There is no stored charge - everything is done with the energy from the push. These clickers will typically flash a white LED quite brightly. The RF encoding is optimised for the short packet length, typically AM, so unlikely to work with battery units
I can confirm there is no stored charge. I used to work for a company that made Zigbee chips. We built a demo using a switch, might have been frome enocean, can't remember for sure. The action of the switch provided just enough energy to boot the mcu, transmit a series of repeated encrypted messages using the 2.4GHz radio (802.15.4) and update the frame counters stored in the on chip FLASH before it ran out of power. Really impressive but a lot more expensive than a single coin cell which could do pretty much the same thing and only required replacement after quite a few years.
Because the unit failed to work with his other gear, I suspect they include the receiver as the two are picky about what protocol they use (see Mike's Electrical Stuff's answer above). So rather than have bad reviews, they just include the receiver too.
I have some door chimes that work on a similar principle. I've had one of the pushbutton units outside mounted to my gatepost for over two years, fully exposed to the weather and it is still working perfectly well.
'super disco mode' 😂😁Phillips makes those for their HUE range of lamps. They use zwave to communicate and work great. Imagine the number of button cells the world can save on a yearly basis!
I've had my hue lights for about 4 years now, the switches are now just starting to complain about low battery (but it's like a TV remote - there's low battery and there's "it doesn't work any more"). The IR sensors still seem quite OK. They've lasted far longer than I expected.
I have fitted a few of those Curv kinetic switches over the years, and had zero failures. They're great for 2 way or intermediate lighting without bashing walls out or running cable. I always wondered how they worked, cheers Clive...great explanation.
Ooooo... really like the snappy action of those switches and a possible 6 codes being sent to a micro controller without the need for a battery in the transmitter, that sounds super useful, thanks Clive :)
I've always wondered how these worked, and like you I had presumed the clicking action and the power came from a piezo-electric mechanism, so I've really enjoyed your deep dive into this switch, thanks for taking the time to reverse engineer it for all your viewers.
It would be really interesting to see you take a look at the Quinetic receiver switch, which incorporates the wireless receiver into a switch plate, and most intriguingly, works just on the Common and L1 wires with no need for neutral.
Theere is high power low value inline resistor which drops voltage needed for circuit, disadvantage of this is some led bulbs tends to strobe when off because capacitors in them are charged with this low current which are discharged through led when reached thresshold voltage of led.
I really enjoyed that as well. Honestly, it restores my faith in mankind. For that much creativity and engineering to be put into a switch device that is not a killing device or a weapon of war makes my day. It also makes one appreciate the power of the milliamp. With about one mm of movement, enough power is generated to store, convert, run logic circuits, and transmit radio frequencies. Spectacular. The only worry I have now is one of these "free energy" RU-vidrs will watch this and make a video that claims this switch will power your home and charge your car. Talk about A LOT of clicks ... imagine the blisters just to charge your Tesla
It's an ingenious, non-obvious solution, I can well understand why it took so long to reverse engineer. It also appears that the receiver could be modified to work on 5 VDC by bypassing the switch-mode PSU. The listings I found seem to offer the switch with and without the receiver units, so I suspect your "wrong box shipped" idea is correct.
came here to ask the big guy the same thing. @bigclivedotcom please put the 2.5V rail on the scope during a button click. Also what happens if you push one button up and the other down at the same time? Or just two or three switches at once does it give the 2.5V rail a longer decay boost time?
Wow Clive! I can often follow along with your circuit analysis but this time I think I'll have to watch the video a few times to have a chance. I'm always impressed with your ability to reverse engineer and then explain these obscure devices.
Would be curious to see how much energy the switch generates- what’s the power budget for the transmitter? Maybe attach a coulomb counter and press a few times?
@@ab_ab_c Not really. LTC4150 coulomb counter selling price in China is around £2. Audrino UNO is around £1.5 Of course, need to pay extra shipping charge.
You'd be *hard pressed* to pull an entire coulomb out of that switch! It takes about a minute for a coulomb to have passed at 16mA - so about ten minutes of switch clicking to fill a 1farad capacitor from 2 to 3 volts... Yet a single click is good enough for a small cap and the micro-ampere draw of the chip.
I believe the TX10-1 ic is used in car remotes under a different name it a very versatile chip . thanks for the tare down clive i am really enjoying your channel i am a new Patreon supporter and having fun going through your back catalogue of videos , i am a semi retired EE.
I had no idea these things were even a thing. My first guess was also piezo. I'm guessing they don't generate enough current because if they worked, sure they'd be cheaper than those complex coils, magnets, and mechanics. Suppose it'd also be hard to tell the switch position from a piezo alone. 🤔 Either way, this is super neat!
I imagine a piezo crystal could feed a step-down transformer. They can produce huge voltage pulses at extremely low current. One transformer could be shared by all of them with suitable diode layouts and RC circuits to store a wee bit of the pulse for identifying the button.
I had also assumed these things used the piezo-electric effect. Crystals do of course produce a pulse of opposite polarity depending on which way they are bent.
When you described the transmitter circuit operation, you could have called those four diodes a "full bridge rectifier" because that's what they are. A button press delivers their AC input - just half a cycle of one polarity or the other.
Saw this advertised just today on the Internet. A one gang switch wired into the mains via a live cable and neutral. Other switches can be located anywhere in the room,by another door or bed,without any wiring at all. Each one can be programmed from the main switch by holding the switch down for six seconds. No cost mentioned but I intend to call into the electrical store tomorrow to enquire about them. The name quoted was Quinetic. Kinetic energy is the motive power,as you say,sounds like piezoelectric. Surprised to see your video come up the same day! Very interesting.
Thanks Clive - a superb insight into these devices. Great to see a tantalum cap for the energy storage - stands a chance of lasting! Unfortunately the hard-programmed on and off codes don't make these good for 2-way switching. Since 'down' is always on you have to switch the 2nd switch twice to change the lamp state. It's a shame you can't configure them to toggle on any change of switch position. They also unfortunately don't work with Sonoff RF devices
For those interested in the microjoule generator and the sort of micro-controller that can use it, there is a similar system described in the reference design by Texas Instruments, the TIDA 00690, with a lot of useful waveforms and data. The switch concept is similar to the AFIG0007 bare mechanism sold by Cherry, which gives a a 5msec pulse into 100 ohms load of around ~4V mean and 8v peak, total energy 300micro- joules. Mike PJ
I wonder what the output of the switch mechanism is, a scope across the leads would be needed I guess as the power output will be tiny. very interesting gadget 2x👍
I’d be interested in that, too... this seems to me to take energy harvesting to kind of a new level... I think some experiments are in my future. Now where’d I put that magnet wire? 😁
@@DavidLindes I think its a very clever bit of kit but I still would like to see the output . I dont have a scope and apart from this have no other resaon to buy one. 👍
Awesome! I think the little coil antenna is also glued in place to keep it from vibrating which would induce addition nastiness one not wants in an RF circuit...
Not likely. Vibrations are not likely to cause RF problems unless the vibration frequency is close to the transmission frequency or there are strong magnets around. Plus it's probably not vibrating much when attached to the wall. The more likely reason is so it doesn't wiggle loose in transport. The coil is the heaviest component on the board and attached in just two points which makes it susceptible to mechanical resonance.
I nearly didn't bother watching this video but I'm glad I did, it turned out to be much more interesting than I imagined. It was especially interesting to see that it was able to generate all the power it needed in a single operation which took a fraction of a second, fascinating stuff !
My parents always thought it was amazing that they found me taking apart the alarm clock with tools, this must have been what would have happened if they didn’t just laugh and point and actually encouraged me 😆
That is fascinating (the transmitter side). The boot time on the transmitter RF chip must be ridiculously quick, and at only 2.5V. The power generation is also quite clever. That type of generator might be made to work on a hand power device like the wind up flashlights I have seen that use a small DC motor applied (inefficiently) as a generator to charge a lithium button cell. I feel a project coming on...
No need for extremely fast bootup, the capacitor on the signal diode remembers the pulse while the encoder boots and determines which pin has a signal, then sends that code and runs out of power.
@@dantronics1682 Why use an ultra cap when a regular cap does the job. And why charge anything when you can save state and survive at 0 power until next use. And why save state when you can do with nothing but the factory configuration and the instant situation.
I was searching about this tech two weeks ago and didn't find what I was looking for. So a very special thank you, for finding it for me. Edit: Clive, your coffee is on the way!
I really like the design of it. Looks like someone actually wanted to make a quality product. I wonder if anyone makes these that work with the zigbee network. My father has everything in his house switching with ZigBee then controlled by Google. It's great but I like turning in switches rather than voice. We do have some of the IKEA tactile switches which seem to work ok
Great video, a totally clear and understandable teardown and analysis. These things are all about lazy convenience - at the sacrifice of reliability. I never had to hit an old-school toggle switch twice to get my light to go on or off.
A surprisingly complicated circuit for this application, but then again we do have some wireless bell pushes which are also more than I would have expected for the application.
I've been using a waterproof outdoor doorbell based on this tech for at least the past 6 years. It's really great not having to run wiring to outside your gate. The reach is pretty long. The doorbell receivers actually relay the signal inside the house, so one doorbell can sound multiple receivers inside the house.. really neat.
Reminds me of when I was 7 or 8, Dad took me to tractor repair place he work at part time. I was playing with a little device on the bench with a shaft sticking out. I rotated the shaft and it bit me, fly across the room. My dad and the other tech were laughing so hard while I learned a never to be forgotten lesson about magnetos.
I've found that a Nerf gun does less damage but is impossible to aim at anything - however, you get the greatest joy when it finally makes contact 20 minutes later thus saving yourself those 5 steps.
Really interesting video. I'm having to watch it a couple of times to get my head around all the circuitry but fab explaination, it's just that I'm not too bright and it takes a couple of runs through to take in the details 😊
Very interesting. I had no idea these existed, nor that enough power could be produced in this way. Would have been useful a few years ago as I was looking for exactly this. Nice to know for future fun.
That is a very interesting controller with all those diodes. I'm reverse engineering a 3-way CFL myself and it uses its own interesting configuration of rectifier diodes to vary its DC rail voltage based on which contacts are supplied with AC power. A video will be up on my channel soon, hopefully this week.
I bougth a door bell with a kinetic switch a couple of years ago via Ebay, it works far better than battery operated units here above the arctic circle where it can be way below -30C during winter. Batteries usually only lasts a month or two when it's really cold, but this one just keeps working no matter what. I've lackered the components inside it with finger nail lacquer to avoid rust or corrosion, seems to work well.
Bought a new doorbell a few weeks back that works the same way. My money was on a piezo of some sort, but seems to have a lot more going on there. Love that E magnet arrangement.
I think the best thing about your voice is that it conveys really useful and interesting information and that means I don't have to acknowledge how much I like it 😉
That took me back to STC again, where we used smaller rocking armatures in 'Trill Phones' to transduce the signal into the vibrations heard in the ear piece, via an aluminium foil cone glued to a small gold pin, soldered to a notch on one side of the armature. I used to use a surprising number of different gadgets and machines to both test all the raw materials and destruction test the finished earpiece. The number of tests that went into what was basically a metal and plastic version of your earbones and drum, was astonishing. Worst task given me was to measure the variation of the physical properties of a thousand of the little brick shaped magnets before they were magnetised. The Sinclair calculator had only just been invented, (and a pricy 60 quid was three weeks pay to do very slow, simple calculations. But, at least you could pretend it was a Star Trek communicator when proudly flipping open the case!). With only this to help, (the computer occupied a whole sealed floor of a large building, with coloured silica gel snow all around), I had to use proper micrometers to measure all 1000 little bricks and log all the dimensions on actual paper spreadsheets, and work out the density of every one, and then mean and standard deviation of the batch! I could barely see or think by the time I finished! I still keep finding the magnet assemblies stuck to long unused tool boxes. I used to find phone parts all over the town, carried further and further with each tyre they got stuck to! :)
Thanks Clive I have 2 of these systems one ikea (bathroom lights) with a battery to allow for colour changing leds and one like that kinetic for an outside light. The range is impressive and works over 10 meters through a wall and door.
This is brilliant. I never imagined this existed. Very clever idea (even if this is a copy). I can imagine a number or uses for it already. Bathrooms. Inaccessible retrofits. Wall to wall windows. I really like this. The mov on the receiver is a bit of a fail.
Thanks to dissect it for us. The way the CPU tells the (ON/OFF) state is by magnetic polarity transient is experienced by the induction coil, either transit from N to S or from S to N. When CPU powers up and the detection diode signal is high - is taken as one state, versus CPU powers up again to see a low by the same diode is taken as another state.
Thanks for this Clive, very interesting. I was one of the people suggesting you have a look at these things. I don't think the neodymium based magnets are as susceptible to losing their magnetism from repeated striking as the "standard" ferrous/cobalt based. Only time will tell!
Another great video! I'm surprised they didn't design the up/down positions to be momentary or a single momentary push in, since the receivers allow multiple switches and the physical position of the switches are no longer meaningful (and causes unexpected tactile response, or the lack thereof), with more than 1 switch.
That is a very interesting switching circuit! How expensive is that unit? Are they easily available or only sold on limited websites? Great find Clive!
Love to see the output of the switch coil on a scope. I'm staggered that it generates enough charge from one click to power everything for long enough.
19:46 "back to school" vibe cool stuff btw, apart the switching regulator consumption they surely can find their place in our homes, good thing to not wire switches anymore
The one fascinating thing about these coil based switches for me is that they seem to be reversible: you can probably make them click by injecting current into the coil.
This was great! I work at an electronics store that sells a wireless doorbell operating on the same/similar principles(I assume). Have actually had at least 2 customers suggest I send one to you to reverse engineer. Glad I now have an answer for everyone who asks "How does it work?" Thanks mate👍🍻
Reminiscent of the clacker power supply for claymore but on a tiny scale, amazing how EM shift can generate power. I expected piezo at first glance as well. Thanks for sharing 👍😊
I've always wondered how they worked. Just saw a video on them with the rocking core through the coil that snaps between magnetic polarities. Very clever.
Came to know about this for first time and it looks fascinating. Thank You!!! If receivers are designed to be efficient, this switches would reduce a huge wiring overhead. (I know as the receiver are wireless, it does have potential to be hacked but still good for small time) Would love to see what is dead consumption of the receiver and also how much power is being generated by the each click of the switch.
I bought wireless doorbell with "kinetic" outside unit two years ago. Didn't even notice that before buying, all that I want was something with AC powered main unit (all units I own before drained batteries in a month and then two months pass before someone notice that postman leave notice even when someone is at home). Batteries in outside units usually last for years (but when it's time to replace them they cost like whole new units) and it's not something I care too much. Didn't put too much thought into it but also expect some kind of piezo element, this surprise me. I catch it on sale in Tesco for about 10Ł, standard price was around 15Ł. In two years save me it's own value just with all batteries that I didn't need to buy for main box.
Jeeze. I missed this one. That's Really fascinating and completely unlike the one you did more recently with the Piezo inductor. Now I'm wondering if this one has better coverage or what the distance is from switch to pole. I think this one is kind of amazing in that such little movement from a tiny magnet can create a one or zero as it were and that it knows or remembers the position. WILD! Thanks for taking this to bits, for the double plus good order (Ha! Rarely do you get more than you purchase) and for the time you spent working this thing out. Oh man.
An incredible bit of engineering there for both modules. I almost want to get one of these to not have to worry about batteries. Not that that's an issue, i have a traditional remote controlled socket set with the 12 volt alarm cell as it's battery, and I haven't needed to replace it yet. i've had the set of 3 in one for about 5-6 years or so. they work quite nicely.
I would love to know the transmission frequency coding protocol.(good old manchester etc) and what the maximum induced voltage in the primary cap after the bridge rectifier. Haul out the spectrum analyser and oscilloscope . great video . I loved the positive action of the switch. It sounded great.
Living in the US with lots of frame construction over drywall the vertical mounting holes make sense because you can sink the screws in to the same stud.
No more chasing out walls or ugly mini trunking everywhere! When you need to make an alteration to a lighting circuit. And the best bit for me, NO MORE BATTERYs in the remote switch! I hope they turn out to be reliable. The kinetic mechanism should hopefully last.
I've got a doorbell sending switch that is self-powering via the switch button and a coil. It always confuses people when I tell them it doesn't need batteries. As for the bi-directional switch, my guess (before disassembly) is that it sees which way the current pulses through the coil and determines what to send...Well, right on that, not quite what I imagined on detection. Cool!
Hi Clive! This is my first comment here, but I've watched many many of your videos - I wanted to say thank you, you're very entertaining! :-) Also your content is helping me to get into electronics! One question: I've two solar powered lamp which go into bamboo holders - unfortunately one isn't working anymore so maybe you could tear them apart and have a look what's inside? :) Greetings from Germany!
Take a look inside and at the solar panel. Water ingress can cause rapid corrosion due to the presence of DC voltage. The on/off switch is a prime culprit for failure and can be bypassed. If the solar panel is intact then you may be able to swap the electronics inside for those out of a cheap common solar light. Nail varnish or other clear lacquer can be used to make PCBs more water resistant.
That capacitor on the transmitter (rightmost in photo) appears to be of a tantalum-polymer variety, which are expensive and are often backordered with long lead times. Their performance is "off the charts" compared to electrolytic and conventional tantalum-oxide varieties. They would have cost-reduced it out if it wasn't necessary. The crystals are also expensive, and many wireless designs use resonators, often on-chip. 26.000 MHz is the same frequency used by ESP8266 and ESP32, so maybe there's some of those cores in the silicon. My understanding is that crystals get power hungry at 80 MHz, so they PLL the frequency up to that frequency and higher. It's impressive that they can stabilize both a crystal oscillator and PLL during the brief pulse of energy.
I had a similar (but battery powered) remote system that operated on pulses but used a flying cap instead. Kinda amazing there's enough juice in that pulse to accomplish the same thing... I remember thinking the cap scheme about had to be borderline... But it worked reliably
