PIFCO Electronic LED Christmas Lights -
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- Опубліковано 3 жов 2024
- In this video, we have a look at a mint set of PIFCO Electronic Lights, the first set of commercially available LED Christmas Lights sold in the UK!
As seems to be a trend on this channel of late, they are poorly.
Hoping Big Clive of @bigclivedotcom might be able to help with these, we don't do electronics on this channel, no matter if they are 40 years old lol.
Check out his PIFCO LED Lights Video.
LINK: • Vintage Pifco LED fair...
Go Subscribe to his channel, for all sorts of electrical shenanigans.
LINK: / @bigclivedotcom
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Welcome to the Vintage Christmas Lights UK UA-cam Channel.
I hope you enjoyed this new video!
Our aim is to provide videos featuring the classic sets of Christmas Lights that were sold in the UK, how to fix and restore them, guides, tips, hints and guides.
Plus videos of unique lights in operation and deep dives into our extensive Christmas Light Archive.
If you have any interesting Christmas Light videos that we could add to are UA-cam channel to archive for everyone, please leave a comment below with a link to the video, and it will be added.
None of your videos are monetized, and they are here for all to view and enjoy. ;)
If you have any photos, part numbers, videos or any other kind of other interesting information or feedback, our email is below.
Alternatively, if you are interested in these kinds of lights, then check out the Christmas Light Archive Website, we are not affiliated with this site, but we do use the fantastic database, check it out!
LINK: www.liivet.uk/c...
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vintagechristmaslightsuk@hotmail.com
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A little 'light' history.
The early 90s were the beginning of the end for 'classic' style Christmas light sets, new manufacturing and safety laws saw the delicate thinner cables replaced with thick and bulky black ones for 240v sets of lights, making them look cumbersome and chunky.
NOMA still produce some 'classic style' sets of lights, identical to the late 80s lights, but unfortunately with this thick cable.
Over the years, Christmas lights have been replaced with characterless, shadeless sets of lights, then eventually we got the domination of LED lights.
Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of modern lights that I do like, and I will try to do some videos about them too.
We do hope that one of the legacy firms like PIFCO or NOMA bring back the classic style lights, perhaps in low voltage LED form in sets of 20 and 40, and possibly 60-100 too with the old style shades, a mix and match option would be brilliant.
What do you think ?
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Track: Deck the Halls (Instrumental).
Find it on the UA-cam Audio Library.
Main Video Music by CO.AGTrack name: PhononGo Subscribe, he's awesome!Link to the Track: • Phonon CO.AG Music Link to the Channel: / @co.agmusic
#bigclivedotcom #christmas #led #lights #vintage #pifco #festive #uk #noma #woolworth #winfield #classic
I'm 99.9% sure I see the issue. See all the brown gunk on the underside of the circuit board? The electrolytic capacitors (those 3 purple/blue bits that look like mini batteries) have leaked due to age! If you're lucky, you may be able to just clean the bottom side with rubbing alcohol on a cotton swab to eliminate a short, but you'll likely also want to replace all three caps. You just need to solder in three new 16v - 10 uF caps (16 volt caps, 10 microfarads), and they cost pennies each. It should work properly after that.
Thank you, we have replacement caps, just need to figure out which way around they go now lol
@@vcluk - You just have to take note of the positive and negative sides of the caps (see that light blue vertical stripe with the several "-" minus symbols? That's the negative side). It SHOULD also be marked on the circuit board which end is negative, but if not, snap a photo to keep track. The replacement caps will have the same or similar +/- markings, just make sure they're inserted the same way before soldering them in place.
FYI - The voltage of the replacement caps need to be exactly the same. The "uF" part can be the same or even higher. Shouldn't be too difficult to solder. Look forward to seeing it fixed....those old school Christmas LEDs are pretty cool! I hang onto and use plenty of retro tech from the 80's, using that stuff is like going back in time! :)
@Apple2gs Thank you for the information, much appreciated. 🙏
WOW! D cells!!! that's heavy duty - unbelievable. When I was a kid D cells were only for really Big toys. Then in the 80s for portable radios, used to have 6 or even 8 D Cells. Amazing plus the push in LEDs 😲
Big Boy Christmas Lights!
These are rather interesting it shows that even in the 80s they knew led was going to take over personally I don't Believe led lights have that Christmasy feel about them granted that we now have more choice of colour but you can never beat the glow of an incandescent great video tho
LED Xmas lights look like somebody has exploded an 80s stereo.
LOL 😆
I was quite impressed with them to be honest, I feel guilty lol.
Recap the board, the caps have dried out.
I bet the caps have dried out.
My Grandpa had a set of these. I never liked the Jack of blue lights but these didn’t exist as LEDs back then.
I’d start with replacing the capacitors. Very likely to fix the problems be sure to install the the right way around - like batteries they are polarised. Lots of videos about soldering online, so a great opportunity to learn a new skill :-)
Thanks for sharing.
Solder yes, circuitry, no lol.
We give it a go though!
replace the caps and check transistors.. more likely to by dry caps.
Oh, interesting!
I don't think it's one of the yellow LEDs; They're all in parallel it seems, so if one has bad contact that should not totally kill it.
It looks like it is a lightchaser circuit of some kind, that stops at the yellow stage. Maybe you could use a pocket multimeter to have a look. First I'd like to check, if the yellow lightstring is shorted. Maybe somewhere some wires got together or one of the LEDs has shorted out. That could have stopped the driver or maybe have killed a transistor...
Of course bad solderjoints are first suspect, but you already checked them in the video. Maybe have another look through a magnifier glass to maybe spot something, but from over here I didn't see anything...
Pocket-Testers in Ohms-Mode should (hopefully, not all are good ones :-) operate with low enough voltages to not open up diodes or transistors, that means you can do some rough checking and shortcircuit-hunting without even desoldering anything... I had some success finding errors here and there, so maybe let me offer some suggestions 🙂
Make sure the yellow light string measures at least a few ohms. Everything
Thank you for taking the time to reply.
We have new caps for them, hopefully that will fix it.
You should check the LED-s. It think there is a dead yellow one. I made LED flasher in the school ages ago. It should charge the capacitor through the LED-s. They are in series, so if one is dead, the rest can't light either and they can't charge the capacitor.
Interesting, thank you.
I would check to see if the switch is working first. See if you are getting voltage and it is staying after the switch. Then I would see if you are getting any voltage to any of the other components. If they have a chasing or flashing effect, I would see if there is a clock signal coming out of the transistors. I assume one is for each color. I would also see if any other components (resistors, transistors, capacitors, counter chip) have failed. I would think that the way these work, is that there is a transistor for each color, and that the counter chip pulses them.
The switch is next on the list. 👍
Dead capacitors
What about sprayin' the switch w/ some contact cleaner (e.g. Deoxit)?
Back when Duracell didn't leak all over your gear.
Probably quality early 2000s bats.
It'd be nice to have a set like this
Some on ebay.
These are on eBay all the time - relatively cheap . No blue bulbs . No pink bulbs 😳
Blue LED's cost a fortune in the 80s
First time I ever saw Blue LEDs pop up was about 2001.
@@MattF340 - There were NO blue LEDs in the 1980s, well techincally not until late-1989 if you count just one manufacturer.. And they didn't become common place until over a decade later (early to mid 2000s).
@@Apple2gs Indeed, i commented from memory.
@@Apple2gs Yes, I first bought the first kind of blue LED in about 1992, probably about £3 each.
0:43 I live near weybridge, Surrey!
Be good if @bigclivedotcom could help out.
The comments section helped!
LEGENDS!!