Lidl Livarno Landfill Light teardown (with schematic)
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- Опубліковано 5 вер 2024
- I got this a while ago to see how it looked and how serviceable it is.
The circuitry is unusual, and seems to be making a lot of effort to protect against damage to the unit by arcing/transients that can damage some capacitive dropper based lights.
The current regulation is also very unusual in that it uses a voltage regulator with a fixed resistor as a load to act as a crude current regulator.
Construction of the unit is quite smart, but makes repair very difficult. So when an LED fails open circuit the entire fitting is pretty much toast. That means the only way to get the light working again is to remove and replace the whole fitting, which is not a good direction to go, as it can force homeowners to attempt electrical work themselves in a wet outdoor environment.
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There's another reason why unfixable lights are a bad idea, when one pops it's clogs then you either have to match the replacement with the other existing lights or dump the whole lot in the bin and start again.
😠
Unfortunately, to some degree this is even true for retrofit LED light bulbs. I always buy a few extra, so that a burnt-out light doesn't look weird after replacement. I.e. color temperature and light pattern might even change with the same product but different batches.
The result of our throw away society......
While, in general, I agree that "repairable" trumps other factors, a good product, with factors like weather proofness, produced inexpensively, may be the exception.
As Clive demonstrated, this product was bloody difficult to breach, had a weep hole, had good sealing executed.
When you look at the likely failure modes, first will be infant mortality (covered by mfgr warrenty).
The next failures will likely be a cap, led, mains connector. The mains connector will likely fail due to corrosion, galvanic action etc.. The other failures will require "specialist parts" and penetration of the water tight integrity.
The likelyhood that you can open, then reseal the unit is questionable. Once you have done it, the ability to match aged/used parts with performance matched new parts is poor. And when one component fails, can others be either far, or predictable?
All too often, I buy specialized parts for such a product, and can't find them when needed for round 2, or more likely "used them in some other application".
Water proofness comes in only 3 flavors, "badly done", "well done, cheaply executed, impenetrable/unrepairable" and "well done, repairable, and ungodly expensive".
All outdoor plastics age, crack, yellow and fail. It is a "feature" of UV exposure.
Open such aged plastics at your peril.
Then when you are done, you have one, young, bright LED (or other component) in a fleet of aging parts, possibly in a now failed waterproofing unit..
And ALL of the units look like "John Travolta's disco suit" (bad to start with, worse now, and nothing like it on the rack, in the High Street shops. (THANK THE GODS!)
Some things are better replaced, as a group.
I'm sure that in the long run, it causes more waste than user servicable products.
I'd much rather replace a 100w lamp every couple of years.
This product seems like a lot of work put in for not much result. Your teardowns are endlessly interesting, don't get me wrong.
It's built for when it fails it will go straight to the Landfill so that you must buy another! That "Landfill" name is so fitting!
Such a strange retro look, with the "old-fashioned" discrete LEDs and the brass. Was expecting to see a larger downlight at the bottom, it's like they were going for appearance only, not function? The 7805 current regulation thing is neat though, will have to remember that. Merry Christmas, Clive, to you and yours, and thanks for all the info and chuckles over the years.
I think the LM317 is also often used as a current regulator in a similar way.
@@jaapaap123 Yeah, I was going to say that "trick" of using it as a current regulator is in the LM317 datasheet as an application example, but you don't have to use specifically a LM317 to make it work.
@@jaapaap123 True, but the 78l05 is a darn sight cheaper as a TO92 package or SMD part, instead of the LM317 in TO220, or the 1117 in SMD, plus the input voltage range of the 78l05 is a lot higher than the 1117, as it will do 30V, as opposed to the 1117 cooking at 10V.
@@SeanBZA I think you are right about the price for most people. However, when I buy 100 pieces in TO-92, the 78l05 is 0,301 euro per piece, and the LM317 is 0,367 euro per piece. Both can handle the same voltage.
I should buy a load of either of them, I've been using the TO-220 LM317 for a couple of low power projects, and I think that one is quite a bit more expensive.
@@jaapaap123 The price the manufacturer paid in China was a lot lower, and thus they went for the cheaper part, as they need to minimise cost. Plus the cheap plastic package is likely a lot cheaper when you buy in bulk, as opposed to the copper tab version. I doubt the entire unit cost more than 2 dollars from the original manufacturer, and very likely they wanted to make some profit on them as well.
There is an argument for banning lights like this. There is too much focus on energy consumption in use rather than the whole life sustainability. People are conned into buying them in the belief that LEDs are better for energy consumption etc etc. But actually having to bin the whole thing as soon as the first LED fails surely defeats any saving in energy not to mention the costs of paying someone "qualified" to change it. Same goes for the popular designs of flood lamps, where to most of the population the light source is integral to the body and the whole thing has to be changed when failure occurs, where as the old linear halogens bulbs could be changed leaving the hardware in place.
Out of 24 screw-in LED lamps I installed 8 have failed in 2 years, always the filter capacitor after the rectifier. I always warned my clients the fixtures would be throw away regardless of the warranty
They are really cheap and actually if you are off-grid and using solar power, the savings make a huge difference, we are very used to having "unlimited power" at homes, we don't power off devices we don't use, etc.
The PTC current limiter may also put a little heat in there to benefit the circuitry from damp beside the drain hole
That's a thought ! Instead of using a 2 W resistor (or so), use a limiter, as it mostly just protects itself, while providing its main function (in this particular application) of heating the box interior.
For stuff I build for outside use, I always put drain holes in the bottom. Water will always get inside. So always provide a means for it to drain out.
I found this video most illuminating 😁
I work for Lidl, and I'm pretty ashamed of this product.
However, we do get some good things also. I've had a 18" fluorescent fitting under the kitchen cabinet for a long time, and it's brilliant. The best thing about it, is that it's got a big real glass shield over the front. No plastic nonsense.
That's the good thing about some lights.... they are brilliant.
Regardless of the electronic side of things, there's a hell of a lot of work gone into that light unit. Just the effort that must have gone into all the mouldings and pressings is impressive enough on its own, and all make a throw away product. You'd think someone might have said "Oh yeah, let's just use a few screws and threaded parts, and make this thing repairable"!
A lot of effort, just to throw away.
The original design was likely different and used incandescent bulbs so would have been repairable in that the bulb could be changed. With many of these they use the same housing, but put LEDs in there and manage to cut cost out of everything they can as it get redesigned.
A lot of effort for making money selling garbage
Few things are economically repairable any more. Half an hour labour in the 1st world is more than the unit cost. Sad.
@@sundog486 sad but true. A guy taking 10 minutes to swap a bulb would cost you more than just getting another one. Fuck this bullshit
Convert it to color-changing LEDs. I'm interested to see how that would look.
Aye, this.
Merry Christmas Clive, thanks for all the informative interesting and anxiety reducing content through the year
I've had one of these up for over a decade, still going strong!
I don't like the "disposable" everything these days. In the end, it's just a waste of materials and time. Merry Christmas Clive!
It's been that way for a while. Take personal computers. Used to be worth repairing, in fact that's what I did back in the late 90s. My employer basically went out of business when clients decided it wasn't worth the labor to fix old units when new ones could be obtained for dirt cheap.
I don't get how anyone would drill a hole in their house to fix a thing like this. It's going to die after short time and the replacement will invariable require new drilling. After a couple of years, the wall around the cable will look like swiss cheese and it'l become increasingly hard to fix a new light.
Agreed re: disliking the trend towards 'disposable' light fittings. Was just shopping for grow lights for my mum's hibiscus flowers. So many devices designed for the fast-track to a bin!
mmmm sure....
yeah your moms funny tomato flowers...
I misunderstood the title of this video, and kept waiting to hear about things like methane ingress, spark arresting, etc... then when I realized my mistake, I giggled for the entire rest of the video. Thank you for a good and interesting video, and for brightening my day! :)
A couple of thoughts about the 300 ohms and the current regulation with the 5V IC. The first is that to my recollection, the regulator current through the ground pin is 7 mA. Or in any case so much that it should be added to the pass current. The second thought relates to the maximum input voltage of the regulator. If my memory does not fail me, it is just 40 V. Hence the second 300 ohm resistor.. Kudos to the 200 mA PTC fuse! Smart idea indeed.
Thanks for being there for us all, streams and all that. You're one of the good guys.
Seasons Greetings from Liverpool Clive. Regards, Rob.
Clive, you did it again. It's not my bed time, but here I find myself waking up at my keyboard! You have to promise to use your soothing voice only for good.
The current limiting may be in case water leaks into the enclosure and shorts the electronics. Without something to limit it, it could just pop the top off the light.
I love LIDL Livarno Landfill lights! 😀
I reviewed one myself a couple of years ago, which was in essence a PIR mains floodlight with a CFL shoved in it - i.e. the worst possible light source to be PIR controlled.
The fix was easy enough, but I'd be very surprised if a lot of those didn't end up in landfill, too. 😛
"I may have to get destructive".....really ? Yet another item on the great altar of sacrifice (Clive's bench) to satisfy our (and Clive's) thirst of knowledge, immediately followed by Clive's detailed post-mortem - as usual thorough and enjoyable. Keep 'em coming oh wise one.
I've only seen the 7805 circuit with LM317 in practice. Although I remember seeing the 7805 trick in a text book years ago.
Current mirroring is the most common current regulation with only 2 transistors and 2 resistors. Very suitable for sub-Amp constant currents.
78L05 as a current source is soooooo simple and brilliant! I love this design idea. Pity it doesn't have a wide range of voltage regulation (just 35V input voltage), but a well-designed power supply with a MOV or similar protecting device will be okay-ish for that.
It is more common practice to use a LM137 for such applications, it even appears in the application notes for this variable regulator, however due consideration needs to be given to the power dissipation of such linear regulation circuits. The heat must be removed somehow.
@@nigeljohnson9820 of course, I know about LM317 being commonly used as current source, but using a 7805 that way was a surprise to me :)
@@KeritechElectronics me too. My most unconventional use of a 7805 was the addition of a 2n3055 circuit in parallel to boost its current handling capabilities, as a voltage regulator. In this application, the LM317 might have given a slightly wider input voltage range and maybe a slightly better maximum power dissipation spec.
It's a brave designer who uses a component in a novel configuration in a commercial product, as opposed to a one off prototype or hobby application. I would never have got this through a design review, even though it is relatively simple idea.
@@nigeljohnson9820 2N3055 in parallel with 7805? I can imagine driving a transistor with 7805 Darlington style, but I think LM317 is better suited for that because it's easier to make and fine-tune the voltage adjustment feedback loop.
Why not just use a current source?
The 330nf cap together with rectifier and 100uF bulk cap will act like a 16mA current source with 2mA ripple for 24 white LEDs. The 78L05 has a quiescent current of 3-6 mA. Setting the output load to a higher current (16mA + (3..6mA)) than the input can deliver will turn the regulator completely on, preventing any current regulation. As a result the ripple current with the regulator will be approximately the same as without. Replacing the regulator and 300 ohm resistors with wires would be cheaper and more energy efficient.
What happens when mains voltage rises?
Clive, American fan here, just FYI we have both Aldi & Lidl here in the USA as well.
Having any fixture that doesn't use lightbulbs seems silly. Like what has to go through someone's mind to think an unserviceable light would be a good idea? Oh well. Merry Christmas!
planned obsolescence and profit !
At 17mA and decent protection against surges, these should last a decent long time. That 300 ohms series resistor should have been on the AC side though: help protect everything in case of a voltage surge or excessive noise until the PTC kicks in.
I was thinking the PTC would help there would it will still pass 200mA. My only thought is that it’s there strictly for dead shorts since the TVS will go up in flames if it’s forced to conduct that much current. I think the trip current is even higher. The dropper will be what actually protects things.
1500VAC surge protection? I think not.
They will struggle to get this approved...
@@mysock351C 200mA is only the PTC fuse's trip current. Once tripped, the PTC's resistance increases sharply it becomes a relatively constant power device. For a 200mA 240V PTC fuse, the power should settle around 800mW, which is roughly 7k ohms.
PTCs need a few seconds to warm up. A 200mA 240V PTC has 6-8 ohms of cold resistance and is only rated for ~1.5A max. If you put it in a dead short across 240V, it will very likely blow up from the hot-spot heating up too quickly. You need enough worst-case circuit resistance to be designed-in to limit current to something survivable if you want the PTC fuse to operate normally under extreme fault conditions.
@@teardowndan5364 Ah ok that makes more sense. I looked at the datasheet for it, but it was a Chinesium one that listed the 200mA as its holding current. In that case it does protect the TVS, then.
@@teardowndan5364 Out of curiosity since I have similar ones on hand I checked and the trip is 400mA and the hold current is 200mA according to the PN and the data sheet seems to back that up. Too high to be of any real use to the circuit itself. I guess they are just depending on the dropper then to protect everything and that’s just a belt and suspenders in case a short develops somewhere.
Having a decent supply with so much filtering might prolong its life long enough that it becomes worth it. Maybe the ideal solution for mains LED lights would be to have a standardised two-part fitting, where an LED module could be plugged into a separate quality power supply?
Make the LEDs and the current sensing the same part, to get different currents from the same source.
And add a signal to make a single source voltage less.
@@ReinoGoo The current sensing would provide that signal.
Some florescent tube light retrofit kits seem to follow that "ideal" model. Power brick module replaces the ballast, and LED lamp part is replaceable. (Although I suppose the market for that is thin due to competing with direct swap-in models that can run off the old ballast power, which are technically more convoluted but easier for the consumer to deal with.)
@@pauljs75 A few years ago I tried some of those LED fluorescent tubes which claimed that the ballast need not be bypassed and those LED tubes didn’t work at all (technology too new at the time). About six months ago I bought another pair of Walmart Great Value LED tubes which allow the ballast to stay in place and they work beautifully in my kitchen fixture. The Great Value LED tubes were very inexpensive and have a life estimate of 23 years at 3 hours per day. The LEDs don’t save many Watts versus fluorescent, but it is worth it to save maintenance not climbing to change lamps or starters. It is a 50 year old light fixture that still uses starters. With LED tubes, there is no filament, so the starters may be pulled out and saved or disposed of properly. The LED tubes also have a choice of a color temperature close to tungsten filament, so the kitchen now looks more cheerful than it did with the cool white fluorescent tubes.
I just replaced the entire fixtures of the classic white double 40 Watt tube shop light fixtures in my basement. If you hunt around, there are fluorescent tubes that are close to 2500 Lumen output. I found LED fixtures with 5000 Lumen output in a nice medium warm color temperature for $15 per fixture at the local Menards hardware store. That was about the same price as a pair of high output fluorescent tubes. Might as well retire the 50 year old fixtures at that price, and the LED fixtures are only the width of a single tube as well.
The 51k resistor gives the 78L05 it’s startup current ahead of the leds reaching their offset voltage.
Thank you so much for writing this, this was my guess and I’m so happy to be proven right
I was going to say the same thing.
"I may have to cut this, it may save time. I have cut this, it saved time."
I always live your mode of speech, it's what makes simple electronics so interesting!
Little gems like the heavy emphasis on chrome parts that "sammidge" together (and I always thought it was only a Southern joke word:-)
In the US a landfill is what you call a tip. I was surprised there was a special light for that.
The brown workbench is actually quite nice!
Wishing you a great Christmas Clive
I love LIDL teardowns, these are things I go by regularly
Merry Christmas Clive! Was half expecting a "cooking Christmas dinner with 240v special"... hope you are not actually trying to cook it that way right now
Plum pudding?
Did you see the video where Thea Ulrich tries to cook an egg with electricity?
Thank you, obviously this item has NO RIGHT OF REPAIR, but CLIVE DOES NOT DISPAIR. Merry Christmas.
Ventilation hole,
I can't think of any outdoor light fixture I've ever serviced that doesn't have cobwebs inside it, so that nice ventilation hole will allow the critters to find a nice warm home in the winter.
You mean lure critters into the web.
Merry Christmas Mr Clive! Hope the big red polar bear brought you plenty of squiffy bottles.
I am pretty sure these parallell resistors and capacitors serves a role to reduce noise and the risk of making the lights glow dim when the lamp is off, it was a rather common thing when LEDs were new on market they did not suppress the AC capacitive coupling which made it impossible to turn the light completely off under some circumstances :) so my guess they are there to reduce voltage from parasitic capacitance in the wiring
Clive thx for taking the time to tear this down. If these lamps were 1 to 2 pounds then they are disposable. However, they ain't 1 to 2 pounds. If these are installed on both sides or an entrance and one goes poof, most likely, you won't be able to match them so you'll have to buy another pair. Just a good legal robbery, I mean good business.
So when you have to scrap one of these you get a HV bridge, HV PTC, some working LEDs and lets not forget a good 78L05 reg. so all is not lost if you are an electronic hobbyist. If you're not then you're out what you paid for it.
Again Clive thx for the tear down.
Happy Holidaus, Clive!
Hope you, and the people you love, stay safe and well this holiday season.
Happy Christmas BC from Down Under (Christmas Day was OK but today's decidedly cooler!). Pity those lights were so firmly glued together - makes DIY modification that bit more difficult. Nevertheless "where there's a will, there's a way" :-) Hope 2022 turns our better than 2021!
The construction of this very neat indeed. Though as you had trouble taking it apart, it isn't built for being maintained in anyway. I take it that once it blows, its binned, after which the owner needs to go out and buy another lamp as a replacement for one's outdoor lighting. I know things need to be protected from the elements, but surely rubber sealant grommets between the layers would be better than rubberised glue. If one can't mend a piece of equipment like this, how much of it is going to end up in landfill and/or being recycled. When all a person needs, is the companies to design maintenance friendly casings.
Cynically, if they made it easy to repair, they wouldn’t sell as many. $$$🚬💵💴💶💷
@@TomCee53 Well we are told to recycle what we can these days. So, isn't it better to repair items than waste engery to break down metals etc and then reform them into new items? When a 20 pence LED replacement could have done a quick repair of it.
I think it's time that Clive got himself a multi tool for "disassembling" difficult things.
Well, there's the X-Ray of Truth and the Vise of Knowledge, so …
you mean a hammer ?
@@fuzziemusic Swing press, if you _must_ be so crude.
It’s only when you change workbench that I realize how much attention you put on the lighting conditions...
Also I miss the Pink Calculator already.
Merry Christmas and happy new year!
Retrofit the lamp with a small motor, with an offset load, and compatible battery. Abracadabra! You have a handy "neck" massager.
Seems like the 10 uF, 100V capacitor is a bit underrated. It's a good idea that they put the back-to-back zener there to hopefully prevent the capacitor from overvoltage if an LED fails open. Thanks for the tour, Clive.
Thanks! The LED current will actually be about 20mA because the 3mA (typical) Iq flowing out the GND pin adds to the 16.7mA resistor current.
It's not the usual bench view, but a fascinating teardown nonetheless. Many thanks. Best of the season to you, Clive, and happy and healthy tidings of the new year.
That's why we have you, Clive. When something like this fails and we say, "Now What?" : }
_A 'Gift' that keeps giving._ Clive delivers or we go shopping. Hope your Night Flight was Grand!
Happy Christmas & Merry Hanukkah *~- **
Thanks Clive, love your teardowns, very informative not just for the circuits but several times now your teardowns have let me cleanly open devices because you found the reason for a need for brute force so I didn't have to destroy items to repair them !
It's a shame that ptc isn't an ntc instead; I'm fed up replacing relays in Shelly 1, Tradfri an other IOT switches because the 16A relay can't cope with the 0.1A or less average load of a led driver circuit. Sure, the 100A+ for 0.0001 seconds after switch on is slightly over the relay's spec, but adding your own ntc to dampen the spike isn't always safely possible.
100 nF perhaps to keep 7805 from oscillating...?
merry Christmas Clive. My friend dave gave me a radio to fix (a broken pin for in power) and I told him talented you were
That's too bad. I was hoping for a happy ending, that there'd be a technique for easily opening the thing to solder in new LEDs. Think I'll stick to the cheap solar units; at least when they fail they're either fixable or yield harvestable parts, and mains voltage never enters into it.
Same here. In fact that reminds me that I have a solar light that needs some TLC. Only has the power to work for an hour or so after sunset. Quite old so I assume the solar cells need cleaning and a new nicad battery installed. I seem to recall they use the AA size ones. Quick trip to the local Ikea for their Eneloop knock-offs are in order.
@@Bigrignohio if you put really a cheap LiPo battery in there, you’ll have a very luminous Tiki lamp!
@@Bigrignohio The prevalence of the seemingly "old" NiCd battery chemistry in solar lights is due to it dealing with freezing temperatures a lot better. (Not everyone buying solar lights puts lives in a warm climate nor puts them away during winter.) LiPo (although better in most regards) doesn't like cold conditions at all. (NiCd will still work a bit, LiPo acts like a dead battery until things warm up again. So the prevalence of the one battery type isn't an oversight, but a feature.) Now if solar lights could be designed to charge a few more batteries in parallel, then they could design around NiCd and still have a long run time.
@@pauljs75 Er, that's why I want to use Eneloop (or the equivalent Ikea version)? I had no intention of using li-ion outside. Although I mispoke, they are nimh not nicad. Should still be good to -20C or so. And if it is colder than that I do not care if the light is out because no chance I will be outside!
Only Clive can make “white schmoo” sound so cool
Hope the weather held off for your walk Clive. 🥳🍻
It did, although the beach was very stormy.
Happy Holidays starting today with Christmas. ... Cheers ...
Merry Christmas 🎁🎄
Merry Christmas...
And Happy Everything.
PTC and self resetting fuses are two totally different things, don't confuse them. I have never heard of a "self resetting fuse" rated over about 32. Volts. I think the color of it has confused Clive.
The 7805 appears to be wired as a constant current source. The added 300. Ω (the two) seems to reduce the current to keep the 7805 from over heating. Ron W4BIN
nice teardown and explaination, a nice Christmas suprise 🙂
Not sure about the 300 ohm resistor here, but I've seen it before in linear regulator circuits and even mentioned in datasheets. It's just to take some load off the regulator.
I'd want to replace those LEDs with that LED COB tape, would be a far better look than the ring of 5mm focussed LEDs akin to the "revolutionary" LED lamps from over 15 years back which had clusters of the 5mm jobs on them... :P
When I saw the title, I thought you found a porch light, at the landfill.
After your video, I'd say it actually did, end up in a landfill... 😂🤣
Merry Christmas!
.
.
I hate that these companies keep restricting us from repairing things...very wasteful in my opinion.
Thanks from Texas Clive.
Merry Christmas Clive and thankyou for all the interesting tear downs with explanations.🔍
I suppose it’s better than taking your new toys apart on Christmas day. Happy teardown.
Thats a very interesting setup. Seems very vulnerable
Somebody thought about the circuit. The individual parts are also elaborately made. It is only dark when an LED is open. Maybe the developers at least used good LEDs.
In the past you threw away a cheap glass bulb with a little metal, today we are further and throw away the whole lamp with electronics in it.
Interesting construction: The capacitive dropper acts as a 18mA current source but has a 17mA current regulator in series.
So frequency change shuld result in voltage drop over the regulator
Quite the interesting light. Merry Christmas Big Clive and everyone part of your channel.
Merry Christmas & Season's Greetings Clive, from Ottawa, Canada..
Merry Christmas Big Clive , hope you are having a good one
Could the polyswitch be there in case the fixture fills with water to keep it from being a shock hazard?
Another reason I'm keeping my fluorescent lights in use!
Merry Christmas Clive Thanks for a Year of great Videos
It might be a good idea for small standard plug in LEDs to be marketed to enable replacement in lamps like this which would be designed for them. No soldering, just unscrew, pull out an old lamp, push in a new one, and rescrew.
Only way that’s going to happen is legislation. It’s more profitable to sell an entire unit.
Funny thing is that cheapo Christmas light strings have plug-in bulbs, while expensive fixtures don't.
@@jpdemer5 I thought of that too. That is easier because the lights are all out in the open.
@@enterthekraken Some kind of greenness score would be helpful. More and more people are becoming aware of greenness issues. I don't like absolute bans, absolute mandates, when an immediate safety issue isn't at stake. But people should be told how green or brown a product is, IMHO.
there are so many different form factor LEDs out there, and requiring different voltage and correct limiting.
standardising a socket for them would be very challenging and likely would hinder innovation
A new video, the best Xmas present!
I recently got a “Mordern” looking light fixture it wasn’t cheap but it’s bigger have 3 sets of bulb shaped contraptions and they have square PCBs with SMD LEDs in each of the contraption with heat sinks & with a replaceable driver circuit soo happy to see a construction in 2021 which is made to last decades just need power supply or LED PCB replacement which I can easily do
Merry Christmas 🎄
Merry Christmas 🎄⛄⛄🎄
Merry Christmas, Clive! I like the styling of this lamp, with the creative application of force and some DIY tinkering, these could be converted to low voltage and have some interesting effects added to them as well. Plenty of room in the bottom of the housing for homebrew driver circuits, and the clear sections could also be reproduced through 3D printing using translucent PETG to add further effects... fun!
Merry Christmas Clive !
Don't know if you will get another video out before new years so i will wish you happy new year now and i just want you to know i have had a blast watching your videos in 21 - learned a lot and really look forward to 2022!
I think the TVS is mainly there to protect the 10u/100V capacitor from overvoltage in case the line voltage is a bit higher than it should be for long periods of time. This situation should also allow the PTC to kick-in after some time.
Hope those sprours did’nt make you sharr Clive lol. All the he vest for 2022 mate
Sad to see we're still producing these things. Money is eveything huh.
Merry christmas you all
Merry Christmas everyone!
While the LEDs aren't replaceable, are they particularly _likely_ to fail?
I know that high-power LEDs like to fail - especially if insufficiently cooled - and of course LEDs can fail if overdriven, and sometimes you just get crap LEDs from certain sources. But this appears to be regular 5mm LEDs driven at a mere 16mA or so, which seems to me like it ought to be pretty reliable. Am I missing something?
No electrolytic capacitors to fail; no Ni-MH/Li-Ion cells to leak/fail; no SMPS with output diode weak link; a constant current LED supply; a PTC fuse; a drain hole for condensation build-up; an earth terminal; efforts to prevent that earth terminal being required (you know it won't always be connected…); etc … - it looks like it ought to last longer than a lot of lights featured on this channel!
Of course I'd prefer things to be serviceable, but I think it's less of an issue in cases where a reasonable effort is made for it to never actually _need_ servicing - not using components with a limited lifetime, etc.
At the very least I'd expect them to lose intensity over time.
Ah yes, that's true; I'd forgotten about that. Fair point! :)
I lived in Florida. These type of lights have a regular fail rate of about every 5 years depending on where it is.
@@zachv1942 Florida also has a humidity anywhere between 80-90%.
This isn't a swampland lamp.
@@FutureChaosTV I see what you did there.
You are right,Livarno is a Lidl brand. However not sold at ALDI 😃.
Thanks for excellent video. There should be government legislation on this kind of wastefulness with the right to repair needed for the consumer
I wonder if the 100nF caps will act as capacitive droppers if the leds in that section go out and keep the other section lit
They are on the DC side of the rectifier, so no. More relevant to look at the 51K in the top board, might pass a bit less than 1mA if a top LED fails.
Merry Christmas Clive.
Best wishes for Xmas, and thanks for the enjoyable entertainment and company you have provided throughout the year. Here's to 2022 also. :0)
I had/have one. My overvoltage/fuse burned out. Was sparking inside.
Bridged it but due lack of light I modified it to an 230V E14 2W filament bulb instead. Inside daylight switch (the blue ebay one without case) and a 12V and 5V power supply to power other Led lights but using the same daylight switch.
It's hard to open btw. All glued together.
Heating it up will help.
Those 5v/12V ac/dc is to Power some cheap rebuild solar lights btw. Better hig power led/cob led. (3x5V parallel with each a 3W led resistor keeping it under 1W.)
To light my fence
And the othere 4x 3W cob strip in series on 12V and small inline resistor to keep it cool. Running with leddimmer. To light a garden canvas poster.
So always room for improvement and keeping it away from landfill.
Metal housings are often ok to use.
happy holiday clive i hope you have an excellent new year
Merry Christmas
Happy Christmas Big Clive