Hacking a Poundland solar light with intriguing design fault 

It's 1.30am and I am watching a video about hacking poundland LEDs. Your videos are addictive.

I listen to Clive no matter what he is discussing just because he has a soothing voice

Your videos have kept my dollar store lights running for almost five years now, even through winter. It also gave me something to do with my old half-working AAA rechargeable batteries. In fact, looking outside, it seems to be time to change a battery again. 👍

You haven't done solar light hacks and teardowns in a long time This is a come back 🌟

*I HAVE RETURNED TO ENJOY YOUR CRISP VOCAL QUALITY. THANK YOU AGAIN SIR*

When I was a kid I would use old aerial coax cable for solder braid and scalextric brushes

As an American, “Poundland” sounds like either the place I take my girlfriend when I’m feeling frisky, or the place I threaten to take the guy insulting my favorite sportsball team.

Once again the dexterity of clives hands when soldering and assembling is amazing

I enjoyed that explanation on how the inductor boosts the voltage in a DC current. I always just figured it was just the water-hammer effect of the rapid energizing and collapsing electric field

Clive: I forgot which side is the positive. No worries, I will tear it apart again. Audience: Why don't you look at the picture you have?

Ever since i found your channel I can't stop buying things to hack from Poundland.😂

"I've stuffed my pinky up the hole. Classy!" 🤣🤣. You kill me Clive...

Was in the discount store this morning and they had dozens of the staked garden lights marked down to a dollar each. I immediately thought of you, Clive. 😉

I learned very early on to hold the solder braid by the dispenser, not the braid itself, Ouch!

They were out of braid here and I made some using very fine wires and flux. Worked great!!!

Never thought to put these in a window what a wonderful idea for some night lights.

There's something quite satisfying about that soldering braid

Me: "You can't polish a turd" Clive: "Hold my beer"

Every time I watch a video like this about lights, I do wonder if Big Clive's house is the only structure on the Isle of Man visible at night from the ISS because of the glow it gives off.

Not to forget that sanding the top of the LED flat spreads the light more in the tube, makes it brighter too

I find these videos very educating. Please don't stop making them.

As an American, I chuckle like Beavis and Butthead every time I hear Poundland. It sounds similar to Poundtown which is where you go after you put your pinky in the hole.

Opened my new tesco wind up solar torch finally, battery capacity? All three of them put together... 40ma...🤯 Yes, I'm using this as a forum! 😛

Any time I see poundland mentioned, I know we are in for a great video. 😁

They look much better now. I have cutlery with shafts looking exactly like that. I just used the spoon for a meal. If you have a property out in the woods and it is very dark there at night, lights hanging from the trees will light the area better up than those put into the ground. A couple of years ago I bought a whole bunch of Ikea solar lights on sale. They came with a thin white fabric shade. I use them without the shades, as the shades would get dirty and destroyed in no time. This exact type is the best I have had so far. They hung outside during winter, and they are still alive and well now. Unfortunately they changed the design so the newer one's can't be used. Mine has the strings attached to the solar part of the lamp. The newer one's have the strings attached to the lamp shades. Those who work at Ikea with these things don't seem to have a clue of what is usefull or needed when it comes to solar. There should always be the possibility to buy spare solar cell parts for charging that can be put in one lamp. You might need three lamps inside or outside, but you would want to have maybe ten or more of the charging parts. If there is not much sun, they don't last long. They have never thought of this at Ikea.

A few weeks ago, I had to repair my laser level. (I left batteries in it, they leaked ...). It was the first time I had done any kind of electronic work for about 30 years, and always used a solder sucking tool before, but based on your recommendations in past videos, I purchased a pack of 7 different sizes of solder sucking wick from Amazon, and am now a convert.

A flickering candle LED might look nice in this type of light. I guess with your modification you can swap any effect- colour you want.

I love that you still using Open Camera! Lovely!

I like this video a lot. Dollar Tree has some nice SP Lights but even though the design quality is quite good, the build quality is not. First off, short the switch to on. Second, silicone around the top portion of the solar cell. Water will go under it, causing failure. Next I silicone the holes where the collector wires enter the inside. Often they appear sealed but are not, allowing water to wick to the PC Board and corrode the board. Lastly, I try to silicone and gaps where water can enter. I've made these $1 lights run for a very long time by doing this. Thanks, Clive, for going over this circuit with us.

I have an old 250m drum of coax so I use the outer braid with flux to make my own solder wick, I don't think I'll run out 😆

“I’ve used the classic twist a pair of scissors technique” Sometimes scissors are a much better reaming tool than an actual reamer.

Just an FYI, you can’t “over discharge” a single NiMh cell as you mentioned. In fact some people intentionally discharge NiMh cells to zero volts to help recondition them. They’re entirely different than Li-Ion cells in that regard.

Great idea for boarding handles on a boat or towel racks, you’d enjoy glow in the dark paint,I use it for a waterbase varnish

Interesting that Clive should choose to do this when I've done the same. I want to mount one of these over the address numbers on my porch. That way they can be seen at night. But these damn button cells won't hold enough charge to light it up for much of the night - just a few hours. It's a shame they had to cut corners and use a cell smaller than AAA. So I have to solder wires to an AAA Panasonic Eneloop long life cell and run the wires through holes in the case. Then try to waterproof the cell a bit. Maybe some hot glue, but it might not hold up in the hot sun. Thanks, Clive.

Those tiny batteries and here I am putting EBL batteries in so they actually last through the night.

I wonder if Poundland's issue is more to do with their pricing point as my local large Asda has a good selection of lights but all priced in the £7 to £9 range. A bit rich for Poundland's tastes.

Although a retired electrical engineer I don't understand a thing Clive says, its just fascinating listening to him

My favorite kind of Big Clive video! 👍🏻

Sometimes I wonder what it must look like in Clive's house, with scads and scads of Chinese/Poundland lighty-up thingies delicately placed about

Won’t that capacitor configuration still work just fine, just the voltage across the capacitor will be 1.2V higher than in a more typical configuration?

It's amazing. I used to work at poundworld many moons ago and the amount of item sales that would go up and clive had review them.. Or down as poundworld didnt seem to have the same quality checks as poundland. Hence many more product recalls

That was fun! Thanks Clive you rock man! I think these are the only solar lights I'm seeing on the shelves here my way too.

Clive handling old style soldering iron like a pro while others complain about tip to grip distance on a frickin JBC iron

Recently discovered these solar light circuits in Eurogiant, thought it was really interesting that it was worthwhile making a dedicated chip to control them. They are very useful and cheap way of making evil eyed garden gnomes!

I'm replaying this one since I have I bunch if these and wanting to absorb what you say. Thanks.

One of my favourite channels - Clive's voice is so soothing it's like adult Jackanory before bed.

I have some very old solar lights I bought probably 10 years ago. Uses 1 AA 1.2v NiMh battery but everything is in a blob on the PCB so no other components visible, also no switch so no corrosion problems either, and a rather large solar panel compared to these tiny ones with the little button cell. They are really tough and even though the sun is eating away at the black plastic, they still work a good few hours at night. Cant seem to find those anymore - I guess they were made too good and now only the crappy ones are available.

Nice little hack. I like the blue LED.

You could also add an extra electrolytic capacitor so that the power is more stable and the colour changing LED will not restart all the time. Then one can really enjoy the classy ever changing luminescence as one were in the royal gardens, I imagine her majesty has at least a dozen of these lights, nice to look at when she walks her corgi late at night.

Would a flickering candle LED work in your remastered version?

There's no design fault. It works perfectly like that. There's actually a problem if you connect the LED to GND: the inductor discharges in the battery (in reverse) so it discharges it... It would probably make the LED a bit brighter because of the extra energy from the battery. But this would change with the voltage on the battery. So a fully charged one would make the LED even brighter.

Well, I'm going to be busy for a while now. Dismantling all of the old LED solar lights my parents keep picking up (they're in their 80s and ocasionally forget that they picked up the same things a month earlier. To be fair, so do I and I'm significantly younger!) and clearly defining "points of interest" in the garden - the edge of the pond springs to mind for some reason...

It is a challenge to design such light with a supercap (2.7V max), or two supercaps in series (5.4V max). I have one in my window with 2 caps (2x100F), and 82x36mm solar cell, and it runs for two years now, and the LED never goes off, even if the solar cell in winter does not get direct sunlight. I did not use more than a resistor (for LED) + diode (for solar cell). For now I have placed an LDR over the resistor so that in daylight the LED is a bit brighter, but need to think about that. In the middle of the night the LED is able to throw a faint shadow on a wall 8 meters away, come summer come winter. Oh, and I will have to use two balancing resistors parallel to the caps (e.g. 2x68K ?), I saw this morning the two caps deviated about 10% after 2 years.

Cool idea, I almost want to take a trip to poundland lol

O no... They are back... Remember the exact same ones in a German 1€ shop sold for 50ct since they where not working properly. That was like 10 years ago. I remember buying 4 or more to mess around with them. They also had some filled with some alcohol water solutions with glitter in it. That had a small motor spinning together with a colour change led when it gets dark.

For clearing solder holes. the cheap Chinese-made hollow stainless needles work a treat.

I thought something looked a little 'off' with your sticker...confirmed at 11:15, haha. Thanks as always for your time and wonderful insight!

You need to modify two identically with same model LED, then add the fix for the cap and diode to ground on one and compare. Runtime and brightness will be interesting as I think the inductor value sets the current based on energy and forward voltage. The improved circuit would probably be a LOT brighter as it has voltage advantage by not boosting as high but ending up at higher voltage regardless.

I bought one of these lamps at Dollarama (Canadian dollar store chain) a few years ago. It had the lower plastic part of the head smashed, so I bought it (for parts) to save it from being thrown out. Here's my report on it: The plastic is matte. It has an oblong PCB and a YX8018, but the layout isn't the same as the oblong one in the video-the switch is in the middle. The battery is a Ni-Cd AAA.* The LED is color-cycling. It doesn't seem to spend too much time on red, and keeps its place in the cycle even with power interruptions of up to about a second. It seems to cycle slightly slower at 1.2 V than at 1.5 V. The solar cell fell out, even though it's just been sitting around indoors-maybe its glue and solder joints got damaged in the same event that broke the plastic. The solar cell is a thick piece of glass (about 3 mm or 1/8") with silicon (I guess) coated on the back, with a thin piece of glass glued on to protect it. The wires were soldered to it through some nasty-looking holes in the thin glass. The metal tubes above and below the bubbly rod are the same length as each other (30 mm or 1 1/8") and the bubbly rod is longer (160 mm or 6 1/4" exposed)-maybe they shortened it and lengthened the lower tube in the new versions because the light wasn't getting all the way to the bottom. *It's fully charged despite having sat around indoors in a dim spot for years. It has been facing up, uncovered, with the solar cell in place, so maybe the broken solder joints still make enough connection, and it gets enough light, to charge slowly? I've been thinking I might put an RGB LED in each end of the bubbly-rod-and-tubes assembly and use it as a dual status indicator of some kind, but I'm not sure two colors will show up distinctly even from different ends, and I haven't gotten around to trying it yet.

could you do a video showing how to make garden lights brighter pls, covering all the ways we could. ive heard changing the inductor and battery capacity is a good idea, but knowing nothing about inductors, i dont know which way to go.

Just repaired two of those (kind of) lights for my aunt this weekend. They had a switch for white, color changing, and off (that needed some contact spray) Soldered through al the wire connections and mounting points for the parts and the problem was solved. Some problems also come from the fact that people change the chargeable AA batteries for normal AA batteries.

Nice to know I'm not the only one who uses scissors to ream out holes to make them bigger. I'm a lazy ass and it just saves the faff of dragging out the battery drill and looking for the right size drill bit, which inevitably is still in the hand drill with my lock picking kit somewhere (or accidently secreted under the bed or a table, or the kitchen cupboard that I forgot to replace the kick board on). ..Hooray for Scissors!!

That's the making of a solar powered Christmas tree! Good idea, thanks! 👍

The diode and capacitor are not a mystery, it's a standard "Boost regulator" design. Also, it doesn't matter which side the cap goes on, either across the LED or from LED to ground. Because the button cell has a low supply impedance and a constant voltage the Cap can go either side. I suspect they put the cap there simply because it made the PCB track routing easier... 🤔

Nice, I really now want to go and get some of those lights :).

They can just use a “Light Dependent Sensor” and a “Joule Thief”

The blue is very nice

Love me some goot wick. especially working with SMD mostly.

Lights are just fun. Maybe cause it allows our brains to connect a bit with the invisible electrons going around in crazy paths behind the scenes that we cannot see otherwise. But Clive hot rodding basic solar led lights to actually do something cool is like super crafts class. (My sisters would say)

If the PCB gets completely corroded (as usual), you can buy 50x YX8018 (or QX5252) on ebay for 3 bucks and build one yourself from scratch. One chip here, some inductor there and you're good to go.

These RBG LEDS are surprisingly efficient and work even at 100 microamps. Green leds are most efficient

If I would put bigger capacity battery cell inside that chip would charge it normally? One time I put bigger cell in different type of solar light and I noticed that it behave weirdly(battery get hot and difference in time was not that big really...) so I was wondering if those chips are set to work only with specific capacity of battery...

Hi can you please tell me where you got your molex connector from as I am doing Ride The Lights in Blackpool & want to put lot's of lights rund the bike thanks

A few of those arranged in a geometric pattern would make for a very interesting and dare I say it, almost stylish, futuristic chandelier. If I had a 3D printer I'd definitely design some sort of holder to insert a few of them into.

Two attempts to record, this is like the third time I've tried to watch this Thanks to your soldering flick technique, which I adopted, I have a wall covered in little splats of lead 😅

A few months ago , I changed the LEDs in mind for a blue led. I also put a 22ohms resistor in series with the led , it reduced the brightness of the led but the solar light stays on a lot longer

Ah Poundland, the only good thing to come out of there is that small screwdriver you use, they are brilliant. I would love to see you cannibalize some solar garden lighting to construct your own 12v garden light!

Unfortunately, I haven't developed the ability to drink circuit boards even though alcohol is involved in their production. Oh well, I'll look for more ethanology and carbonatology in the future. '-)

Very nice!! I use the flick method almost all the time. Unless I’m working with something large or sensitive like TV or motherboards in which case I’ll then use braid. I actually got a few garden lights recently I’d love to show you. They have a board with 24 smd led similar to the kind in the led light bulbs but they’re obviously not the 48Vf type. They have a lovely 2000mAh 18650 cell to power them. The first one I bought I was only getting about 3.7v from the solar panel and the second I tested I was getting around 5-6v. I absolutely love watching your videos because it’s pretty much exactly how I’ve learned everything about electronics (besides tons of reading). Reverse engineering can be the best and sometimes worst teaching method. By worst I mean by example of this video, if the original design is somehow flawed, but then again it serves as a great opportunity to modify.🤘🏼😁🤘🏼

That warm white LED was a CRE!? 🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤 GOTTA find me a box o' them! Great vid Big (C) Man. (Non Red Dwarfian!)

That inductor looks just like a resistor to me! Is there a quick easy way to indentify it as such so it won't be confused as a resistor?

Everyone is suffering to varying degrees from the epidemic. It is difficult to find or get anything now. I to hope it’s over for everyone!!!⚡️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿⚡️🇺🇸

Geez, the battery size in those is ridiculous, most I buy here in Australia at least have a AAA or a half AAA size, the battery in that light looks nearly as small as a button cell. It's true that the switch is usually the first thing to fail from rusting, better designs have a rubber cover over the switch so moisture doesn't get in there. Then the second failure is the battery itself, the battery can be replaced. The other components however typically don't appear to fail from my experience, so they don't need replacing. I like the bubble glass effect in the light you have there, there are some here in Australia like this also, however if the material is plastic I don't want to buy it, because the clear plastic turns a gross murky colour after not too long from the sunlight. Therefore I try to buy solar lights that have glass instead of clear plastic. A good solar light may cost 5-6 dollars instead of the cheap 1 dollar ones, but the good solar light will be better looking and made of glass and such and can easily be repaired endlessly. There are even some large ones here I have that use AA batteries, which is excellent. I agree with you also, the white light is so damn boring, virtually any colour is more interesting than the white light. The standard colour you can get are the red, green and the blue. Out of those the blue is possibly the best, green being ok, and red just looking too harsh. However you can buy a wider variety of led's outside of these, one particular neat colour to buy is purple, this is probably the best looking night time colour. Of course making sure to not buy 5v ones, but to use the 3-3.6v ones. They call them ultraviolet, but they are actually more like just violet, being around 390nm etc. You can get the other ones that are not based on the material itself, but it's like a white LED encased in a purple plastic, but I find those are weaker in their light output, because they are getting the purple via absorbing a lot of the other spectrums and allowing the purple inside the white to pass through, which means a lot of the light energy is lost. But blue is probably the most easily available, and cheapest good looking colour to use. I like your idea of using that connector, so you can just swap them out easily. I also take apart my lights to check the components, they nearly always have the green inductor, the little oscillating integrated circuit. I have seen some that only have those 2 components, yet a lot of other ones have the power diode in there, and a capacitor. I also have one that has a zener diode inside it, instead of a power diode. So each light is a little different, but it's essentially doing the same thing. Usually the most components, the better obviously, it's a more intelligent circuit. These additional components are usually to control the direction of flow better, and to not allow backflow. Obviously commercial solar panels have their own inbuilt power diode, but these tiny cheap panels on these solar lights don't have any such thing inbuilt.

That is confusing but I fingered it out. when the mosfet is open the cap gets charged through the inductor, then when the mosfet closes the diode is now reversed biased so no current flows and the LED sees both the battery and cap voltage combined so it turns on. The voltage created by the collapsing field in the inductor is not being used. Very odd indeed. That angel light you might recall that worked on uses a QX5252 chip which is the same thing but the circuitry is normal with the cap across the RGB led [that was my mod] so the built-in chip does not reset and stay on red and the white blinkers keep blinking.

where did you find a data sheet with multi circuits on ? , i had a look a couple years ago and all i could find was a poor quality chinese one with just one circuit on and all the writing on the single page was in chinese .

Big Clive how are these rgb led change their color ? Is there a circuitry on the die or is there another trick? I know I can google it but it would kill the joy of learning from our elders :)

Clive identified a problem with how the capacitor was miswired in both circuits but did not adequately explain why it was wrong. Nor did he repair the problem and show the improvement. Can someone complete the analysis, please?

Goot Wick seem to have a monopoly on the soldering braid market.

OK, hands up, you fooled me. I was expecting you to move the capacitor and bridge the switch. I suppose that if it ain't broke, etc. I think the local B&M had something similar last time I went... You've sewn a seed, haven't you. :-)

There's another way to prep the holes so you can install the new component: just don't do anything. I usually just heat the solder blob as I insert a new component. Then add a touch of extra solder and make sure it has adhered well to the new part.

Is it me? Keeping the switch at the top, if you flip the circuit board over, shouldn't the left hand components now be on the right of the picture?

If you file down the Bubble Acrylic stick to the same diameter of hole, as on the Slide Glow Flex Ribbon Controller Socket you recently tore down. I wonder if you can make them into Glow Bubble Stick Wands for a window display or as mini Bubble Light Sabre's, LOL. Also use the circular base with a sheet of black plastic with edge supports glued level with the rim of the LED. Which has previously been drilled with a centre hole to let the light emit. Then set on top an acrylic block etched with a display design inside it, or other item that will illuminate from beneath as a light display.

What is the namn of that connector? I have a few batteries with that one and have not been able to find these…

Why do your lights still have crappy soldered in button cell batteries? Even our cheapest lights have replaceable cells of at least 150-200mAh.

Its good to use a Shottky (SP) diode, but you can use a small signal diode

Two questions. 1. Why not put the solar panel under the light so that light that would otherwise be wasted is instead used to activate the solar panel to feed some energy back into the system to allow a longer length of operation? 2. Since the charge is 1.5, can it charge a cell phone?

You are like a grandpa that's explaining how it works to his grandkinds, keep it up !

much like the circuits I was asking you about!

Can anyone tell me what voltage the 100 nano farad capacitor is??? is it 2.7v? im trying to convert a solar light to a colour changing one....but cant findthe right capacitor value...

Would it make sense to put the capacitor parallel to the LED or does that not change anything?