LEDs roasting on an open wire 🎵 Big Clive nipping at your heat shrink The sound of tortured LEDs screaming And folks dressed like Firemen beating down your door 🎶
Why do I now have a mental image of Clive just chomping down on some person's leg, like still had a pair of jeans on, but it's severed off of the body and he's holding it like someone would who is eating a turkey leg or something, but he pauses when he notices we are looking at him with puzzled looks on our faces? Interesting.
LEDs are more than just for light. LEDs are a lifestyle. LEDs are life. BTW, the usage of "Pound Shop" brightened my day due to my mind still getting the giggles out of silly things like that! 😁 And, forgive me, but I was just being goofy initially.... 😋 Ugh, I'm bored and my Roku has been buffering the entire time I've used writing this so I haven't even gotten to watch it yet!!!! 😢
@@nimoy007 I hope you are satisfied with the knowledge I sat here dumbfounded for a moment wondering why you were watching or listening to anything regarding those two animals getting it on with a Christmas theme or something? I don't even want to know..... 😂🤮😁 Edited: I forgot to add I read it wrong originally to read something like "Dogs on Cats, Christmas special" or something like that....🙃
When you first plugged them in they drew 1.575 Amps at 2:05 , then were quickly 'semi-damaged' down to 1A. Before settling at 300mA. Chinese 'engineered obscelesence' has become noticeably more aggressive.
I'm worried that their actual plan was to just cook the LEDs until they were damaged enough to draw a reasonable current. They might as well be incandescents.
@@ZephodBeeblebrox Ironically, this LED string was designed by Boris along with the implementation of Brexit and his COVIDcritter super spreader party at 10 Drowning St. last year (that party supposedly cost him and his wife 1000 pounds each thanks to the police). At least now the UK has a cute chick as PM, maybe she will be a bit better than Boris the Russian was (yeah, I know he was born in the US but Boris is a Russian name). Current PM Liz can either shape up the PM's office and do well or end up dragged out of 10 Drowning St. in cuffs at this point. I think the chances of the Tories winning the next election are pretty slim after Boris' dismal performance.
That's a fine product that is safe and compliant with all the product safety regulations required in the UK, you can tell this as it has a UKCA logo on it... XD
Here in the USA, our Dollar Tree stores -- roughly equivalent to Poundland, having recently introduced $3 and $5 tiers, as well as marking up their $1 tier to $1.25 -- has LED flashlights that for years have had similar construction. Lasts about three days. Needless to say, I only ever bought one.
yep, many small (maybe big ones as well) led torches here in the uk, use leds direct off 3 AA cells, at 4.5v, so if you put good capacity cells like alkalines in, they get a tad warm😉 they seem to work perfectly ok off 3 nimhs so thats what i use
I had the reflex to disconnect the plug as soon as I saw the current, my arm actually twitched a little bit before the brain stopped everything saying "it's in the video you dingus, you can't disconnect shit, watch those LEDs suffer the worst of deaths"
I've had a similar light for 3-4 years, and we love it. It has no USB, tiny bare colored LED lights, and thin copper wires insulated with clear lacquer. It runs on 3 AA cells or a Li-Ion hack. It turns on automatically when you choose every day and shuts off in 8 hours. Batteries last 4-5 days. No danger or device damage possible!
Pardon me if I'm showing my lack of knowledge but with how genuinely horrified Clive sounded at first and how promptly he unplugged them, are those a fire hasard?
For anything low current (like these lamps) drawing 1A from USB is a sign of a possible short circuit somewhere. Also really thin wire exists (with fat insulation) that won't carry 1A.
Using resistors with LEDs was literally one of the earliest things I’ve been told, either when soldering at school or looking at circuits e.g. Arduino. They likely didn’t add one because of reducing costs and ‘it works without them’ (as in they power on and light up).
I've screwed up breadboarding projects on occasion and turned LEDs into DEDs (dark emitting diodes). I even managed to blow up a couple of DIP optocouplers until it dawned on me the input was a bare LED without any current limiting.
I had a former employer who was doing education and they didn't use resistors on LEDs and still don't really understand why they should be used. This is somebody getting paid to teach.
Let's be honest, if someone's dumb enough to buy an electronic device or anything that plugs it from a pound-store, natural selection was never on their side
I remember seeing these sold in Peacocks last year. No wonder all their stores closed in my area! Great work. These things are a health & safety hazard, and draw wayyy too much electricity !!
Wow, just... wow. Those LEDs actually surviving 125+ degrees is testament to just how good they actually are, components now days have to survive lead-free soldering processes, so they seem to be hardier than their 2000's counterparts, which were an order of magnitude better than the parts of the early days! Only way to make sure they fail before next season is to cook 'em; or it's the grinch getting mad that the christmas lights stopped lighting themselves on fire!
@@trickster721 It's not unusual to see that figure listed as a peak value, but that is a very short pulse! I've seen transistors desolder themselves, so yeah they can'handle' it - but probably don't work as well as before...
I guess that's one way to save money, skip the resistor cost and when they burn out in a few hours (as opposed to 50k hours) hope the customer buys another. But it also looks like they are relying on the temperature coefficient of the silicon to limit the current, as the hotter they get the less current they draw. They'd probably fail alot quicker if it was plugged into some sort of flasher with 125mA peaks each and not given enough timt to heat up much.
I would *love* to see these run on a quick charge power brick with a USB meter/tester behind it. Either Ruideng or FNIRSI make them (or both. I can’t quite remember.) and they can interrogate the charger for its capabilities of volts and amps, but you can also use the tool to essentially force the output voltage to whichever mode you want. That really would make for an entertaining light show to shove 19v or even 24v down those LEDs!
@@markevans2294 AA cells are still pretty wasteful though, since LEDs like this would go through a set of cells quite rapidly. I'd go for the 18650 (or other Li-Ion cell) + TP4056 route and add a single resistor for the whole set to limit the current (or at least some other sort of current limiting device).
@@TheSpotify95 Wasteful in what way? It takes the same amount of energy per watt to charge a Lithium AA cell as a Lithium 18650. As you said it would only effect runtime, which does not meet the criteria for being wasteful
Yike-a-rama! Good thing I've made my own USB Christmas lights and QA tested them before bringing them out in public. I didn't use resistors on my LED string either, I just made pairs of LEDs that added up to about 5.2V.
Maybe it is made from leftover sections of normal LED strings that weren't long enough to get to a useful length. They just chopped to short lengths and moulded connectors on the end. The constructions looks like it.
No, these strings are wired wrong no matter how you use them. There really needs to be some sort of current limiting component (such as a resistor) for each individual LED in the string, no matter how you drive them or how long the string is. Any longer strings made this way would just consume even more ridiculous amounts of power and fail just as fast...
@@foogod4237 Well, the longer strings may be intended for current-limited power supplies given they're all identical white LEDs rather than a mix. Still, even if they're theoretically identical, it's still suboptimal to put them all together without individual current limiting, even if that's _technically_ something that you "should never do but often get away with".
@@foogod4237 Cheap (and shitty) current limiting can be achieved by powering blue or white 3,6 V LEDs with two AA-Cells (3V). Seems they used a LED string that was intended to be used that way.
id honestly be interested in how much current can make it past the LED's when you hook up a load like another battery bank so far its just wasting all its power burning the LED's and not charging whatever its plugged into
Well, the cheap and nasty cable between the USB plug and the first LED is going to be limiting the current a bit, so by the time said current has made it all the way to the other end, you may be lucky and get maybe 200 to 400mA to charge your phone!!!
@@Mark1024MAK would have been interesting hooking up the power meter to the other end as well. Maybe one at each end to see current out from the powebank and into the load simultaneously.
@@Mark1024MAK I just tested mine with the Ampere app. Plugged in a 1A charger and the app sais I'm getting 800~900mA to the phone somehow. I'm confused... Is the phone acting as a resistor for the LEDs or something?
I do feel for the staff in these shops, seeing Big Clive thundering through their door with his well clamped monocle, combat webbing festooned with test equipment & a spudger in each hand, - the Poundland eqiv. of 'Oh shit, it's Mr.Creosote'? : )
Did you notice the insect running 'round the back of your left hand at around 3:44? It's in and out of frame quickly a few times so you might need to set the playback speed as low as possible to catch it.
Not every led fails quickly ether when you over power them. I had one actually catch on fire witch I was shocked cause I never ever seen that happen before. That's crazy lmao!
The beauty of a fire-based design is that if LEDs aren't available, you can just use regular diodes, or any component really. And if wire isn't available, you can just stick the LEDs directly in the socket, without even having worry about polarity.
Be interested to see what the current draw would do to the LEDs if you added a phone to charge at same time my phone has 5v 6A charging would been interesting to see how they'd a react on that as for that fast charge no data lines with would shunt it straight through the leds
I'm surprised they didn't immediately blow when plugged in. I connected a LED directly to 5V once and it flashed briefly and died, leaving a tiny black mark on the inside. I guess their thought was that when a load is plugged in it will limit the current to the LEDs, so you definitely shouldn't be leaving this one plugged in when it's not in use, which means you probably shouldn't be using it at all, because who doesn't leave their charger plugged in all the time?
I'm paranoid and unplug EVERYTHING that is not in use from the wall, almost died in an electrical fire and still sometimes have nightmares about it lol
After a long day my tired brain decided to check if the 9v battery was dead and causing my circuit not to work... by placing an LED across it. There was a loud pop and suddenly I was only holding half an LED. I wisely called it a night at that point 😂
@@KempPlays I did that once mucking around I had my head in the boot of a Mini clubman and stuck an LED across the 12 volt battery for shits and giggles. It sounded like mini firecracker and the end flew off, lucky I didnt get it in the eye.
@@KempPlays Half an LED, philosophically, must _ipso facto_ half not be. But half the LED has got to be, _vis a vis_ its entity. Singing, Lah-di-dah, one, two, three, Kemp's half an LED! A-B-C-D-E-F-G, Kemp's half an LED!
Not fair, we can't get crap like this at our Dollar Stores here in the USA. They never have anything with LEDs in it. Not even the ones that catch fire. This is not right.
I think the reason why they slapped them in there like that is because after about month and a half to they're going to be so dim burnt out. That where you're going to have to go buy another string and probably another phone. 🤣
I work in in the US and in the electronics department of a big box store and I’ve got to check to see if we have these. I have little issue tanking the sales of a product for safety.
Presumably they're only supposed to last about 2 weeks with them being cheap seasonal product? I was wondering if the resistors have an affect on the charge capability? Maybe they left them out so that the current can get too the phone? At least when the lights pop you know Christmas is over right 😅🤟
I don't understand the technical side at all, but i relish listening to all your sage advice and like hundreds of other people, will follow any advice given. You should be part of the national curriculum.
4:50 4.73 volts 😉 edit: yes you corrected v/a mixup 😉😉. Also, I really would like to see a phone being charged to see the results with a proper termination. i suspect the current draw would be ... interesting. pls do update BC. Cheers.Your mate, Rob.
Hooray for cheap seasonal garbage to pack the landfills with!! I do have to admit that I appreciate all the spider plushies that can be found this time of year though.
Well seems you get the quality you pay for. I would consider this to potentially be cause for civil action on the retailer for selling "unfit for purpose product". In worst case potential fire hazard.
The lack of resistors is due to the LEDs being on the same wire as the charging. Lowering the current would make the cable mostly useless for charging, and at that point just use a normal cable and use a strobe app to slow flash red and green.
I wonder if they weren't intended to be wired in series and someone along the line "optimized" the design by eliminating the LED power wiring and grafting them onto the phone charging wires.
If they were meant to be in series then the USB charging aspect would no longer work, as it would be under 5v. I recon it was meant to be a resistor per led, and someone being paid not a lot got lazy
Me: watching Clive after a few drinks hold the LED and with his finger on the shrink wrap slice it up to the LED…. Insert wince here 🤦🤦🤦. Love your vids!
i doubt you'd get a fire from these, the current needed to get hot enough may trip off the charger/psu or the cable may self limit current enough, i bet its copper coated aluminium , or very thin real copper, it may well blow open at a bit more current
HyperValue was just as bad. The only thing worth having there were the Rocket batteries. They cost a fifth of what Duracell cost, you needed 4 sets to equal the life of a Duracell so you did come out on top by a fifth of the price of Duracells.
They probably figured once you plug your device into charge, it's going to take most of that load from those LEDs that's why they probably didn't put resistors on it.
Nobody ever leaves the charger plugged into the wall. Specially near a cold window with a wooden frame and highly flammable curtains. Come to think of it, they are designed in a way to make things around them glow 🌟 brightly.
It might be worth getting for the USB adaptors and a USB plug/socket on a short lead. Just rip out the LEDs and reuse the overs. I miss Poundworld. I use to buy their crap 5m network cables. They were fun because they were coiled in such a way as to set off the alarms in Superdrug.
There are 5v LED's which could be used but the colour range is limited to red and green. The illumination intensity with the 5v types is also limited as well to 20 to 30 max millicandela typically. This would tend to limit them to an open assembly similar to the battery powered LED lighting sets available.
Impressively bad - only query I had was what effect it would have adding a phone to be charged on the other end? I presume it would exacerbate the current draw further while dropping the voltage across the LEDs ... I bet a real phone wouldn’t be happy with it. Maybe worth some extra tests?
Quite literally one of the most bizarre juxtaposition of functions yet envisioned! The warming function is an added bonus. They may self destruct providing added entertainment! In an ideal dystopian world heating of hot melt glue might allow the bulbs to drop off ceremoniously as in the falling rose petal effect you made earlier ;)
I got these last year as a present. Whilst the novelty is nice they barely charged my phone, plus they would blink on and off every so often. They are now gathering dust in a cupboard somewhere.
When you first said you were having difficulty getting the caps off due to the hot melt glue, I thought, "Just give them a bit. At 1,000mA, they'll soon release themselves."
That would be sort of a delightful little product if only it was constructed correctly, with a resistor per LED. Shame it's such a bad design . I wonder if there are standard size LED packages that include a current limiting resistor for low voltage DC use, and this was originally supposed to have those, and some higher up decided "we don't need those expensive special LEDs, just use the standard stuff":
They do exist, but they are slightly more expensive and when used for higher voltages they tend to fail. However for such a moderate voltage drop when powered from a 5V source i believe they could last for a while.
There is a twist - simple circuit with LEDs and resistors will work only for standard 5V charging. Quick charging modes with increased voltages will explode LEDs again. So either this willl be slow charging cable with Christmas bling. Or this contraption will require buck converter to 4V and final price will be 2$ more expensive.
I expect most phones would just not charge on this cable, the usual approach for dumb USB chargers is to incrementally step up the charging current until the voltage drops and 4.8V output is already too low. I'm impressed that this manages to fail at every one of the claims on the box. Also, Bug Clive at 3:40 on your left hand
Very common to see in cheap LED based thingies from Asia, particularly when the LED is powered from a coin cell. Even though resistors are vanishingly cheap these days, not putting them in saves time and money. The circuit relies on the bulk resistance of the LED, which thankfully has a +ve temperature coefficient of resistance, and the forward voltage drop across it which is around 3.5v for white LEDs. The LED initially draws a lot of current, but its resistance increases and therefore the current through it drops as the LED heats up. The life of the LED is going to be short, but it will probably last through the Christmas season before it fails and destroys your USB charger.
I wonder what were to happen with one of those (or even one with proper resistors) if the data lines were connected through and charger and device negotiate USB-PD at 20 V.
The box illustration seems to include a dimmer box. Maybe that was meant for the current limiting, and the designers weren't consulted on the decision to remove it?
