and more powerful with their SSb radios.
It's an open sign for 24 hour convienence stores. So they can lure you in only to tell you nothing can be bought because there is no power for the cash register to function.
Incredible how this can be cheaper than Capacitive dropper -> 0.05-0.1$ 5v regulator -> 0.2$ lithium battery charger IC - > battery -> 4.2v from battery OR 5v from mains (two diodes, higher voltage wins) - > leds with a current limiting resistor. In a normal world, just having so many different resistor values and different transistors and old Ni-Cd batteries and so many through hole components would be more expensive than a much smaller number of parts you could buy in higher volume)
OPEN could be to designate the/an unlocked door. The NiCd battery should be easier to replace every 3-5 years with out destructive access. Planned obsolescence?
Hi there i was wondering if you can fix my car amplifiers i have around 5 that need fixing, problems are safe mode, blown channels, cuts off also a few car stereos.
With the common simple capacitive dropper circuit, I have often wondered why the capacitor could not be connected AFTER the bridge rectifier. As I recall, the full-wave rectified waveform has a frequency of 100Hz, double the 50Hz mains frequency, so a dropper capacitor of half the value could be utilised to give the same current. (Impedance = 1/2пFC)
An emergency OPEN sign would be useful for things like hospitals, emergency shelters for storms or what not, Maybe police stations and firehouses as well. That would be my guess for it
Handy if you run a shop in a country with lots of power cuts due to wire thefts, coal strikes or power struggles, and you want to keep the shop open in times of trouble and strife
Much naughtiness here! Mod time! Get one 5v DPDT relay, and wire the N.O. contacts across the dropper cap, and the other set across the "test" switch. Drain the batteries with a resistor. Now hook up the coil of the relay so it turns on once there's a power outage. Put everything back together and give it some schmuck you don't like. At first, nothing will happen as the batteries will have to charge. When they leave the shop for the day, the batteries will now light the sign, and said schmuck will now be unhappy that their "open" sign is still lit. They'll likely unplug it, thus arming the new "self destruct" feature! Now stand back when you see them go to plug the sign in again!!! :) Or better yet, see if you can sell the "new and improved" design back to the Chinese - make sure to undercut their own prices for even more fun!
I think its for country's with very ify power supply you have a sign that works even when the power goes out. In some 3:d world country's is fairly common. But of cause, the charging time of 3 days may be a problem
why do I always feel compelled to read all the comments on things like this as if I were to expect that somebody has answered it? I was thinking possibly roadways/ tunnels/ Gates where one road would remain open and one road remained closed.
Maybe the initial design just calls for the aluminium back plate to be a matching "CLOSED" glass instead, and you just turn it around when you leave...
Nice little circuit clive :-D So the battery keeps the pnp off via the base resistor., so no output. But when power is applied the diode keeps the pnp off with force and over rides the bottom npn, no matter what its resistance is. Then if the power is removed the diode doesnt have any effect and the npn has enough gain to turn the pnp on. Close enough ?
Hey mate, are you doing anything (meet up, etc.) for your subs who are visiting for the TT this year? Keep up the vids mate, I learn a lot from them and it's appreciated. Cheers!
The only thing that comes to mind is that some country denotes an 'open' exit in power loss conditions.the same way the US denotes an 'exit' in the same situation.
You often mention that you cannot turn this sign off! but they why would you need the catch-latch circuit in this light? Could they not just connect the led's to the battery and the AC as a charging circuit on there? Also, as you mention you cannot turn it off, how did you turn it off in between the breaking it open and the detailed view?
I went to California recently, where Marijuana stores were EVERYWHERE. This sign looks like it's for that application. Same color green as the usual green crosses they have outside said stores. BUT WHY DOES IT HAVE AN EMERGENCY LIGHT FEATURE!?!?!?
Hi Clive, In my opinion, the "latch" circuit is arranged so that it cuts the power when the battery discharges at 0.8 volts (roughly), thus preventing the step-up circuit from over-discharging it: what do you think?
would totally use that for a mount for high power cheap leds n to hide the power supply and a fan...pretty cool unit, you can do a crap ton with the parts!
Could it be to indicate where the contraption to open the emergency exit is located? Bit of a long shot maybe, but we're talking about China, after all..
You know how it is easy to forget looking at a screen-shot of a computer screen and then try to scroll or close it? I did something similar with this video. I closed my eyes when he was nipping off the plastic clips holding the boards into the channels. You know... to protect my eyes from flying bits of plastic because I don't have my safety glasses on...
Hi Clive, sorry for the OT but I wondered if you have come across a decent supplier for LED drivers for the high power chips? I recently got drivers that were rated for 36V AC/DC input although I ordered mains drivers. Thanks in advance.
bigclivedotcom Yeah that sucks. But at least I hopefully got a decent supplier for 50W 5600K chips at last. I ordered one for around 2.50€ to check out which turned out surprisingly good. Now I'm waiting for the second shipment of another nine chips.
One reason for a maintained OPEN light would be to indicate a route is accessible in an environment where "fail secure" has priority over "fail safe", this would be complemented with a "closed" sign
+Tom Varley They do indeed have a matching sign that says CLOSE.
My first thought was for a door with access control that had failed open during a powercut, but in which case you'd want the sign to be off when power was available and only come on when it failed ..
bigclivedotcom
But you can't turn the sign off without taking it apart.
If you cut a vertical slit in the mask, you could slide the N over to make it say "NOPE" when you closed the store.
"PEON" - alert native born trainees : to start - a new day's first shift - for their : celery - I mean salary : a sandwich *_R > G_*
OKAY now I need one. Nope sign modification to be performed. Thanks
You can just clean the paint off with a solvent, make letter stencils then get a can of spray paint and it will say anything you want.
ChrisD433
im laughing so hard
It's definitely odd - I wouldn't put it past them to have just put different words in the same frame, but I can imagine that there are situations where workplaces need to notify you of that, much the same as 'ON AIR' signs in radio/TV! Perhaps if you want to warn someone that there's a portal to another dimension next door that hasn't been blocked off...
Simon Hollingshead oh that last one, thats gonna be useful. I hate it when people trip into the interdimensional portals I forget to block occasionally
drkastenbrot the liability insurance on that must be dreadful!
Maybe it's for emergency shelters, those are the only places I can think that would want to have glowing open signs in case of a storm or something
There are more Chinese products than markets. I'd say even if there isn't a market, there's a cheap Chinese product for it
Or maybe the Chinese folks who made it have no idea what it says.
I was thinking something similar, I can imagine a number of services that may need to indicate they're "open" in an "emergency". Even just a help desk or something at a hotel.
For 24 Hour shops in a power cut?.... but then who is going to go into a dark shop in a power cut? Then again I work in retail and the amount of people at the end of the day as we are leaving who still ask "are you closed?" is bothersome to say the least.... the urge to say "No we are still open, we just wanted to see if customers could still get in with the shutters down and lights off while we watch with our coats and bags outside..."
Charlie Fleming Power generator or backup lights.
Would you doing that be considered " reckless abandonment "?
_This weird schematic will shock you, electricians hate it!_
trustnoone81 use this simple component in every circuit to trick your power meter!! electric companies hate it!!! (insert imagination... red - green flashing text)
Lmao yeah, that's where my mind goes every single time I see a non-clickbait video title that happens to have "weird" in it.
Meh, I can do it better.
*MUST WATCH!!!! VERY WEIRD OPEN SIGN WITH DANGEROUS SCHEMATIC!!!! (SHOCKING!!), (GONE WRONG!!), (GONE SEXUAL!!) // FREE 200 FIDGET SPINNERS GIVEAWAY + RED HOT KNIFE VIDEOS AT THE END!!!! WATCH IT RIGHT NOW!!!!!!*
Look at 30s. They also have a CLOSE sign. Not CLOSED but CLOSE. So perhaps think in terms of there being something which you need to open or close even in a power-down situation. A door, a gate, a valve or similar.
Chinese manufacturers are getting smart. They made a weird emergency "open" sign so they could entice Clive to buy one for review of their circuitry. He probably wouldn't do it on a normal bases so this would get him to do so.
I was disappointed I couldn't find one lol
The capacitors across the LED string may be to reduce EMI from the boost oscillator and the peak current/voltage across the LEDs. For you to read a 9mA average current through the LEDs which total ~18V, the boost circuitry from the 1.25V NiCd cell must be pulling around 150mA through the inductor. Without capacitors to average the flyback's output current, the LEDs would be seeing those ~150mA peaks and might not live long.
Yeah, I don't think the results would be too good without the caps. I think the reason they use two is the small capacitor can handle the high-frequency part that would shorten the life of the bigger capacitor. That way you don't have to pay for expensive low-ESR caps.
My parents had a small snack bar (hot dog, hamburgers, fries and lunch special during the week) when I was young, all the cooking stuff was gas operated. This was before electronic payment, It stayed open during power outages. It was a small place so the two emergency lights and a few candles were enough to provide enough light to see.
"I could test that, I can test that, I will test that!" Big Clive 2017
Also if you put some of those colour changing LED's so people would know you're OPEN to party regardless of power or lack there of.
It's a sign for 24/7 shops. :D
daoneTM I'm sure that's what it was intended for, but the eBay listing still said "Emergency Lighting"
what if the creator was a non English speaker? mind 🌟blown ✴️
Customers who need this are probably used to buying things that are somewhat repurposed, and leaving it under "emergency lighting" foreshadows the feature set exactly; it is actually an emergency exit sign with different front paint. Real customers will understand, even if bigclive doesn't. He's just playing with it, he isn't the intended customer.
railspony what real customer would need this? why not just buy an actual exit sign?
Or 4/20 shops.
Getting plastic push pins off - It helps to have an assortment of ink pen tubes. You can cut or heat and expand them to various hole sizes so that they can be slipped over the push pin, retracting the tabs on it enough to fit through the holes of the panel they're mounting. You can also buy some aluminum rod and make holes in each piece with incrementally larger drill bits (on a drill press).
"Shop that's open during a power cuts." - That's hilarious! :-D
Maybe it's used in places where an exit door is usually kept closed but designed to fail open with power loss (perhaps an electromagnetically locked door)?
Emergency "OPEN" signs are good for areas with unreliable power grids. There's a fortune to be made here, I'm sure of it.
I would want to add N.O. momentary switch(es) connected across the transistors in the same way he shorted them, to add ON/OFF functionality to the sign though, as a mains-connected open sign that stays on for (at least) three hours after you unplug it is kind of a pain, you'd have to physically take it down each day. Just ditch the "test" board and add it in there, then this is a pretty functional product.
Yep, our registers are down and anti-theft devices don't work but everyone must know we're still OPEN ;-)
Ain't nobody got electric registers or card readers in the third world.
think about what you just typed gant
My first comment was sarcasm.
In remote areas, where power is intermittent, being open but lacking mains is a not uncommon situation. My Dad worked in a service station that had a couple of pumps that had crank handles for emergency use and some nasty petrol lamps in the window that gave enough light to pump and read the meters. Last fuel for, oh, quite some miles, in 1960s Australia. Late night power drop out were not uncommon.
He very quickly rigged a couple of car batteries and some sealed beam headlights to give decent light, as he slept behind the counter on night call and the petrol lamps smelled and were too bright to sleep under. There was a bell on a chain for service, if the station was unmanned, the bell pull was hauled up out of reach and the "ring bell" sign turned around, very high tech.
The sign might be for indicating an open door that is electrically locked but defaults open for emergency exit?
John S i am thinking the same but EXIT might then be better...?
Another guess: The manufacturer tricks everyone into buying these as (uncertified) emergency signs but still can say „it’s just an open sign“
"You WILL be OPEN on Christmas eve to sell me batteries and spray cheese-in-a-can!"
I would love a big clive teaches eletronics series
Agreed, that would be great. I believe he has mentioned doing this series in a previous video.
Isn't that what this channel is already?
I took apart a certified battery backed exit sign awhile back and interestingly the latch circuit was very very similar to this one. A good way to describe it is it has an SCR-like action, which can be modeled as two transistors (one NPN, one PNP) cross coupled back to back. The set in this sign is no exception. In the sign I took apart, it has two pads on the board which I presume were used in manufacturing to turn it off for shipping when shorted out.
I love the "Not quite compliant with UK Standards"! After all, who needs earth continuity (on a METAL cased item too!), reasonable isolation, etc!. "China Electronics - Thinning the Herd, one accident at a time" !!
14:17 - "I could test that...I can test that...I will test that..." I was waiting for him to say, "I have the power!" LOL
Thank you for showing these "random" items from Ebay. Every video is like xmas you never know what you will get or find!
I have been window shoping on ebay for a few weeks now and there is alot of stuff there. I like when you provide the seller's name and if its good or bad. Oh one more thing i noticed you roughly calculated how long the battery would last with the current load. I would love to see more of that "Detail" when it comes to battery charged things.
I enjoyed the technique you demonstrated for turning it off.
If you're running a shop in an outdoor market with intermittent power then having a sign that stays on during the power cut could be a huge competitive advantage! If it is dark out and you're servicing tourists with oil lamps for light, the shop with this thing will be visible as open from hundreds of feet, whereas the people with only lamps people have to get right up close to the stall to see that it is actually open.
Now it would be interesting to see a emergency light that is build to code dissected for a comparison.....
+Carsten Langbo That will happen.
Proper emergency exits signs should be wired into a lighting circuit with an in-line fuse. Had to have two installed in our own small theatre here in France. A local electrician wired them into the mains circuit so we had to change them to conform. An emergency light must be tested periodically and a record kept, hence the test button. Quality emergency lights can be wired either always on or only on when power off (or if in the switch circuit when the house / auditorium lights are off.) They also have an end that opens to accept different signs / symbols i.e. arrow left / right or below sign to indicate where the emergency door is.
Same fucking shit mate. The only difference is the amount of stickers issued by government institutions and the massive tax stemming from it. Watch's AvE's video "BOLTR $500 industrial flashlight" about it.
debbie62140
Can't be set up for power fail only here in Australia anymore apparently. We had ours set up for manual switching plus power fail, but had to go always on when we needed new ones. Something to do with power not necessarily being out when you need to evacuate (like in a fire I guess).
bigclivedotcom I have a few
Love your reverse engineering analysis work on these gadgets Clive. Good job!
Yup.. those notorious small plastic rounded nubs.. soft and sharpedged but a pain to get loose when hooked. The pliers will make it flat and even worse.
I was impressed with the collector & emitter shorting to turn on the LEDs. Smooth.
Submit your useless emergency signs here:
"Danger: High Impedance"
"Baked Goods"
"Not Out To Lunch"
"Enter"
"Ladies Only"
just a quick suggestion re. the mounting pillars that caused you so much trouble....... if you remove the ink refil from a BIC biro, pushing the empty plastic case over the pins releases them with ease.
Maybe it's for a shop that sells backup batteries and such for computers. What better advertisement that having your shop remain open during a power outage!
Clearly you need to pair it with an unmaintained emergency 'NOT' light.
I wish I knew half of what you do about this stuff (as it is maybe 15% is in my knowledge at 62, but still learning). I have always loved to tear things apart to see how they work. The problem with that is, once I find out what I want to, that item never seems to get back together and/or even the parts get used for something else. Really enjoy what you are doing though, thanks for the share/info. Because of people like you I have started my own youtube page and can only hope to do half as much as you do to help others. Subed and thumbs up. Semper Fi
you should do a room tour im sure a lot of people would like to see it
It could be put next to the cabinet with emergency exit keys for example, telling the user to open the cabinet if it's too dark to see a regular sign.
Perfect for arkwrights shop
Seems obvious to me , you fix the sign on the outside of your door and it tells you when your door is open even in the event of a power fail ! GENIUS :-)
Hi Clive,
big fan of all your videos. Thank you.
On the matter of checking earth continuity you must have come across the fact that however metallic looking the frame might be, anodising does not conduct electricity. I found this out the head-scratching hard way when I used a scrap as the contact plate on a home-made cigarette lighter socket. Anodising is also ridiculously hard and a bugger to remove.
Will
This would be handy in Venezuela, you could stay open during the rolling blackouts. If you had anything to sell.
I have been in facilities that have doors that are locked with electric locks in case of a power failure a few doors have a emergency unlock and it has a sign that glows open above it when the power is cut. Mind you the signs on those doors are made up to code.
you could use for a farmers market (or other off grid shops). Just plug it at home and you have three hours of open sign
just like my emergency light flashlight torch, all I had to do was add a battery switch and cord.
that sounds useful
You've got it upside down. It's a Molvanîan sign denoting the location of the Vlasouki supply. It reads *N3dO*
I would tend to think that the 100nf cap across the LEDs is to filter the transient spike from the choke so it doesn't damage them. I would equally assume the larger value cap is to reduce the flicker effect. At least that's my guess.
19:31 Why would you need a giant open sign in your home?
CliveCAD received an update? I'll have to download the new patch when I get home.
and my "WbAW" probably has an update to, i should go check. that is "Whiteboard Audio Workstation" instead of a DAW, I had to demonstrate audio editing to help explain something but I saw a whiteboard on the table. you can figure out what happened from there.
P.S. I think DaveCAD is higher quality and doesn't crash as often. lol
One of those things that may well be worth the purchase for the frame work parts and perhaps the LED setup. Well lots of things to play with. I recently picked up the top part of one of those solar sidewalk illumination lights at a yard sale for a quarter. It works great when supplied with a AA battery, and is very bright to my surprise. Must be the same sort of setup, however when I took it apart it had very few components, I expected to see a sort of juele thief setup but not quite so, I guess because of the light sensor and solar cell but it is a very small board and very few components. Mostly run by an IC with a couple of transistors and a resistor or two as well as an inducter in the guise of a resistor type case. These things are great to tear down and reuse, not sure what I am going to do with the little light, right now it lays on my end table and when the mood strikes me, I put a cell in it and play around. Doesn't take much to entertain an old man who grew up in the Kerosene lamp age, and ushered in the dawn on the electronic world.
+Jerry Ericsson If I can travel back in time I'd go back to the 70's to usher in the electronic era again. It was just an incredible time.
Oh ya, man I still recall looking over my fathers shoulder as he poked around in our old AM radio. I ran on a large battery pack, almost identical to the ones I used in the old AN/PRC77 radios in Nam. He would tell me to look for the glow in the tube to try and decide which one was going bad when the old radio misbehaved. That radio was the entertainment center for us back in the 1950's, and my love for electricity grew from those days. When we moved off the farm and into town, where we had electricity, I began tearing apart every electronic thing I could find, regular trips to the dump ground found me tons of things to tear down, and rebuild into HI-FI sets, this was before Stereo came along. Yes it was a wonderful time indeed, I was in the US Army as a communicator for 8 years during, well the first 8 years of 1970 beginning working with field phones and wire, and ending up running my own communications section at an infantry company level , with cross-training in land line teletype, and radio teletype, those early RATT rigs were huge and needed a deuce and a half to haul, the latter versions were on 5 quarter trucks and much more compact, and more powerful with their SSb radios.
Clive , seem you had difficulty "opening" this sign ?
It's an open sign for 24 hour convienence stores. So they can lure you in only to tell you nothing can be bought because there is no power for the cash register to function.
they can't because the tween's that they higher don't know how to do math in their head ( nor did they care to learn? ).
Incredible how this can be cheaper than Capacitive dropper -> 0.05-0.1$ 5v regulator -> 0.2$ lithium battery charger IC - > battery -> 4.2v from battery OR 5v from mains (two diodes, higher voltage wins) - > leds with a current limiting resistor.
In a normal world, just having so many different resistor values and different transistors and old Ni-Cd batteries and so many through hole components would be more expensive than a much smaller number of parts you could buy in higher volume)
OPEN could be to designate the/an unlocked door. The NiCd battery should be easier to replace every 3-5 years with out destructive access. Planned obsolescence?
Hi there
i was wondering if you can fix my car amplifiers i have around 5 that need fixing, problems are safe mode, blown channels, cuts off also a few car stereos.
How is the glass masked off? Could you clean it off w/ some acetone and make your own mask for it? Maybe put some ws2812 lights around the inside?
With the common simple capacitive dropper circuit, I have often wondered why the capacitor could not be connected AFTER the bridge rectifier. As I recall, the full-wave rectified waveform has a frequency of 100Hz, double the 50Hz mains frequency, so a dropper capacitor of half the value could be utilised to give the same current. (Impedance = 1/2пFC)
It needs the alternating polarity.
What a strange design choice!
Change it to red LED's and it's useful for Ladies of Negotiable Affection ;)
And replace the front panel with SLUTS.
+bigclivedotcom - You never cease to impress!!
I didn't realize that brits didn't/had not coined their own word for those. Now I feel a little less americanski.
...And add flashing LED's for extra effect.
Why not OPEN SLUTS?
An emergency OPEN sign would be useful for things like hospitals, emergency shelters for storms or what not, Maybe police stations and firehouses as well. That would be my guess for it
Handy if you run a shop in a country with lots of power cuts due to wire thefts, coal strikes or power struggles, and you want to keep the shop open in times of trouble and strife
The latching part looks sophisticated. Looks like a logic algorithm. Would a solenoid be an alternative? Brilient interesting video. Thanks.
Much naughtiness here! Mod time! Get one 5v DPDT relay, and wire the N.O. contacts across the dropper cap, and the other set across the "test" switch. Drain the batteries with a resistor. Now hook up the coil of the relay so it turns on once there's a power outage. Put everything back together and give it some schmuck you don't like. At first, nothing will happen as the batteries will have to charge. When they leave the shop for the day, the batteries will now light the sign, and said schmuck will now be unhappy that their "open" sign is still lit. They'll likely unplug it, thus arming the new "self destruct" feature! Now stand back when you see them go to plug the sign in again!!! :) Or better yet, see if you can sell the "new and improved" design back to the Chinese - make sure to undercut their own prices for even more fun!
I think its for country's with very ify power supply you have a sign that works even when the power goes out.
In some 3:d world country's is fairly common. But of cause, the charging time of 3 days may be a problem
Perhaps it's for areas / countries that suffer from brownouts or power cuts, that way your open sign would always stay on...
Being not a native English speaker, it makes perfect sense to use this to show an exit is open.
This open sign in probably intended for brothels. Open 24 hours even if the power is out.
Strange item indeed. What whould be the easiest way to modify this with a button/switch so you can turn it on or off?
why do I always feel compelled to read all the comments on things like this as if I were to expect that somebody has answered it?
I was thinking possibly roadways/ tunnels/ Gates where one road would remain open and one road remained closed.
i assume the sign is intended to be flipped around when the store is closed hence the two rings at the top for hanging the sign
what power supply has a good power factor?
The open sign which needs a tiny set of curtains for when your closed.
Maybe the initial design just calls for the aluminium back plate to be a matching "CLOSED" glass instead, and you just turn it around when you leave...
tape on the top right side?
Really enjoyed watching that one, Clive. Great explanation.
How long usually before that battery will start leaking?
It's NiCd so probably not for a while.
Nice little circuit clive :-D
So the battery keeps the pnp off via the base resistor., so no output.
But when power is applied the diode keeps the pnp off with force and over rides the bottom npn, no matter what its resistance is.
Then if the power is removed the diode doesnt have any effect and the npn has enough gain to turn the pnp on.
Close enough ?
It's for a business that wants to keep going in a blackout, probably useful in countries where the power is unreliable.
This makes most sense to me, i cant see any other reason
Hey mate, are you doing anything (meet up, etc.) for your subs who are visiting for the TT this year? Keep up the vids mate, I learn a lot from them and it's appreciated. Cheers!
I really should do a Manx-meet.
"open light" infort of open "normally closed" Doors in some cases, public building for example.
The only thing that comes to mind is that some country denotes an 'open' exit in power loss conditions.the same way the US denotes an 'exit' in the same situation.
Nice to see the reflection at 3:00. Looks like my own desk which has piles of electronics just outside of the camera. :)
+Bas van der Sluis All productive work benches are piled high. A clear bench is a sign of inactivity.
I don't find the latch cct. perplexing. It's the battery discharge cct. that stumps me.
You often mention that you cannot turn this sign off! but they why would you need the catch-latch circuit in this light? Could they not just connect the led's to the battery and the AC as a charging circuit on there?
Also, as you mention you cannot turn it off, how did you turn it off in between the breaking it open and the detailed view?
A very quick shunt of the battery to put it into standby mode.
I went to California recently, where Marijuana stores were EVERYWHERE. This sign looks like it's for that application. Same color green as the usual green crosses they have outside said stores. BUT WHY DOES IT HAVE AN EMERGENCY LIGHT FEATURE!?!?!?
you would use this for a emergency door, which is normally open. when people expect it to be normally closed
Pleasant and Deep Voice,you should work in radio or news
Hi Clive,
In my opinion, the "latch" circuit is arranged so that it cuts the power when the battery discharges at 0.8 volts (roughly), thus preventing the step-up circuit from over-discharging it: what do you think?
It cuts off at 0.85V
Many thanks, Clive!
would totally use that for a mount for high power cheap leds n to hide the power supply and a fan...pretty cool unit, you can do a crap ton with the parts!
Your one clever bloke Clive. Thanks good video.
I guess that explains why the open sign is still lit and the darn place is closed with the lights out!
Could it be to indicate where the contraption to open the emergency exit is located? Bit of a long shot maybe, but we're talking about China, after all..
,Possibly linked with a magnetic door lock, showing that the door is open in an emergency situation?
You know how it is easy to forget looking at a screen-shot of a computer screen and then try to scroll or close it? I did something similar with this video. I closed my eyes when he was nipping off the plastic clips holding the boards into the channels. You know... to protect my eyes from flying bits of plastic because I don't have my safety glasses on...
Happy Easter 🐣 glad of the upload.
Ronnie Barker could have used one of these (and maybe you could have sorted out the spring tension in his till)
lol, this just tickled me , an open sign that won't let you close!
Suitable for a 24hr shop i guess.
It would be great in areas such as india with the rolling blackouts. other than that? not too sure.
I'm sure removing the fault LED really boosted the QC pass rate.
Hey what if you are open 24/7 and there was a black out and you're selling power generators
How do we get in touch with you Clive?
Is it easy to remove the film off the glass plate to change the light's appearance, or is that not possible/hard to do?
It's not dissolving with acetone. It might be baked on enamel.
Thank you!
That aluminium frame would make nice coolers for led's. You could make some cupboard lights from them.
Hi Clive,
sorry for the OT but I wondered if you have come across a decent supplier for LED drivers for the high power chips?
I recently got drivers that were rated for 36V AC/DC input although I ordered mains drivers.
Thanks in advance.
It's all a bit random when you order online. And even several units from the same supplier might be different.
bigclivedotcom
Yeah that sucks. But at least I hopefully got a decent supplier for 50W 5600K chips at last. I ordered one for around 2.50€ to check out which turned out surprisingly good. Now I'm waiting for the second shipment of another nine chips.
Против Глобал
I don't hope so.
bigclivedotcom
Hey Clive,
I just found this shop on the Chinese eBay.
Seems to be legit and they sell all you need LED-wise.
s.aliexpress.com/ZFjeANzi