Faker-shaker. Fake "eco" flashlight.
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- čas přidán 28. 08. 2024
- I remember when these things first appeared. They were so hyped up it was ridiculous.
The implication was that with a brief spell of shaking the flashlight would provide hours of light. And to be fair, you did kinda get hours of light if you regard a faint glow when you look directly into the end of it as "light".
James sent this light from the USA and sadly it's one of the many fakes that appeared when the Chinese manufacturers realised that the concept was so flawed that they might as well just fake it from the start. The real ones produce a visible pulse of light when shaken vigorously.
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:-
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If you shake it with your left hand it feels like someone else is "charging" the flashlight
you're going to hell.
so naughty
Best comment ever
I found that shaking mine after sleeping on my side and my entire arm is asleep works even better.
Hahaha
"You can recharge it by replacing the batteries" Golden.
Since the flashlight from the 2017 hit horror game tattletail worked the same and you can get a golden flashlight im thinking the batteries have to be golden
@@ipga13no cuz there are real ones so tattletail is real 🤑
When I was a kid, I won a really high-quality one of these. I loved it. It did indeed live up to the claims. I have no idea what happened to it, but I miss it.
I one got a light, with a small thing that you could spin around. It was charging like a dynamo. The lamp also had a radio. I still have it to this day and it’s the best apocalypse device
@@Boy-pr2uz I have two of those: a flashlight and a lantern. Both are handy. The lantern also has solar panels and a USB charging port, so there's lots of options for filling the battery. It also has a USB output port so it can be used to charge other things.
As good as those are, though, the shake light I used to have was better than either of them.
@@TheOriginalJphyper yes. I miss the shake light too
The one I had as a kid was massive! It took quite a bit of energy to shake for a minute. But it did work
@@l4ndst4nder Mine was small and easy to shake. My family had a few of the bigger ones and it took a lot more shaking to get it to get to a useful brightness.
Toyota gave these away years ago at a press event for the Prius. They were pretty naff then, and they still are.
The similarities are amazing. These shake-weighty torches self-charge by you buying new batteries. Toyota's shake-weighty cars self-charge by you stopping and buying fossil fuels
Here in Australia we used to be able to get them. First LED torch I had ever seen and it would hurt your eyes of you got shone with it.
naff? do you think i speak tea time?
@@jameshowell1214 She was born one of us: a limey Brit, so Nikki can slip back into speaking Tea-time, when talking to us folks back over the pond (or in this case Clive who lives in the pond itself). However if you watch her channel you'll see that she also speaks fluent Merkin "auto makers" "the holidays" "an appointment with the Dennis at three-twonny" etc ;)
My granddad had a bunch of these in the early 2000's. They're garbage.
Charging it with your right hand: That works
Charging it with your left hand: That feels strange.
hehehehehhehehehehehehehehehehehehhe
I love how he still hearths comments on a video from 2 years
Read the comments before comment
@WITE FOX nah right upside down is where its at
Lol
My grandmother was given one of these as a "free gift" from a mail order catalogue. We spent weeks playing with the thing trying to get it to work. I thought it was just a cheap lump of plastic, it never occurred to me that it was a fake cheap lump of plastic!
The best free gift I got (ironically paid for) allowed me to watch Sky Sports.
Matthew Bartholomew Do a quick internet search, for Chinese fake food. An example is, Walnuts being filled with concrete. I’m guessing the gadget featured here, is from China.
@@HeaanLasai
No, the go-to for those emergencies is lights that feed off either lithium primary batteries like CR123, or LSD NiMH rechargeables like Eneloops. And a USB battery charger that can feed off power banks or solar pads.
@@HeaanLasai
Sounds like you're trying to convince yourself more than me, or you're _that_ unaware of battery technology today. Do you even know what an LSD is?
My brother had one of these stored vertically in the tool box on the back of his quad. Just driving around off road kept it charged and it worked great.
Did he realise it was actually being charged by the engine in his quad bike?
@@ColinWatters yeah, for sure. It was the bumps and jolts that were keeping it going. I messed with it a few times and it was definitely real. You could turn it on if the quad had been sitting for a while and it would be dead. If you shook it for about ten seconds it would last for roughly one or two minutes and could watch the led slowly get dimmer.
@@ColinWatters The energy used to shake it would otherwise be most likely dissipated in the suspension.
@@VintageTechFan +1. Some time ago I read a paper that discribed a shock that used magnets and coils to collect energy normally dissipated. It was a long time ago but I think they concluded that enough energy to run a car AC system could be collected.
Good idea!
My dad used to call this the "wanklight"
Toss torch
anybody using these is a Wanker?
Lol.
@@Francois_Dupont Lol.
"Shake it for one minute and it will work all night" appears a bit unrealistic to me...I mean the flashlight, of course.
My older brother has one of these. The only difference is that his has a weird pink rubbery opening at the top.
I beg your pardon
@int i see
@int i accept your forgiveness now i have to buy some bleach
Does he spend a lot of time charging it up?
"it's not even convincingly magnety" is an amazing sentence and I'm taking it.
I got one of the real ones with a large coil and a capacitor a few years ago, when I was teaching early elementary school. I would take it into a class, hold it up, and ask what would happen when I flipped the switch. Since it looked like a flashlight, they all answered 'light up'. I would turn it on, & it didn't light. Kids say 'it's broken', 'batteries are dead.' Now a shake it a little and show that it now lights up. I ask 'why?' The kids want to try it. I let them. They figure out you have to shake it to get it to work. But why? Many guesses, much curiosity. Who can make it light the longest? Does shaking hard vs soft matter? Fast vs slow? etc. One of the better educational 'toys' I ever bought for only a few bucks. So... not totally useless, after all.
And it taught them that like many things in life, lots of stuff looks and sounds cool, but isn’t when you try it.
@@Lumibear. LOL - that, too! ;-)
@@Lumibear. Solar Freakin' Roadways! :D
So it's a good device, provided that you have a classroom full of kids to charge it up?
@@jpdemer5 Exactly. Or maybe several very competitive children - "OK, Billy, Sammy got it to work for 3 minutes - he says there's no way you can beat his record!" "Gimme that thing - I bet I can do 5 minutes, at least!"
the best one were the one with a real dynamo and gears inside. crank for 30sec get 1min of light maybe. and even then back in the day it was fillament lamp. you could light for hours with a LED in the same lamp.
I have a tiny, maybe 1" square LED one of those bought about 10 years ago from Maplin. It doesn`t work any more. Don't know exactly what's in it as I haven't taken it ap..... Ooh... OK, off to the shed.
I still have one in my 2003 merc's trunk (standard equipment). For a car in an emergency, I think it is perfect.
Yes, I have a dynamo lamp radio and it still works great after 20 years or so. They are great for camping or emergency kits. An AM radio is very useful when you lose power during a natural disaster
those are really good.
Those, with a radio and also a solar panel, are a genuine delight to have on hand.
“So you can recharge this by putting new batteries in.” Oh Clive, you crack me up.
My cousin was so dead set on.
"I never get ripped off."
That now he is going through life with one huge arm, much like a fiddler crab.
Lol.
he might never be ripped off, but he sure got ripped.
i never get tired when i charge my eco fle---flashlight.
Better maintain that 69 likes there mate 🤣
@@Isolierter_Hazim god I hope so
😏
@@Isolierter_Hazim Lolo.
An eco-fleshlight does seem like an interesting idea
I was given one of the real ones as a present. Mine has a reed switch as the power switch and a sliding magnet on the outside. The unit is sealed and submersible.
It takes a least a minute of vigorous wanking for a few seconds of barely useful light. There's a joke there somewhere.
I bought a genuine one at a garage, like yours it had a reed switch - gave a pulse of light each stroke if you 'wanked' it while it was switched on but only stored enough energy for a few seconds of useful light if you used it in accordance with the instructions. disappointment factor was about equal to solar water fountains.
@@rogerw9840 Now that is efficient! Mother Nature LOVES you! And your wife. (Honey? What's that noise? It sounds like a muffled rattling).
I remember having one of those as well. I don't remember thinking that it was that bad, a few minutes of wanking gave a few minutes of super dim light. I used it in caves for a while until I dropped it and it cracked. It used a large electrolytic capacitor rather than a battery.
LOL, practice makes perfect....... no uh, I mean makes you blind!
_La petite mort_
Both wires from the coil are going to the same point! That's great!
I worked at a store that was selling these a decade ago. To prove to someone else that they were fake, I gutted a couple of them. They were wired exactly the same way.
No problem, as long as they used lead-free solder it has to be ok. They're wired for recycling the power back into the coil to try and magnetise the slug.
@@TheAmpair is this a /jk? Or do you not know anything about elechtronics?
@@yanuehara8017 I'm sure he was joking...I thought it was funny. If he's not joking I'm sure he feels the fool.
It uses highly advanced Monopolistic energy-flux wave combining circuitry.
I had a flashlight exactly like this, except mine actually had a magnet approximately the same size as that piece of metal. It's interesting to see the exact same construction forged.
"It looks like a slug of metal they've chopped off a bar", it looks like a slug of a waste uranium fuel rod ;)
If you put enough of the torches in a confined space it also works as a heat generator :o
The creators saw "depleted" and could only think of one product.
...and if you buy 1,000s of the flashlights (ok, torches) and take them apart, you can build a little nuclear power plant that doesn’t work. But it might look cool with all the LEDs and batteries and wires to hook up.
@@alienpoker Would give off a nice blue light at night though, as well as act as some weird sort of storage heater.
Shhhh! This is the us government's solution to it's nuclear waste storage issue.
Also the real shake lights you can’t actually take apart they are fused at the end where the lens for the LED goes to make it waterproof
I am holding a waterproof one in my hands right now and it can be taken apart. It's just an silicone o ring behind the lens with a threaded plastic top screwed on to press it firmly together. Needless to say it has a heavy neodymium magnet and a fairly large copper coil, but it still only manages to power one simple 5mm LED. The switch has a magnet on it itself, which allows to turn the lamp on or off in a waterproof way through the case. The circuit board only has 4 components labled M4 and a 1.5F capacitor.
Agreed wholeheartedly!!!
And some of them even use a magnetic reed switch so as to maintain a waterproof seal.
You should convert the flashlight into an actual shaker-flashlight
No gud showing a crap product ....mod it lol
This is a great idea.
I was thinking that would be an amusing challenge. The rectification/storage circuit has to obviously be built anew. There aren't many turns in the coil, but so long as it's enameled wire, it'll work with enough flux change!
The extra challenge should be that the original steel "magnet" is not replaced. The modification would take the form of a variable-reluctance linear generator with external excitation!
... it's either that or make the harvesting circuit sensitive enough to work when fed by a weakly-magnetized lump of steel rattling through 40 turns of copper.
no reason not to put some more turns on the coil, i'm sure he has some transformer wire around.
Well, for the purpose of a challenge, it would be interesting to see if it could be done (practically or otherwise) with the most minimal alterations. That said, if I recall correctly of the ones I disassembled a decade ago, that fake 1-layer coil probably isn't actually magnet wire.
So Clive, it looks dodgy, has rubber protection on the end, needs vigorous manipulation for a result and as others have said is likely to cause RSI. However, unlike the old wives tale, in this case excessive usage will not leave you blind, well at least not blinded by the light!
You forgot to add that ultimately you will feel a sense of disappointed when using it.
Another point of good news, no hairy palms either! 🤣 (unless you are shaking something else for practice)
When i saw the thumbnail I just couldn't believe this. I remember that my grandpa had one of these and i would spend so much time playing with it. Thank you for bringing back the good memories
It’s a waste of time. It’s why battery companies like Duracell or Energiser have not invested into building or selling thease things..
"So you can recharge this by putting new batteries in" 😂
In the video game: Tattletale you had this weird translucent flashlight that you violently shake to "charge" it.
This thing gives me those vibes even though it doesn't live up to the game's equivalent.
I had one of these. It would generate a faint light with a reasonable amount of shaking, but it broke the third time I touched it. Still looking for a similar product that's not as crap because I like the concept.
You can get one of those hand crank generator-powserd flashlights. The generator is far more efficient than the shaking magnet so those can have a very decent light output.
@@IkBenBenG I have one of those also: it's way better but it's not as cool =(
Poundland usually sell something like this when summer comes around, I had a one that charges vire a trigger that you pump like those Spark emitting Ray Guns from the 1950's.
I got a good one back in the day at Ocean State Job Lot, it was huge maybe 5 pounds and pretty quiet compared to the cheap ones you see everywhere. It was also waterproof.
@@muppetpaster
put it in your pocket and jump up and down , keep fit and get "free" energy :-)
Had one in the '90s. Kept it in the glovebox as there were no cells to leak, didn't care about heat or cold, nothing to discharge.
Shake for one minute (basically feels like forever) useable light for 45 seconds then a continuing dim useless glow for the next 3-5 minutes.
You could shake it more while it was on and get a pulse of brighter light but not like you could walk around like that.
Neat idea, utter trash.
The ones from the 90's would have had either a battery or a wet cell electrolytic capacitor and either could leak.... but they where still pretty resistant to cold conditions and unlike the crank style of lights they where completely sealed. We also had a real one once, but it was a filament bulb that ran like 10 seconds after you finished shaking it, so it honestly wasn't that practical to use for anything, and we replaced it with battery powered LED headtorch as soon as they reached our local market in acceptable cost/brightness/run-time balance and never really looked back.
I had a real one. It worked reasonably well. Not brilliant, but it did the job.
Then one day it stopped holding a charge. I couldn't get it open, but looking through the clear case, I think all that shaking dislodged the battery and pulled off one of the battery wires.
From then on, it would only light up when I was actively shaking it, which was less than useful.
It's too bad. There's piece of mind in owning at least one flashlight that doesn't require batteries or USB power, but all the "self-charge" flashlights I've ever owned are terribly made.
I hoped one of these shake lights would be more reliable since it has so few moving parts, but nope.
@@AndyLundell The only real option apparently is to make your own crank light. Salvage some steel reduction gears out of a starter motor and go from there.
I have a one that kind of works, when the magnet (it's actually a real magnet) goes up and down, the light flashes for an instant, then it goes off a second later
My guess is the capacitor is shot and it’s not storing up power
After watching this video I found mine (as you suggested), gave it a single shake and the plastic exploded with the magnet flying right out the end of it. But that's how I learned mine was real! Nice magnets inside the real ones.
"You can recharge it by putting new batteries in." 😂
I love you Clive.
My parents used to get these for free somewhere. They were real too. I have like 8 neodymium magnets that size now.
Got confused, I have one with the same outer shell and it works fine, difference is mine has a large capacitor, a real magnet and a real circuit board.
I've also got the 'real' thing, given a 2 minute tantrum shake it will lite up for up to 10 minutes.
@@dherrendoerfer i have a 'semi real' one, has proper magnet which does generate useful current, but still has non rechargeable cells...
I bought a more authentic version of this 10 years ago, still have it, still kinda works, but it's starting to disintegrate.
@@xenialanthrope255 actually mine is quite a few years old, and there are cracks on the inner assembly where the button cells push in..
I also got the real one about 15 years ago from a friend which worked in a "Job for people with disabilities" organization who were actually building these. Note that the real ones were never even intended to be sold commercially but instead they were intended to become part of relief packages that were sent to less developed parts of the world or even parts of the word that might have suffered some natural disaster and where thus without electricity.
With mine shaking it for about 2 minutes would also allow it to work from about 10 to 12 minutes. That is if you would have drained the batteries prior to that. Interestingly that was more or less the amount of charge that capacitor held. I know this because my brother managed to break one of the wire lad that goes to the batteries. But with full charge of the batteries it would actually last for about 18 hours. Now don't ask me of how long would it take to fully charge those batteries with shaking since I never bothered to measure. Instead I kept mine pretty much always fully charged since I had it in a glove compartment of my car positioned so that the magnet would slide back and forth while I was making turns.Unfortunately with all these years sitting in my card being exposed to pretty harsh conditions (up to about 50 degrees Celsius during summer time and even as low as -25 degrees Celsius during winter) the batteries actually degraded to a point where they would no longer accept any charge. So now this flashlight is sitting somewhere in my basement waiting for me to replace the batteries and perhaps even replace the LED with a better one. You see the main purpose of these flash lights were to be cheap water-proof flashlights that could be sent to less developed parts of the world as part of emergency aids.
Clive I swear you can make a video about anything and I will watch it not to mention your videos have a very calming property to them. If I'm feeling anxious about something oftentimes I will go back and watch one of your videos I've already seen because your voice and your style makes me feel like everything's going to be okay and then I'm not scared or anxious anymore.
Needless to say your channel's been a lifesaver during the pandemic.
I had a version of this design, and it really lived up to my expectations. It would run for hours after a very brief shake. I loved it, but tragically dropped and destroyed it.
I wonder if the seller of this product just scrapped the components to make something else, then sold what they couldn't use to get rid of their trash.
I had found one of original Shake lights on the road it have been run over a couple of times. But I was able to scavenge the magnet and the copper windings.
I've got one that I've had about 15 years. The build quality looks much better than that one though. If you shake it for about 30 seconds you get about 5 minutes of quite bright light, then another 5 minutes of reasonable light, then say 5 minutes of dim light before it goes off. I use it in the shed if it's dark. It's not bad for that kind of use. It certainly won't replace a battery torch but I find it useful. Mine does have the magnets at either end. I don't think I paid much more than a fiver.
Over here in Australia there is a legit store known as Bunnings, I was surprised once when I bought a plastic rechargeable torch, it wasn't a shake version like yours, it instead had a little wheel you would wind. However when it's battery ran out, I tried to wind the wheel and I found that it ultimately didn't do anything, other than dull flickers on the LED. I opened it up and found that not only were the batteries not rechargeable, but the actual little winding dynamo thing wasn't even wired to the batteries at all, instead it was wired directly to the LED's, it would give a very short burst of light when you moved the wheel, but it wasn't charging any batteries and the product was clearly fraudulent. Another made in China no name product, I was shocked that Bunnings would agree to even ship that in and sell it in it's store. It was only a few dollars so of course I didn't care, but it made me view Bunnings as now being a place of potential Chinese fraud products.
I'm not an electrician,but even so your videos are far more interesting than I feel they should be!I find myself watching and learning so much.Thanks for your efforts Clive.
I have one which might be authentic. It looks very much like the one you have, but it didn't have those little bumps/holes on the outside. Anyway, I shook it for 2 minutes and started reading a book on analytical electrochemistry. The test was conducted in the night under a blanket, so I would say it was about as dark as it gets in here. After about 9 minutes I had to give up, since reading in the dark under a super dim and tiny spotlight was just getting ridiculous. In the end I could no longer illuminate an entire line of text, but rather a few words at a time. Perhaps a more reasonable reading time would have been between 5 and 7 minutes. This light is indeed only for emergencies.
I also took the light apart and it did have more electronics than the one you have. Also the magnet was indeed a real magnet and the amount of copper wire in the coil was significantly larger too. Therefore, I have reason to believe this one could be considered authentic. Even if that's the case, it's still not a great product. If you find yourself in an extreme survival situation and this is the only light you have, it might actually be a viable tool to have. However, I suppose matches and candles would still be better in most cases.
I think they're intended to be kept in a vehicle as a back up incase your main torch goes flat. If your car broke down or you lost something nearby to it it could be very handy to have 5 minutes of light for "just in case"
In practice it's probably more sensible to invest in a decent torch battery and just occasionally check that it's well charged. Since the smartphone has become ubiquitous it's pretty rare to need a torch and not have one, particularly in the car.
It might make a useful addition to a camping first aid kit, but you'd have to be camping very regularly that it's going to be an inconvenience to check battery levels before you leave.
Just get a dynamo one they are pretty good... the problem with these is the shake idea, shaking doesnt really work with these. A crank up one however, can be great to have
I’m speechless at how fraudulent *some* of these Chinese actually companies are, I see products people have bought from Wish and they sell items completely different from what is shown.
There was a SwellPro Spry drone (not named as the Spry, but clearly it was their company promo video used) for $169, almost a 10th of retail value.
I guess this is where PayPal has its advantages, just claim the cash back.
Wish is a joke to UK 2 to 4weeks fuk dat I've had fun with a 20quid drone tho lmao
People that buy from a shit hole company like Wish, should be stripped of their money. If you're stupid enough to buy this shit from Banggood, Gerabest, Wish, etc... Or if you think you're getting a "VR headset for only $1.73!!!," it's a _"you"_ problem.
@@xenonram Wish is fine as long as you know what to expect. You know, not be stupid and buy a 10$ iPnoho X7.
The swellpro is around 500 bucks
@@xenonram banggood is a very good company for the Modell hobby my friend
I always have ElektroBooms voice in my head when someone mentions a bridge rectifier
I remember these. They were popular for about 10 minutes.
I got one of the real ones with a capacitor about ten years ago, and I still use it. It doesn't put out a great deal of light - it's just one LED after all - but shaking it a centimeter back and forth for ten seconds gives you enough light to see what it's pointing at.
I've had this exact flashlight for like 10 years now. Wtf
Edit : mine is one of the originals and actually works
Same here. A note of interest: They don't have lithium cells to store energy, just a 1F capacitor.
@@fluteplayerify 1 Farad? How big is it?
@@theEskalaator about 1 farad
@@jd16596 I did not ask about capacitance, idiot.
@@theEskalaator sorry, I should have asked if you're able to understand a joke before making one. Clearly not.
The manufacturers and sellers of crap like this are probably having a good laugh at all the wrist action going on. "Western Wankers". lol
A bit like the Shake Weight™
Jep, Chinese Humor at its best
I had a squeezy flashlight when I was a kid that spun a magnet inside a set of coils and it was able to run a tungsten lamp. Gears inside broke eventually :c
I got one of those too. I squeezed the trigger so hard it made a loud crunching noise and all the teeth broke off inside.
I've got one but the bulb has failed (I know, I can see the end of the filiment dangling) - no electronics as far as I can see, storing the power in a flywheel to smooth it out, so just just have to keep squeezing.
I actually have a really good one, it hangs above the bench where I do most of my electrical stuff so that if I trip a breaker I can find my way out of the workshop without tripping over anything or walking into things
Mine died the same way, shame really ;-(
I had one of those squeezy torches too, its gears also went crunch eventually. I once wound up a rechargeable torch so quickly its teeth melted and 'gummed up'. The most interesting user-powered torch I saw was one with a pull-cord method of charging it up.
I've tried to find a high quality user-powered torch with metal gears to last years but they don't appear to exist :(
It is amazing the amount of effort that goes into these scams when they can just make a product that works for about the same effort.
I have this exact model, and it had the proper neodymium magnet. I've since lost said magnet, because like yourself, I take everything to bits!
But the magnet was super strong, and roughly the same dimensions as that crap slug you've got there. I'm unsure what power it was rated, but it almost pulled a radiator off the wall in my house. I decided to keep the torch housing, and now use it with normal 2032 batteries, and swapped the white LED for a UV.
The board has a 0.22F 5.5v button capacitor, diode arrangement, and some resistors. The coil is very neat, and a lot beefier than your model. I followed the wires and can see them neatly soldered to opposite ends of the board. My model does have the exact same rubber bungs either end, and I remember they took quite a thump from the magnet with some rigorous wrist action.
Fantastic video as always!
Tom from Edinburgh.
My father had one of those in his car for emergencies. Looked exactly like this one, but I think it was quite a lot brighter, so maybe it wasn't a fake one.
i have one, had it for years, works fine around the house, not a shtf survival tool maybe, but it was cheap and still works.
i love how even after 2 years he still hearts comments
I appreciate all sensible comments.
“You CAN recharge these by putting new batteries in it”
that's a lot of energy wasted from people who shaking it
But keeping people fit
Better just to fap imo.
@@uK8cvPAq exactly, they've got their fapping arm nice and strong
uK8cvPAq this is why god hates us
@@sfsaviation What god? Which god? There are THOUSANDS of religions, dude. Many have multiple gods, too. Nah, sorry, no evidence for any of them being more than fairy tales made up to explain what they couldn't understand
IKEA have a good wind-up flashlight called "Ljusa" for only 4GBP. Maybe future video?
I have two of those. They actually work pretty well. My parents have a WW2-era 'squeeze lamp' that is a small metal housing with a flywheel inside and a lever on the outside that you compress over and over until the flywheel is racing. While the flywheel spins the lamp gives off light through a small incandescent bulb set in a plastic fresnel lens. It is nearly 80 years old and still works!
@@staggerwings Livermore, California is home to Centennial light bulb that still works perfectly after 117years. Back then things were made to last.
@@vine01 I wouldn't say it "still works perfectly", if it's that old I guess it might actually be one of those carbon filament ones? But it's quite dim compared to original specifications, I don't remember the exact reason why maybe a property of those old filaments (don't have practical experience with them) or maybe them running it at a lower voltage to keep it lit up and intact. But it does actually still work while having been on for many years, that in itself is impressive.
With incandescent bulbs there was always a balance to be struck between longevity and efficiency, higher filament temperatures means a larger amount of the output in the visible spectrum which is what we humans need but also tougher on the filaments leading to various issues: broken filament, evaporating and depositing on particles on the glass, etc. Over the years many improvements have been made, the evaporation issue was mostly solved with halogen lamps (tungsten filament, inert gas mixture with some halogens inside that when operated at high temperature prevents it from dimming during its lifetime).
I also ran across something a while ago claiming more durability in US 120V lamps compared to our higher mains voltage here in Europe, due to the higher voltage the resistance needs to be higher and thus thinner more fragile filaments. But neither traditional incandescents or halogen come anywhere close to the efficiency of a modern LED for purely lighting purposes. They are still useful for heat lamps and situations where the byproduct of heat is actually needed to function like for example outdoor lighting in places where being covered in snow is an issue, although one could argue that it'd be better even then to use LED and a heating system that is only active during the seasons its needed.
good boy points
@@meso_p Give me my tendies.
This reminds me of a powerbank that you need to shake to „charge“ it up
I’ve looked at reviews of this thing complaining that after 30 Minutes of shaking they’ve got around 5 second of phone charge...
Amazing
We have one of those ECO flashlights. I have no idea who brought it into our house. It's a little larger the one you showed and it does work, but like you originally described. When I'm bored and watching TV, I'll pick it up from the bookshelf and it will be completely dead. After a minute or two of shaking, it will run for a little while and eventually die out again. It does charge up from shaking, but like you said, shaking it continually and long enough for a decent charge gets tedious very quickly. I have an emergency light/weather radio with a hand-crank that is much more effective.
When I was a kid (mid 2000s), I had this exact model of shaker flashlight, and it did actually work. I reverse engineered it for a science project in mid-high. I'm shocked how identical (except for the obvious fake magnet and awful coil windings) this flashlight looks!
I used to have one of these, it worked surprisingly well and even came in handy during a power outage.😂 No idea what happened to it thought.
I love your channel, learning about new things I didn't even know I'd be interested in
Haha I had the exact same one as a kid, hell it might still be in my medicine cabinet. It was trash but i just thought mine was busted somehow. Would be shaking it for hours for absolutely nothing. Such a shame that we live in the same world as the people who would make things like this..
I got a red windup flashlight from Ikea some time ago that actually worked fairly well. It uses a capacitor so it didn't degrade over time, and while the run time to crank ratio wasn't anything to write home about, it was okay for emergency use. Only improvement they could have done was to put a bearing on the crank knob.
Man discovers the truth behind all "Eco" "Green" "Ambient friendly" products ever invented
I got one that kind of work.
Coil with god knows how many layers of winding and super powerful neodymium magnet.
The coil feeds into a DB-107 rectifier chip where the +/- is connected to a 5,5V 0,22F button capsitor instead of a battery.
Fat O-ring seal round the lens and a glued on sliding magnet over a reed relay on the pcb to avoid holes in the body for the switch. The sliding magnet is so strong that when it hits the upper spring it actually activates the reed, making it flash when shaken even with the switch in off mode.
Still got to be a champion wanker to make any practical use of it.
Wanked it for 1 minute and it gave about 30 seconds of usable light, then about 30 seconds of half-bright and fading down to night fly mode. Surpricingly it took more than 5 minutes to go all dead.
I guess it will be less exhausting to calculate than to experiment with the optimal wanking duration.
worth 0¢
I have the same one. Though I had an accident with some metal powder and somehow they managed to migrate into the cylinder, the magnet is so strong that Its impossible to clean and so it just fouls it up.
We need to import Lakkris. *Licorice based treats of any kind is a requirement*
You need to try Danish salt liquorice. Unfortunate name of "Spunk", but it's amazing.
@@WintrBorn heck yes!!!
@@WintrBorn yuck, no , i cant stand liquorice 😷😉
andygozzo72😁
@@WintrBorn Nah Finnish Salmiakki !
Think I got the same same flashlight as a gift from a family member a couple years ago. The fact it only worked for a short time (length of the interior batteries) makes a lot more sense now. I didn't dissect it to find out the issue. I just assumed it was a piece of crap. Kind of nice to know both how my fake PoS and the original, almost as bad PoS, are supposed to work.
Thanks for that.
I remember trying one of these in the British science museum shop as a kid (in the late 90s). That shop was good as it made sure I could test a lot of the hyped up crap without buying it first!
Don't mind me I'll just giggle uncontrollably in the corner 😂
Remember, 97, 98, 99, change hands!
@@stevemorse5052 I'm a woman and don't own the 'rechargeable flashlight' unless you mean to charge someone else's 🙃
I got one of these, for free, from a flea market vendor. I thought that he was being generous, until I discovered that he gave me the same light. It would have only cost them a few cents, to put the components in, and make it a genuine product. Instead, they would rather ship non-functional products. I could understand if they used cheap components, but not even including the components, is inexcusable. In all honesty, it would probably be cheaper to make the genuine product. If you remove the batteries and battery contacts, that alone would more than cover the cost of a diode, a capacitor and a resistor. (They could simply use one diode, and half-wave rectify it.)
I remember when we used to bitch and moan about Japanese products. It took buying Chinese products, to make us appreciate Japanese products. Now, India is setting up to compete with China, to be the next global supplier. I honestly fear, that they will be so bad, they will make us appreciate Chinese products. :-(
Right ....... If something is "Made in Japan" these days, it might be considered to be the "Cream of the Crop"/top notch. There was a time when actual competition/cheaper alternatives was an ok thing(generally speaking). Like in the 70's/80's you could get a decent $99 panasonic or hitachi stereo system(for instance) Vs. a $599 Marantz where the difference in quality clearly existed but was negligible to the average consumer & perhaps you'd get even more longevity out of the cheaper one. Or in the late 80's & early 90's(even still?!) you'd have to practically be stupid to by a new(if that was your thing) american car(that will likely break down and/or even fail inspection after ONLY 2 years) as opposed to a Honda or Toyota etc.(that was significantly cheaper with a 10yr/100Kmi Warranty min). BUT worst of all, is that eventually any/all Solid, "Made in USA" things became virtually extinct. "We" wanted/needed to save a buck & what we got is: dollar stores everywhere full of cheap plastic, useless, harmful(in many cases) shit. We're now reaping the "benefits" of Slave(child) Labor. Sad af. & you're saying "dot products(pun)" will be worse ? omg !
The Japanese genuinely wanted to improve, and they exceeded all expectations -- hats off to them. The Chinese, on the other hand, seem to want global market dominance without having to actually put in the work to achieve it.
"without putting the work in"? I think the Chinese factory workers are working their asses off... but that doesn't necessarily mean that the products they're putting together are useful or at least decently engineered... @@gcewing
Well, I'm talking about intellectual work rather than physical work. Also, the Chinese government has a thing or two to learn about international relations. I can't believe they're stupid enough to think they're fooling anyone with their censorship nonsense, which means they don't think they have to care how the rest of the world sees them. If they want to become trusted and respected trading partners, they'll have to wake their ideas up.
@@gcewing nah the problem with china is that you can get the quality you want. You want top quality? They can deliver. You want utter crap? They can deliver. The problem is that latter part: they're willing to deliver crap, and don't care if it hurts their "reputation". Also they're buying western companies left and right to give a sense of quality. Philips, for example, is a chinese company now.
I have the larger of these, the size is D sized battery diameter, as opposed to the C size Clive is -sporting- exhibiting. This appears to have a much more substantial amount of copper windings. The battery seems to be underneath the circuit board so I haven't identified it yet. Mine is missing the metal strip that should be underneath the switch to make/break the circuit. The magnet test causes quite an excited reaction.
I should really go through some other torches and find a metal strip that will do the job. Then I can give mine a good shake and see what output there is from it. I've lived on my own for a number of years now, so I have quite a strong wrist from ... does opening jars of pickles sound plausible to you?
Some of the originals have a magnet and reed switch as a switch.
@@user-gx6jb6wc5g My ignorance overwhelms your knowledge, It has what I then assume is a reed switch, I'll check the rubberised buttony/switchy thing for magnetism.
"does opening jars of pickles sound plausible to you?"
YES is does!
I open several every week :)
@@gregorythomas333 Phew! that's good, I thought people wouldn't belirve I eat those fucking horrible pickle things.
These devices, both the real ones and the fake ones, work really great.
I had to change a flat tire once, and stood in the dim street, doing this special "charge motion". In about no time, the police appeared and they had lights which worked.
Just be careful with comments like "this is the normal motion to charge it up and to make it work all night".
I purchased 2 of these when they first came out...and on one the coil was connected nowhere, and the second the coil was only a piece of copper colored paper, printed to look like a coil.., and the metal slug was a piece of wood was painted silver, with 2 thumb tacks on either end to make the initial sound of metal hitting metal. That was the best one...I think I chuckle about that to this day, and I wish I still had it to send to Clive.
I often wonder about the people that think of shot-cuts like that up, and really how much cheaper it was to make a phoney one.
Great episode! Over-seas fakery strikes again... They got me! I have both and neither work.. Thanks for sharing.
Clive got George Jetson's calculator.
I was gifted one of those shake lights. It broke in no time at all when I needed it to work. POS
Clive... you need to take apart the IKEA one, LJUSA
We used to have hand-crank LED lamps, with foldable crank handle, gearbox and all. They were tiring to charge up, but worked quite well.
My son and I love these things. They have a surprisingly powerful (though badly plated) rare earth magnet in them. The rest of it is junk. I pick them up from flea markets for a euro occasionally and we are always pleased with my purchase.
Shake it till you break it
I had a knock-off one as a kid however it did actually work a little bit interestingly enough. I found it again recently and it took like four minutes of shaking to get a little glow. obviously the batteries arent supposed to be recharged but oh well.
I had a crank/solar flashlight and radio combo when I was younger (maybe 10ish years ago). Thing worked great. You'd crank it a bit here and there or leave it in the sun and I swear you'd get plenty of light, and you could even get some lower mid to low quality music while you're at it
i have had mine for almost 16 years and still works great. turns on even after 2 years of in use.
Had these in a warehouse for when power went out.
Have to admit I didn't hate them. Glow in the dark exterior made them easy to find in the dark, and a couple good shakes gave passable blue light for about a minute. Typically a rough couple shakes as it fades keeps it going.
Worked last time I tried them, would have been 4 years old at that point.
about 5 years ago bought one i shook and shook every year it and shook more, it hardly went on for two seconds. it's somewhere, prolly at the dump. I thought mine was broken . thanks Clive!.
We had a flashlight that was at least 30 years old with a handlebar, that you had to squeeze and it produced light directly through that. You had to squeeze it pretty fast to get decent light out of it and it was quite a workout. Wonder if they are still manufactured somewhere. I guess they had a dynamo inside. Also, the casing was all metal.
The craziest manually charged device I have is a South African made "FreePlay" radio from I think the 90s. You could crank the thing for less than a minute and get quite loud radio playback with somewhat decent bass even, for 30 full minutes. The catch was that the device contained a very large coiled spring. A set of gears, all plastic, reduced the enormous torque of this spring to drive a tiny dynamo DC motor with a rubber belt. This was the secret to its long playback, it effectively stored enough force to turn a dynamo for 30 minutes. But it was sketchy as hell. The spring was not particularly good steel and could fracture, the gears were plastic, but most often the little rubber belt would fail and cause the whole thing to wind down faster than the gears can really take. I practically took my life in my own hands working on that thing, but somehow I managed to repair the broken spring and it still manages to work to this day. If it breaks again though, forget it. I value my fingers too much.
I've got a real one with an LED and a super capacitor, and I'd say it does have one good use. It makes a great emergency light, because you never have to change the batteries, and the only time you'd ever need it is if there's no other light. For example, if the power goes out at night and you just need a little bit of light to be able make your way to the fuse box or out the door to see if everyone else's lights are out as well.
Also, one really quick way to test if it's a fake or real one if you aren't sure right away is just run it until the light is dim, leave it on, and shake it. If it's a real one (at least with a capacitor instead of batteries) it will flash brightly every time the magnet passes the coils (presumably due to the capacitor's ESR).
This is why I bought a flashlight that takes your standard 18650 and have both Xtar and Opus chargers.
These "shaker" flashlights seem to be targeted toward older folks who watch late night TV ads, which is why I assume there are so many fake versions of them.
As a kid we use to have a real one that you would wind up and it had a somewhat decent light on it. But it also had a siren, different levels of brightness and even a radio attachment. Now I had to wind that so many times just to get 5ish minutes of radio or light time. But it always intrigued me as a kid.
I Just accidentally came across this video. I bought one of these YEARS ago; ...must be way back in about ...2004-ish? Anyway, I have hardly used it since the day I bought it (cheap with a gallon of petrol (Gasoline) as a special offer, but I knew exactly where it was. Cue the pause video and run to go and get it. It was dead. Absolutely no light at all when I flicked the switch. I shook it for a minute or so, and lo and behold, it worked and gave me a light far better than the one featured in the video. I shook it for another two minutes (all I could manage this late at night before bedtime), and It's now giving a fairly usable and substantial light which could be of use in an emergency. Mine is longer than that one featured in the video, and just by looking, has a beefier coil. I opened it up, and it has a decent strong magnet. The battery though is sealed inside of the inner housing, with no visible way of getting at it, not that I can see or willing to risk breakage, so I presume it's a rechargeable one rather than one that needs to be replaced from time to time. Seems that I got a decent one at the time. I'll give it a good shake tomorrow and see how much light it will produce, before stashing it away again till the next emergency or power-cut ...although I bet when that time does come, I'll simply use the "flash" on my mobile phone. Thanks for the video and info though. ;)
I own a couple of the originals that my father purchased back in the early 90's for our camper and to keep in vehicles for emergencies. They worked ok but took much more shaking than the short lived amount of light was really worth.
I still have mine. My mom bought it for me when I was a little kid. I layed it on my tv ( you know those old box TVs from past). Let's just say the tv wasn't so great after that but the flashlight was actually really good. Still works to this day but it doesn't hold a charge like it use to.
I got one of the Excalibur brand ones. I've had it for over a decade and I like it for what it is. It has a capacitor and although it never was very bright or lasted long, it's a great emergency light to help in a pinch.
At the beginning I thought you were going to show how ridiculous the torch was by putting a Lakkris in instead of the metal slug and shaking it for the same result.
Here in Canada many years ago a very similar, but not quite the same, flashlight was marketed as an emergency light that would give you light for a short time when shaken for a few seconds. It did exactly as advertised. I can only assume that this version is a cheap knock-off (of a product that was cheap to start with)
It CAN be recharged-- by popping some fresh batteries in there. Classic. Thank you for the chuckles this morning.
My dad managed an outdoors store a while ago, I remember him taking on of these apart when I was young and he started laughing a bunch presumably when he saw the battery.
I think have learned more about electronics and how they work from watching this channel then from anything else
I had a real one that was significantly larger and rather heavy. It actually worked pretty well - it did dim slightly after a minute or two, but then it would stay relatively steady for a good long while.
I found it a bit too cumbersome to be worth hauling on hikes and camping trips... But I vividly recall it proving its worth during a power outage, when my family inconveniently discovered we were out of spare batteries.
I had a similar thing in the 70s. You gripped the handle and squeezed the large button in the hand set and the bulb came on. You had to squeeze a few times in order to build up a charge that lasted 5 minutes after that you had to recharge. I believe they had a gyroscope in them. After a year the squeeze handle didn’t make contact with the gyro and you could only use the torch if you squeezed at the same time.