Poundland lights unexpected feature and USB mod.
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- Опубліковано 10 вер 2024
- It turns out that the sets of battery operated fairy lights at Poundland have an extra feature not mentioned on the packaging. The way it's been implemented is "economic" but still seems OK.
I also used a couple of 10 ohm quarter watt resistors to convert a 120 LED string for USB use. The current is about 100mA which is quite bright and high enough to keep most "intelligent" USB powerbanks awake. This USB mod will work for most parallel LED strings that don't have the two-wire multi-channel effects (two channels relying on polarity reversal).
For higher intensity you could use a single 10 ohm resistor, but it would need to be rated at about 1W to keep cool. Likewise you could get longer run time at lower intensity by using higher resistor values noting that if the current is too low some powerbanks will switch themselves off. Not a problem with a cheap simple powerbank or a mains USB adapter.
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:-
www.bigclive.co...
This also keeps the channel independent of UA-cam's advertising algorithms allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty.
You're like the Bob Ross of electronics, Big Clive. So relaxing to watch you explain a project. Keep up the awesome work!
HA HA I could just imagine how Bob Ross would sound if he were Doing electronics.
[ whispering ] " And over here, lives a happy little transistor"
"and we just dab on a little solder, right here, like this.. Dap dap dap dap"
"there we go.."
and maybe next to it lives a big, tall Capacitor"
wise decision to chop the USB lead in the middle instead of right at the plug. That way you can use the micro usb side for other projects.
Maico 👏 👏
Last year I did some of these for the historic railway station I volunteer at. However, I had a surplus USB charger type supply with a hardwired lead to a micro USB. Instead of removing the box, I just cut off the micro USB plug, let the cable in through a hole and soldered it to the main battery terminals. That way I didn't need to muck around with resistors and still had the flash effect available. In fact I combined two similar sets together, each with their own box, glued back-to-back and connected to the same PSU. That way the flashes of each set don't remain in sync and an interesting bonus effect is created.
This year, I found there were two more sets that needed to be modded. I should say now that these sets have the same kind of 3AA battery supply, driving a chain of 50 LEDs. This time I took a set and installed one of those LED driver SMPS units, exactly the same one that you used on your LED strip flouro light replacement. Although I had recovered mine from a failed LED bulb (one LED burned out). The original batteries supplied 150mA to the 50 LEDs, but with the driver I was getting 300mA. That's still only 6mA per LED, but they sure are bright!
This arrangement worked fine on the bench with the resistance of an ammeter & clip leads in the circuit but when I installed it in the battery box with nice short leads, it still worked fine on the flash mode, but the solid on mode was now causing the PSU to cycle super fast. I guess it considers the voltage drop of effectively a single LED too low & an overload condition.
However, I didn't see this as a drawback as now we simply have two modes, normal flash & super-fast flash. It'll be used in the normal flash mode down at the station anyway. So job done after fitting a really long light duty mains lead, that way an extension cord is not needed to put the set where it wants to be.
Finally, I should point out that the sets I have been working with do not have the timer function built into the controller.
All of your videos are so informative and entertaining. You're a rock star.
Good video as usual, but I was expecting that you'd power the control board with usb and not the lights directly so that you would still have the functionality that the board offers.
Just solder a USB lead on to the battery contacts. The extra half a volt shouldn't bother it.
@@woofer2121 not sure if the battery contacts will take the solder though.. perhaps it'd be better to take out the circuit board, remove the battery contacts and solder the USB wires directly into there?
@@vimicito yeah some of the crappy "chrome" contacts won't take solder
@@woofer2121 lightly sand them, should be good to go
@@vimicito could always just solder it where the battery connections connect to the circuit board.
Only people who have worked on electronics know the rage induced by realizing you forgot to stage the heat shrink before you soldered.
Brilliant yet again! I'm a coatings chemist by trade but I am really learning electrioncs thanks to you. Please keep the videos coming and thank you!
I was waiting for the photo getting probed with the fluke :D
I'm waiting for that on every video. One of the many 'living in hopes' I have about Clive's offerings.
I feel like i would do that way to often
That’s funny cause I was so hoping he would. Even if it was to just show where he probed at.
he said he has done that once already
It's quite obvious where the track goes without probing: The negative power pad (where the U1 label is) goes under the chip to C1 (decoupling cap); therefore the other track must go to the pin in the corner as discovered with probing. But I think BC probed it to show how to find such things for those of us who need to know!
I wish BC had been my tutor when i did my Electronics HNC all those years ago! :-)
Thanks Clive, keep them coming!
Glad i saw your video the other day - i went hunting in poundland and found the clear warm white sets - they look amazing and the secret timer is good - ideal if you fall asleep or got to bed and forget to switch them off
10:19 good advice when repairing strings of lights with the CR2032. The other mod for USB ( plus the resistors of course) or batteries would workout the case , a USB female conector and add another switch . That way the would preserve the functionallity of power saving and add two power options... with the work of ripping the case :P
Oh man I don't know much about electrical components and the ilk but when I see a Big Clive video I just have to watch it.
3:57 Looks like you were trying to avoid the huge screw hole for a second. :D
I kept seeing them as actual holes in his bench! It was messing with my head, especially when he would move it. :)
HA! ..he has stereo vision there
You should always avoid huge screw holes.
They result in very unsatisfying sex. 😀
@@BedsitBob Tossing a hotdog down a hallway is definitely less satisfying.
Great video, came across it by accident and glad I did, good job explaining it. You taught it well, anyone wanting to do this, this is the best video to watch and learn.
Great hack.👍
Big Clive doing what he does best at this time of year. I always enjoy your videos. A BIG 👍 from me!
This little tutorial on how to convert christmas lights into usb powered christmas lights is genuinely fantastic.
Note that it only works with the parallel strings. But you can run several from one powerbank or plug-in USB supply.
product review, tear down, reverse engineering, and mod it to your heart's content! Wow........ That's like going 4 level up!
Thanks for the video.
YIHUA 8786D, I'm only writing this here because I had to re-watch the part where bigclive mentioned the name three times before I managed to fully grasp the name. Probably my non native-speaker shining through again.
I have the same solder station. The workmanship inside was awful but after reflowing cleaning and tightening the screws it's worked great for 5 years.
@@blitzwing1 Anything that happens to it is easy to fix and get parts for. I also thickened some of the traces with solder. I only wish they would use an iron with a little more mass. Have you tried the tweezer soldering iron accessory?
Can you add a quartz and the resisters to make it operate or would programming be needed? Just curious if that would work
Mark Eckelkamp would be an interesting experiment!
most microcontrollers have "fuse" settings that select internal oscillator vs external crystal which the programmer must set. (They are called "fuse" because ages ago they were a one-time "blow the fuse" setting, but modern parts typically use EEPROM or flash memory.)
I would need to be reprogrammed.
Sylvan Butler Agreed, either a hardware fuse would need to be set or, alternatively, the appropriate register would need to be toggled to switch the local oscillator source on the fly. Given that most of these very cheap microcontrollers are OTP (one time programmable) you are very limited in terms of after the fact alterations. Sometimes it can be done to an OTP micro if the new fuse settings just happen to align with the old as the default state for uninitiated bits/fuses in E/EPROM is typically logical “1”, so if the change *only* happened to require reprogramming an existing fuse that is logical 1 to 0 and no bits/fuses already at logical 0 required flipping back to logical 1 then you may be able to make that change after the fact provided they forgot to set the security bits to prevent reading the existing program state - but odds are you would also have needed to reset hardware dividers and such as many internal oscillators run at 4MHz and you would be installing a 0.032768MHz oscillator in its place, so the timings are going to change enormously (122 times slower!). Otherwise, adding an external oscillator would almost certainly be akin to just soldering random disconnected parts on a PCB that effectively go nowhere and have no power - they would just be decoration rather than active components.
@@Sylvan_dB The dirt cheap micro mentioned is (at least listed as) one time programmable. Might of course be available in EE versions as well.
Great Video Clive thank you.
Oh, Clive, the PICs I've worked with often have compensation registers for the internal oscillator. You can hook the A/D to the battery (using something like a 1.5V reference generator) and as the voltage goes down relative to the 1.5V reference, you can increase the oscillator trim. I know this exists on the PIC32MX because I've used it quite a bit. And the lowest-end PIC32MX110F016B is under $3 in single quantity. I pretty rarely use the lower-end PICs anymore because the 32MX line has so many awesome features and great peripherals, and it comes in a huge range of sizes and speeds. Anyway, back to watching the video :D
Or, of course, you could just add a 32.768kHz crystal and be done with it, which is probably what I would do in the same situation again. But it was fun to learn about the compensation registers.
Many of these timerds do use the crystal. Even with the calibration enabled I found the PIC microcontrollers drifted too much with time.
@@BigClive Fair enough, it's a pretty crap RC oscillator :)
I like the timer and some of the other functions supplied on some of these strings. And I want them to run from Thanksgiving to New Years or 12th night (Jan. 6th). I tend to simply add a standard diode between the USB supply and the circuit. 5.1v less 0.6v is perfect. The good news is - since the voltage stays constant, the timer drift is reduced and the LEDs stay bright. The bad news is - some power banks shut off if you don't draw enough current. My latest single cell banks shut off at around 30ma.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!! May Each day be worse than the Next. (It's a good thing.)
Now that's a quality modification. Makes it easy to make your garden look nice with fairy lights and a cheap and rechargeable power source. Just put the power bank in a sandwich bag.
Do the Padauk microcontrollers have built-in programming pins? Could you hook up a diagnostics tool and read off the program?
I'm not sure if the chips have a security bit that prevents reading out data from the program memory.
In case anyone was wondering, "A good blob of solder" is actually a scientific unit of measure. All the cool kids use it
Although it has been used informally for a number of years I believe the blob (and hence the good blob and little blob respectively) was finally recognised as an SI unit at the the 26th General Conference on Weights and Measures, yesterday in Versaille. Unfortunately it seems the announcement was overshadowed by the new definition of the kilo, mole, ampere, and kelvin. :P
The correct terms, in ascending order are: Touch, Dab, Blob, Gob, Lump, and Turd.
"Look at that huge turd of solder on that joint!"
A good blob is a little more than a smidgen, but less than a touch.
It's the Plebian System of weights and measures. Also includes one glug of wine, one shake of salt and a gnat's nadger of chili.
I did this but by stringing three of the 50 multicolour sets together, and keeping the microcontroller. Unfortunately, whilst the greens and blues were bright, the reds and yellows/oranges were dim. Removing the resistors didn't help. On the plus side, the flash functionality still works wonderfully, and it's still somewhat beautiful, especially as I took the to ensure that the order of the colours was maintained.
For anyone trying this, use three sets of warm white (It'd work better). Remove the end lead and first LED to form a string of soldered and shrink-wrapped LEDs, with a single battery box at the end. Remove the metal terminals from the box, and drill a hole at the bottom (or melt your way through with a nail heated on top of the stove). Remove the battery separators either with a Dremel, or by cutting them out with snips and cleaning them up with a chisel. Feed through a stripped USB cable and solder it to the microcontroller (black to where the metal negative was, red to where the positive wire was. Add strain relief with hot glue, and screw the box back together.
Voila!
"...always a storm outside on the Isle of Man a this time of year, it's just the very nature of living on an island"
It is indeed, and those of use who are fortunate enough to live on islands wouldn't have it any other way. Greetings from Vancouver Island, way out west here...
I should also add, I love your wire strippers. Who makes them?
The way you are holding the wires with 2 fingers and the solder with the other tow its a very nice trick.. I laughed when I discovered it first :D
Why not put USB sticking out of the battery box then you use USB power but still have the control of the circuit board of the original with the timer and switch control?
that certainly would work, if you do this mod you can do this. you can also use the box to provide a little string relief for your usb power cord and your resistors would not require heat shrink tubeing.
I suspect Big Clive just didn't want the extra bulk, it is a bit of a cleaner looking without it.
Excellent video, thank you for your time. 😊
So glad I watched this video! I have been wanting to add some LEDs to a clock above my PC and wanted to run them from the USB on my PC, but could not for the life of me remember what the resistor value was. Thanks! :)
It depends on the number of LEDs you use. 100 ohms would give 20mA, 47 ohms would give about 40 and 20 ohms as used here gives about 100mA.
You're the best, Clive haho! 🍄
A new video, just in time for tea. Excellent timing indeed!
The shiny paper looks amazing!
We like the storm noises in the background.
Righto, just used this as reference for how to turn an LED I had lying around into a USB plug that, er, is a small lamp. Get some use out of the power bank.
Worked a right treat.
I have a control box for a string of led lights that is similar. I modified it to plug into the wall via usb charger. Since 3 batteries add up to 4.5vdc, I added a small resistor and it works great and it works with the original controller board which has several modes. I no longer have to worry about batteries.
I went to the Dollar Tree today and found a nice stocking stuffer flashlight with 3 cold white leds. Nothing special about that BUT it had a hand crank where you squeeze it to recharge the batteries. OMG, so cool and for 1 usd BUT I smelled fake. I looked and looked and could not see anything inside but luckily someone before me broke one open. The squeeze crank was spot on and would/should work but the other part with the lights is what i was looking for to confirm, or disprove, my suspicions and I finally found it. BOOM, headshot, fake as it had 3 tiny Lithium button cells for the LEDs so the hand squeeze had the wires going to the batteries and the lights but Lithium batteries don't charge so once they ran down you could get a nice hand/wrist workout but that would be it.
Damn fakes though if replaced with say a super cap it would work perfectly though it would require destroying the flashlight to get to it due to super glue being used.
Nope, just on and off nothing else and the hand crank was tied directly to the 3 button cells and from there to the three leds. Ask Clive and he will surely tell you that you can't recharge lithium button cells (the kind you have in your computer but maybe 3mm around at most). It was pure fake as hell.
btw, the Hand crank in the off position did NOTHING, as in the LEDS did not light up no matter how damn fast I cranked it, and I tested 5 of them so I know what I am talking about here.
Did you verify they were CR (single-use primary cell) cells and not LR (rechargeable secondary cell), LR is a rechargeable Lithium coin cell?
I was going to add that I ask because I have a similar unit from Amazon (though it cost more than a dollar from China, but then I only bought in quantity 2) and it’s battery is a very small rechargeable Lithium-ion coin cell located behind one of the three LEDs. I’ve not taken it apart but I would estimate that the battery is roughly a 12x2.0mm size (by sight). They do not have a lot of storage capacity, then again the LEDs don’t draw a lot of power (not terribly bright, but still enough to be useful) - but it is indeed rechargeable as I have run it down before just to confirm that it can be recharged.
@@johncoops6897 Why not? Clive has done videos on fake solar recharge led flashlights. The solar cell was real but did nothing. The light was operated by batteries inside. Maybe the purpose was to charge more for perceived extra functionality.
Well, the "mistake" might explain why it was being sold off at Dollar Tree. More cost effective to just send them to such a retailer and get a little money back, than spend labour hours reworking them and selling for the original retail price.
Smacks a little of the "fake" solar cell calculators some other rather more rabid youtuber has spent a couple videos on "debunking". I mean, what really do you expect for $1 / £1, but eh, seemed the inclusion of a fake / nonfunctional / not (correctly) wired in solar panel was the more important thing for the guy rather than the fact you were getting an otherwise complete and fully functional calculator plus one or more button cells (that would cost about as much to replace, minimum) along with... Anyway, they were either wired in series with the (non-rechargeable?) battery, or not connected at all; either way, they didn't appear to do anything to power the calculator, sometimes not even if the battery was removed and its terminals shorted.
However, I do wonder; the cells might not be rechargeable, but they surely still conduct some current once they're dead, right? My experience with devices that end up with a mix of charged and dead batteries in them is that the whole pack voltage is within sigma of the sum of the individual cell voltages, indicating that the good cells were still able to "push" power through the dead ones. In which case, once the batteries die, you should still be able to power the light with the crank as per a common dynamo powered light, it just won't stay lit when you're not cranking, unless there's also a small capacitor in there somewhere. IDK what the internal arrangements of the crank-lights I've owned were like, but they sure seemed to act like they had either a reasonable amount of capacitance inside them, or a very low capacity rechargeable cell that could be charged at a pretty high rate but was delivered in an uncharged state. Seems weird that you'd just include primary cells instead ... maybe, from a wholesale perspective, they're somehow cheaper?!
A few questions if don't mind. Can you point me towards where to get the soldiering kit, heat gun and who does usb Christmas decs. Is it just pound land? Thank you
Easy log trick; 32768 = 2^15, if you calculate log(32768)/log(2) you get 15. Handy trick!
There is no way to make a simple system that auto-corrects drift by having two elements that drift in opposite directions, or maybe just by different amounts, and then applying a correction based on the measured difference?
yes helping hands are very handy I have extra croc clips on mine and a small solder reel holder and I have one of those too !
I have a question about a pool table light. It has 5 glass bulbs with leds in them the leds are burnt. I can get them out of the bulbs. I would like to change them to RGB lighting and I was wondering if your mini rgb kit would do for that project. I can send you pictures of the light if it helps.
Interesting that the LEDs were previously drawing 50mA. Isn't that about as much as you'd typically want to draw from an MCU's gpio pin? I guess they saved the few pennies of a transistor to make the LEDs brighter.
P.s. I really like the trick you showed us using the shaft of the soldering iron to do heat shrink.
Gadgetboy - that’s a very old trick!
Are battery powered fairy lights the norm in the UK? In the US Christmas lights plug in.
We have incorporated the self-timed mode (we call it SIFI - Set-It-Forget-It) for years in filipino parols, but we implemented 7 hours on - 17 hours off. We use a MicroChip PIC16F628A, which has horrible drift using the internal oscillator - so we added a 4Mhz crystal and 2 20pf caps. There's still drift, but it's seconds per month, not minutes.
We make our own sequencer PCB for our parols - we are all +12VDC inside, using an AC-to-12V adaptor. No mains voltages into the body of the parol.
I used your Sharpie polarity trick while modding a new fan onto my 3D printer last week. So simple and so good!
Thanks for sharing 👍😀
Interesting Hack as ever 😄👍
incredible soldering skills at 14:00
Is it usual for cheap USB cables not to have the data connections wired?
Could you connect the usb wires directly to the battery box so you can still have flashing / on and the timer function?
Yes you could.
Have you ever been soooo drunk you've tested the picture :)
i did indeed once probe the picture on camera.
@@BigClive i would call that a brain shart
Which video was that.
bigclivedotcom Have you ever probed yourself 😂
i can't find where to buy in the U.S.? can you provide a link please?
Great video Clive, secret feature and mod must get some of these.
Just wondering, why you did not include the circuitry from the battery holder into your USB conversion.
You could have gotten USB compatibility while still keeping all the features.
BC - whatever happened to the other larger-display Amecal multimeter you used to use? I rather miss the giant display!
Phil S The big display Amical died some time ago.
@@johnfrancisdoe1563 if I remember correctly the rotating switch just feel apart
I've got a replacement mechanism for it. It'll be back soon.
@@BigClive an escuse to make a video about a multimeter teardown?
@@alfoncejean8826 BOLTR?
Mike Whitson
4 days ago
Good video as usual, but I was expecting that you'd power the control board with usb and not the lights directly so that you would still have the functionality that the board offers. I didn't read the comments before I posted, I should have lol.
Red Sharpies can be very useful - when you have them ;-) .. Keep the Holidays safe (it keeps it safer for the rest of us)
Clive, would you know how to disable the timer function? I have a set of lights which run from 3 AA batteries, only my set is multi-coloured 120 led set, only the two wires going out to the leds, so i am guessing they are simply reversing the polarity in order to switch the colours. I am running it from an old 4.5v charger i had laying around, but the auto-switch off is annoying me, 6 hours is too short a time for me, so would like to have them on constantly. Obviously i can't do what you have done and simply remove the control box because of the multi-colours being controlled by just two wires. Is it possible to disable the timer do you know? Thanks.
I had the same issue recently. I used a time switch to turn the lights off after 6 hours and on again 1 minute later. The timing function was integrated into the control chip.
@@BigClive Sadly the sneaky Chinese have thought of that work around with my set - after disconnecting and reconnecting the power i have to push the select button to turn the leds back on manually. So no quick timer switch option for me. But thanks for the suggestion, i shall remember that idea for other sets i may get in the future seeing that i have a couple of timers kicking about.
I love this time of year on bigclivedotcom. ..time to break out the xmas lights...cheers sir. ..keep up the good work. ..
Just saw in my local Pound Stretcher that they have very similar LED light strings, in boxes with the 24-hour timer cycle advertised on the front. They're £5.99 though (it's not a single-price Pound Shop).
What are your thoughts on those heat shrink lengths with the ring of solder in them?
I've not tried them yet.
@@BigClive I used the wire splice with crimp with the heatshrink casing and the "glue" / "sealant" to make them moisture resistant and oil resistant, on a f wire harness on a 99 7.3 l diesel injector wiring harness. That's a pretty tedious but very important part of that feul system / engine. So it was important to you use something reliable and it worked fantastic. I have not tried the connectors with solder tho.
I used a few on some LED shop lights in the basement - mostly just to try them because I was so curious. They were very easy to use and have held up so far (about 2 years), but they are indoor so I never expect trouble - even if I just twisted the wires together and taped them :)
@@raymondmucklow3793 these crimps come with a low temp solder lump already on them but the problem is that the connection could become very weak if a short circuit appears. These connections are usually only good for low to medium amperage or to simply make a good watertight connection. Everything has it's ups and down's. Hope this helps.
They work alright, although if you heat them too fast or too much they tend to burst since the ends tend to crimp shut before the solder melts. I've had best luck with a regular lighter on those. They do work quite well and seem pretty water ingress proof.
I typically use the crimp connections with a built in heat shrink and hot melt glue, I get through a bunch since I deal with a lot of trailers and trucks running in brine half the year.
The resistor is probably series with led- and 2 top left-most pins are probably shorted
13:43 did you mean to say "spread the heat dissipation"? Because you'd have to put resistors in parallel to share the load between them, not in series.
It works both ways. By using two quarter watt resistors with half the desired resistance value you get the full value but spread across two quarter watt resistors giving a half watt rating.
Picked up a similar thing from Lidl today. £2 and only 20 lights so not as competitive as £land. In addition the picture on the box (a glass containing a string of SMD knot kights) bore no resemblabce to the contents which was regular 5mm LED and no glass :o.
On the plus side it did come with 3 Panasonic AAs, worth at least 30p.
The circuit does have a crystal but it is unmarked. The 8 pin chip is scrutably marked T6-24 and the output is witched through a 2TY transistor through a 15 Ohm resistor to the lights.
I will check out the voltages and timekeeping later on, prior to converting to USB (with circuitry). I'm guessing it is not the same chip as in the poundland version and hope it doesn't drift so much thus making the extra outlay worthwhile.
Huh I’ve got the exact same power bank but it always heats up on the usb plug-in and started burning the table under it . Still in a drawer somewhere battery flat
Amazing how many products for sale in the U.S. have Black as Positive and White as Negative. Makes one wonder.
"For those wondering about the silent heat gun, it is brand X model Z. I suggest it, but check before using. Most are great, but some are actually just hand grenades."
What if you rigged it to run the pack off of an outlet would you still get drift?
is it possable to mod the board with the ubs lead to keep the timer function?
Yes. It could be connected in place of the batteries.
100mA, but that's for all the LEDs in parallel, with 120 of them, that means each LED consumes just 0.83mA. Is that right? That seems very low.
It is low. But for a string of lights like this it's surprisingly bright.
your new finger nail looks good. cheers.
Thank you so much for doing this video. I've had a good look at the battery box on my line of LEDs but it doesn't have a circuit board on it. There's a metal strip from the positive battery terminal into the switch then a resistor coming out of the switch which is connected to one of the wires to the LEDs, the other wire coming from the LEDs is anchored at the negative terminal of the battery box. Ok, I think I know how to do this. I don't have a soldering iron or solder so I'll just have to use electrical tape. Cheers, Poo
2K7 could be PWM drive ratio for current limiting. different R values for different number or LEDs. what is the continuity voltage of the fluke 23 ? my fluke is 7.0 volts !!!
It's a disappointing 2.6V which is just enough to make LEDs glow.
More efficient to use a voltage regulator vs resistor?
Thanks Clive.
Nice video very informative. I have a question though, I have a few of these lighted Christmas pieces that I have gotten from different stores Amazon ,Wal-mart where they have lights built in that flash all the time, have you ever made a video on how to fix these, or in my case, stop the lights from flashing to where they are steady on?
Could you please desolder the microcontroller to see what the markings below it are?
the only problem with glossy paper is that unless the light is exactly precisely exactly precisely correct, you can't see anything, so there's that.
I wonder... can you put a christal on the board and the capaciters and so on and does it work with better timing then? Especially if you run it then from USB-power (5 Volt, more constant)
Well no, not without reprogramming the µController to use the different oscillator... (or do some auto-sense a crystal?)
That was what I was wondering. Maybe some auto-sense ? I mean when it is prepaired on the board, maybe it is also programmed for it (and normally sold for a higher price with an official timer-function)
How much do you spend on ink and paper over the course of the year?
Not much. Glossy printer paper from Poundland and a printer that uses bulk ink in tanks.
Hi Clive, Thanks for producing these fun videos. An ESP 8266 or NodeMCU ESP8266 could receive clock syncs and toggle commands from a LAMP stack using GET/WGET? for remotish (wifi-range) operations.Alternately, Would adding a transistor and pullup resistor enable these to be toggled on and off via batch file on a pc (ie disable/enable usb device)?
I bet they now want you to show them how to run it off a USB power supply with the circuit board so they can change it from flashing to on all the time and to turn off in daylight/timed. Just thinking out loud!
Can you tweak the frequency the crystal generates. I made one of those clocks like you made a while back and the drift is quite bad.
You could try swapping the crystal for a more accurate one.
@@BigClive I honestly didn't realize they varied. I'll have to try that.
Until recently the strings of multi-coloured LEDs you can buy (from China) with SMD LEDs soldered straight to copper wire, were really rich and warm in colour.
Sadly all of the sellers I've seen now have a very cool colour version instead. It also has silver coloured wire, rather than the visibly copper from before.
Hopefully they'll change back at some point...
Hi Clive!!!! Love the channel! What temp do you typically run your soldering iron at? Thank you...
Around 350C, but go by soldering feel and not a displayed temperature.
Clive awesome video man. I was also thinking like everyone else You could of just solder some the USB cable wire directly to the battery inputs of that box or to the micro controller to keep the same functions. in our dollar store we don't have that many led's on Battery powered here. Most i ever saw was like 25 or 30 led's. I need to start making my own Battery projects for the holidays soon.
I simply tacked the usb cables onto the + and - battery tabs. it works now off usb or normal cells, and still has the timer feature!
The Negative Cymbals...Ozonia Beardcore.....OUCH!!!
HI Clive, Quick question in a previous video you told use which wire you buy from rapid but what solder do you use.
Standard 60/40 tin/lead also from Rapid. (RVFM)
Cheers Clive Do you happen to know the order code
So they're sinking the LED current with the microcontroller but haven't even decoupled its power pins. I'm surprised it even works.
It is being rather harsh on the microcontroller.
8:03 - was that a spark as you cut the power leads?
What exactly is the purpose of the resistors here? Thanks!
They limit the current through the LEDs. Without them the LED string would try to draw a lot of current and it could damage the LEDs.
Hi Clive is it possible you can do a video about different voltages on old vintage fairy lamps?
I have a huge selection of old vintage fairy spare bulbs and they are not all mark with their voltages on then, I'm like to know if the is a way I can find out the voltages of my spare bulbs?
Sorry if this comment is in the wrong area I couldn't find a way to contact you other Wise.
I know of 1.8V, 2.5V, 3V, 3.3V, 6V, 12V types...
Love it! Quick question. What if your USB lead has 4 cables coming out if it?
Most of those simple powerbanks do have short circuit protection nowadays .. doesn’t yours ?
They do have some level of short circuit detection, but some of the older ones still have a current path through the inductor that will still pass a lot of current even if the chip cuts out.
The 1£ power banks just burn out the inductor if the USB out is shorted. It'll supply about 6 Amp for a few seconds, before the inductor lets out the magic smoke.
Some have chips which will actually cut the output and pulse it until the short clears
The thing to realize is, if they turn on at the wrong time the airplane isn't going to crash. Big deal the decorative lights are 8 minutes late. I have a similar set of lights and the batteries are dead after 1 week. So long term drift is not a problem because it gets reset after a week anyway to change batteries.
I want back filament lights. Those where great electric matches.
Go to eBay and type "electric match".
@@BigClive You know that's too eazy :D
Good to see auto ranging Fluke, bet it's more accurate than Amecal despite it's years. Did the Amecal crap out ?
Good video, you are the master of led gadgets.