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The shocking truth about cheap LED "corn cob" lamps
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- čas přidán 15. 03. 2014
- NOTE: CE does NOT mean China Export, it's just a mis-spaced CE logo (just like the one on the back of an Xbox 360). en.wikipedia.o...
Comments mentioning China Export will be marked as spam automatically, because it's horseshit. Commenters trying to use alternative characters to bypass the spam filter get muted from the entire channel.
Based on feedback comments on my earlier video and a request from the folks at www.avforums.com/, this is a shorter test on a range of "corn cob" LED lamps available on eBay and Amazon.
If you're thinking of buying cheap LED lamps, whether it be online or from the local market, this video is for you! Of the six "corn cob" style LED lamps tested here, only ONE could be considered safe to use. Watch the video, know what to look for in a safe bulb and know the risks associated with the dangerous ones!
Some details left out of the video:
At 50mA-100mA, ventricular fibrillation (very rapid uncoordinated contraction of the ventricles of the heart) is possible.
Hand-to-hand body resistance of an adult lies between 1,000 and 4,000 ohms, depending on moisture, muscular structure and voltage. The average value is 2,100 ohms at 240V AC.
(source: Basic Industrial Electricity: A Training and Maintenance Manual, Kenneth G. Oliver, p156)
If your resistance at the lower end of the scale the current will be higher and the 100-200mA range is where you're at highest risk of fibrillation (and CPR won't fix fibrillation, you need a defibrillator for that).
Apologies if some of it sounds a bit scripted, that's because it IS scripted to stop me rambling quite as much as usual, I'm trying to strike a balance between brevity and detail here, and it's tricky!
If you want more information about what's inside the lamps, please take a look at my earlier video:-
www.youtube.co....
Not interested in corn cob lamps? Mains LED spotlamps are just as bad! Check out Julian Ilett's video:-
www.youtube.co....
There's an excellent Lux magazine article by Emma-Lily Pendleton at luxreview.com/....
I am an Electronics Engineer working in the industrial power sector. First off what a great video. Your test setup superbly demonstrates just how unsafe these bulbs are. Secondly, how on earth are UK eBay and Amazon sellers getting away with selling products like this? It beggars belief that the general public are being subjected to potentially lethal electrical products. I think its high time Amazon and Ebay employed professional people who can weed out this sort of product long before they reach the public. You managed to do that so what excuse do they have?
How do they get away in the USA ?
cbcdesign001 This is the old thing they trot out, isn't it, about being a marketplace, not responsible themselves for the sales as such?! I am with you, I thought electrical stuff sold in Europe, let alone the UK, had to have some mark on it to say it was safety approved. I think the stupid issue is, that because they sell 'from' China to a consumer in another country, then 'Chinese' law applies, as opposed to UK law. It seems to be the same as the stupid tax chase around the garden that goes on - as consumers we all recognise, all that matters is that if you are patently a UK (say) consumer because you are buying on ebay.co.uk, then you ought to be sold only UK (ie Europe) compliant items? Same as tax. Yet, it appears somehow the powers that be are powerless. Question: is it to do with not upsetting China? It's the only reason that explains why the UK govt has failed to block sales of unsafe crap - ie any design not kite-marked as safe by the relevant UK or EU authority. There's no safety reason not to prosecute ebay, amazon etc from selling dangerous crap, only political reasons and economic ones. It is possibly the sheer amount and fast-changing designs, compared to the pre-millennium times, when there were very limited numbers of suppliers and types of products. Let's face it - there was hardly any innovation in the 1970's, 1980's and early 1990's in light bulbs for example. GLS filament 40, 60 or 100W was it. I couldn't have told you where to look for a screw-fitting bulb in those times, I'd never even seen one. I guess along with good stuff, we get a sea of 2nd-rate also-ran copycat designs!
I bloody hate ES fittings. Had to change a bulb a few weeks back, bulb cross-threaded itself in the fitting and I ended up having to replace the bulbholder as well. The manufacturer? That well-known American brand... erm... Micromark.
At least you can't overtighten a Bayonet Cap fitting.
Funny how people blame Ebay/Amazon for all these when you can buy them every where online. If one looks around, many small stores/flea markets across the globe they are sold there too. Just saying..
i can undersand dangerous crap on ebay , you get what you pay for but Amazon are supposed to be a professional bussiness you can trust
Always a pleasure to watch material by someone who knows what they are doing and can articulate it well. I must also say, as someone from an electrical and electronics background, what I see here is appalling! Such unsafe consumer electrical goods should never appear on the market.
Very well presented expose of dangerous LED lights, and your willingness to name and shame is admirable
Sell shit goods and I'll call you out on it. Maplin already found that out, some nice "suggested videos" when you watch their 4-in-1 jump starter advert on CZcams :)
All this testing proves once again that the "CE" mark means "can electrocute".LOL
Counterfeit Electronics :)
Thanks for putting this on. It's amazing this stuff is getting sold in the UK. I think most people would assume it was safe if sold via Amazon, so this really just goes to show.
I wonder if they are pulse driven fast enough that it doesnt make eye movement inaccurate for reading.
Very good warnings here; many may never realize just how "close" they are to shorting a (cheap device on an) A/C circuit with their hands, or whatever other conductive material it may be.
I gave up quite early on the "cheap" Chinese LED bulbs, when my very first tear-down of one exposed the truth of how close a certain bulb was to shorting the A/C. In fact, most likely a worker's poorly placed solder connection had created a product which was "shockingly" close to shorting, meanwhile I had used the light for already close to 30 hours of on-time. Made me re-think the whole concept of "get what you pay for". When the house or garage starts on fire, you may lose a lot more than you had ever hoped to pay for!
It appears to me there is a primary difference between the "cheap" and "good" LED bulbs. This would be the electronic driver installed. I have torn down the good quality FEIT, Philips, and OSRAM-Sylvania LED bulbs of varying designs, and these typically have good quality A/C->D/C electrical drivers of the (convert to D/C and) buck type. As such, the output you could reach with a meter probe anywhere near the exterior of such bulbs is going to be strictly D/C converted current. It may be rather high voltage D/C in the case of multiple-SMD type bulbs (80-110V DC), but in the case of the single-COB LED PAR30, PAR38, PAR40 etc style of bulbs, this D/C is often bucked all the way down to ~36V maximum due to the single emitter.
In your experience, is it the difference of driver circuitry alone--that being either simple (fuse-diode-capacitor) or complex (regulated step-down or buck conversion with on-board IC controller)--which often dictates the final chances of a hazardous bulb-type?
Very informative and well presented as an electrical engineer
I agree with everything you have said hopefully this has been pointed out to
trading standards.
One little point unrelated that I noticed (as one does in my profession (Grin)) was that your recommended re inspection date on the consumer unit was 2013 and video clip uploaded 2014 so it appears you have or the person testing the system had forgotten to
update the label at the time of filming……
But with so much test equipment around you electrical installation
would not dare to even think about becoming faulty.
Keep up the good work!
This doesn't even cover how the driver circuits are intentionally designed poorly. This leads to bulbs with perfectly good diodes that last you even less time than your standard incandescent.
Thanks for posting this - for many (particularly those who have some electrical knowledge) this might be obvious, but for most it won't be. I've recently ordered some very cheap corncob lamps from aliexpress but thankfully they have plastic enclosures.
Your point is valid, however, I'll raise this point-if I make a purchase of a cob off, say Amazon and not Ebay, I make the purchase confident that Amazon is not going to put their name on a deathbulb- why would they risk their good name and reputation doing that? So your point is good, only the "electrically inclined" should be trying to diy it.
Amazon should indeed sell genuinely safe goods. Amazon Marketplace sellers on the other hand can be as bad as eBay sellers. YouOKLight for example sell GU10 bulbs with exposed LED chips, as do Dephen with their 30 watt corn-cob lamps, but I don't know whether either of these use isolated drivers (Dephen in particular claim that "Our corn light have been certified by CE and RoHs certificate,so they meet the necessary safety standard").
Very good information and proper testing.
That being said I am in the U.S. and I would never change (or touch) a bulb with the power on. You would not do so with a regular bulb for it would burn your fingers so I just learned at a young age never to touch a live bulb. I do have about 12 of those corn cob bulbs in my office and I love them, they give out proper light and have lowered my electric bill quite a bit.
I also have some of the newer CREE bulbs that are enclosed in glass and they are great (but more expensive) and even the heat sync is powder coated so if something inside went wrong they would not be live.
I just love LED's in general.
Thanks
In Australia almost all these cheap Chinese bulb have a plastic cover which is very hard to take of which stops exposing the metal, also most ppl do have common sense to make sure the power is off, but the bad thing about the Chinese ones is they usually don't last long and the chips starting failing quickly, in my house I mainly buy Phillips, they make gr8 LED bulbs but for some bulbs I get the Chinese ones.
Thanks for highlighting this. It's pretty scary that suddenly the bulb you're handling is now at 230v and the only thing between death and life is a resistor (if that!). This is a brighter version of the neon screwdriver.
Frankly, I've had incandescent light bulbs break when inserting and removing them, which also exposes you to possible contact with mains voltage.
So I always turn off the light switch before changing bulbs.
Cheap LED, incandescent, or CFL, problem solved.
"So I always turn off the light switch before changing bulbs."
Yup and that's electrical safety 101. People have been killed when the glass envelope broke whilst changing bulbs on a live socket (If you really must do it, make sure you protect your hand with something insulating, but it's far safer to take the extra couple of minutes to turn off the power)
Surprisingly more people have been killed when the burst of light startled them and they fell off their ladder than have been killed by electrocution from a broken lamp - another reason to ensure the power's off before starting.
Brent Brown I dont know how you break all these bulbs that this is a problem do you have hook hands?
My brain stopped working as soon as I saw all those gadgets.
One of the best-known and respected safety testing laboratories in the United States is Underwriters Laboratories, and they use the "UL" mark to indicate products that have passed their tests. While returning half a dozen faulty Chinese-made fluorescent shop lights to The Home Depot in the mid-1990s, the fellow who worked in the electrical department told me that Chinese manufacturers routinely forge the UL mark on products destined for North America. His day job was at Underwriters Laboratories, so if anyone knew, he would. Unless the product comes from a famous European or North American manufacturer, e.g. Philips or General Electric, any safety agency markings on Chinese-made electrical goods are worthless. _Caveat emptor._
I feel strong resentment towards Amazon for listing products which are deadly.
In other words, don't put them in open enclosures or if you do, they have to be high enough not to touch.
_SOME_ (and only a tiny few) corncob lambs have clear covers over the chips. These are safe.
Brilliant video. Shocking outcome, how do these so called safe lamps get the CE logo on them.
that's a counterfeit CE mark, draw circles around the C and the E; they have to intersect at only one point.
nrdesign1991 unfortunately companies can self-certify CE, which means that unscrupulous manufacturers can make bogus claims about the quality of their goods.
Very informative video. Glad I viewed it as I was going to purchase some of these bulbs. Definitely won’t be now though.
Thanks for the heads up. I always turn power off to the light socket when changing bulbs just for this reason. I was not aware of the real danger that these present. It also explains why I haven't seen any UL stickers on these.
Very informative, I quite frequently change bulbs with the switch/power in an unknown state. I won't be buying any of the exposed Corn Cob lights any time soon.
There are plenty of cheap ones with the glass cover, really though everyone should wear thin rubber gloves when changing bulbs, they don't cost much and they make it 100% safe from shocks.
I'm paranoid (because of shocks received tinkering with electronics in my teens) and always wear insulating gloves when handling any electronics and make sure the light switch is off before installing, I also make sure my light fixture is metal so even if there is a failure fire cannot occur, so far touch wood never had problems with Chinese LED bulbs. Definately not a good idea to use them on anything but ceiling lights where no one but adults can touch them.
And I was just about to purchase some of the dirt cheap ones for 'construction' lighting until we can get all the work done downstairs... I'm usually pretty careful with mains and whatnot but I definitely screw bulbs in by holding the would-be circuitry area and twisting, likely making connections across bare solder. And who expects for an LED to harm them? I soldered an array of IR leds together for a fun project with a disassembled camera, but now I'm rambling...
Thanks! :)
How high is the risk of one of those Light bulbs catching fire and do bigger damage? I mean they are probably on a aluminium print so no fr4 which could burn.
I've been repairing some of these bulbs. They contain transformer isolated switching supplies. I don't know the insulation level that was used and I haven't done any hypot testing on them, but unless they have some very leaky caps tied from the output to chassis you shouldn't see these kinds of results.
These ones had no switching supplies. I did an earlier teardown at czcams.com/video/n3ci4nlKhEk/video.html which has the circuit diagram.
Yours sound like they have a proper driver circuit, at least, possibly universal voltage input, too.
your wife is going to get a nasty shock when she realises you've wired up the front of her drawers!
Awesome, I appreciate the information. I've just started switching over to these bulbs. I'm glad I've been buying the protected versions.
Corey
This is news worthy ...thank you for your demo . You may have saved my life.I buy lots of leds for different projects, I will be testing any high voltage led I buy and send it back or put guards on them (depends on the heat generated). Again thank you.
The legal position:
If you are a manufacturer it is your responsibility to:
carry out the conformity assessment
set up the technical file
issue the EC Declaration of Conformity (DoC)
place CE marking on a product
If you are a distributor you must check the presence of both the CE marking and the necessary supporting documentation.
If you are importing a product that is from a third country you have to check that the manufacturer outside the EU has undertaken the necessary steps. You must check that the documentation is available.
So the distributor of these is liable...
Very useful info, cheers. I've just Googled a snippet to get the link: www.gov.uk/guidance/ce-marking
In the US here, they are mainly pushing the CFL bulbs still, I havent seen much LED available, not even at the economy "Dollar Stores". When things switched over to CFL and the new low power TV's, the electric bills went up because there was such a decrease in the amount of power being used and the electric company had employees and stocks to pay, so they had to increase the rates. Didn't actually save any money in the long run, only those that were quick enough to use them first.
trailkeeper You must live in some remote forest area because here in the US, they're at every hardware store, most grocery superstores, walmart type stores, etc. Of course not at the "Dollar Stores" because they cost quite a bit more than $1. Also in many areas electric companies will subsidize LED bulbs so as a customer of their electric service you can buy bulbs for $5 or less each, sometimes as low as $1 each.
You are wrong that when things swtiched to lower power that it was the cause of electric bills going up. It is the opposite, that electric companies are subsidizing bulbs because that costs them less than putting in more infrastructure to supply the continually growing power demands of a particular area. Using less power is a decreasing demand which would make the price drop if it weren't for that factor. The basic rules of supply and demand apply.
You would in fact still save money because the increase in power rate is nowhere near the decrease in power consumption of LED vs incan bulbs. That is, unless you rarely ever turn lights on and have some other heavy electric consumers constantly on like clothes dryer, HVAC, stove, refrigerator, etc.
No matter what we do the price of power is going to continue to rise, especially now that the "green" movement is in full swing and people are choosing more expensive ways to produce it instead of coal and natural gas. Even if neither was the primary generator source in your area there is still the issues of undercapacity regions selling power to other regions. Thus, if your area had undercapacity and you think that raises prices, then all they would have to do is sell it to another region instead. All power companies want to run at 100%, no more and no less but that is a modular figure which means 100% PER generator.
Stinky Cheese hi i caption
trailkeeper Every Lowes, or Home Depot sells GOOD CREE LED light bulbs, and the prices have fallen. 40W equivalent is about $8 the 100W versions are about $20. NOT CHEAP..But they are bright. I like the cool white..because to me they LOOK brighter. And I am often working on some project... so good lighting is preferrred.
Try one of the Cree branded ones... they are pretty nice.
kens97sto171 if they're that cheap and you happen to be on the lookout for more, why not do a review of some? You'll probably want to lock some of the camera settings (white balance, shutter speed and iris) to do a like-for-like or split-screen comparison, don't forget to add some conventional incandescents, fluoro tubes and CFLs into the mix as well, plus maybe the ones you've already got so you can compare brand new with "part worn".
How many rubber gloves does it take to change a lightbulb?
Thanks for the video and work. I live in a cold climate so a inconsistent bulb that creates both heat and light. The heat is not a waist. It just depends on where i get my heat from. Natural gas or electricity. The bulb just makes a small amount of heat. I like the light that comes from a inconsistent bulb.
Thanks for the well taken video. You probably saved many lives with this video. I was not aware of this too.
Very, very good video! You and Julian Ilett are doing the world a great service
Nice test, many of those corn lamps now comes with a plastic cover.
Yes, although I've seen a few exposed-LED replacements for 2D tubes which I'm suspicious about.
@hansonsux why would you realise that they're all in series, rather than in parallel or series-parallel? Why not something safe like a switch-mode LED driver running series-parallel which would only require about 18-20 volts per LED strip, with all strips in parallel so only an 18-20 volt maximum potential betwen any two exposed contacts and an isolated output with no reference to the input supply? Why not set your G+ settings to enable direct reply to your comments?
+AintBigAintClever That's a good question. Lots of importers just want the cheaper bulb,that's make the market bad. And lots of the customers and salesman don't know the LED at all. This video is very professional and can design the led light. That's good video for sharing. Thank you. MAN.
+AintBigAintClever Some of these actually have the inverter with isolated output, but most I found used capacitive dropping, or simple buck converters without isolation. They are cheap, and that's why people buy them. It seems to be legal to trade them, and there is none stopping the sellers.
A friend of mine some time back pointed out "that with some of the stuff sold these days, you would have ended up in prison by selling or installing it some 25 years back". There's a point to it.
If they're live to the touch but CE-marked then they're not legal to trade.
AintBigAintClever I noticed that the corn cob bulb had 6 leds per row,including the top.so the bulb says 666666666
DEATHTECH
i invented this term FIRST!!
This was a very well presented demonstration - thankyou!
Personally I only use Phillips LED bulbs as with the CFL's I had a few of the cheaper makes go up in smoke, whereas the Phillips seemed to die of natural causes (significantly reduced phosphor efficiency) after a number of years
Voltage drop, yes. A function of distance, resistance, and current as well as DC voltage. Boost converters in each room could help. Minimising run distance (I'm working with maximum of 18m in my case which isn't too bad), although of course that doesn't deal with net power loss / inefficient use of energy. Your idea, minimising run distance by using local nodes, is best.
Lots to think about before I start this project!
why not use AC 12/24V? at least for long circuits. I use AC 12V on cameras for 100-200m circuits and rectifiers at the end.(they are extremely cheap. so much so that small diameter wires SWG25-35 + rectifiers are half price SWG19 wires!)
redycoATyahoo
would make any PWM dimming more complex with no real benefit over what he's proposing.
AintBigAintClever
really? because what he is trying to do has been done before commercially, and the solution was every time: transformer at the entry point, low AC voltage (as the application required), stabilizers/rectifiers at the consumption point (near the light bulbs in his case). Having circuitry centrally (transistors and whatnot) for an UNKNOWN amperage, for an UNKNOWN voltage (to ensure precisely 12V because LEDs are NOT protected!...you need a stabilizer circuit near them for that...ha!), losing significant power/voltage with DC even on 5 meters cables (practically having a CONSTANT useless power drain)... I don't know... BTW, what PWM do you have in mind Mat?
And a voltage stabilizer/regulator for 12V is 2.5 USD!!!!, comes as a module ready to be used..... And for dimming, putting the regulator in the light switch or behind it can solve the easy access assuming no remote will be involved (although I cannot see why...) in this way one could use the existing wires in the walls! 3 rooms 6 bulbs one man 2 days job = maximum 100 pounds all included.
@redycoATyahoo Interesting points. To be honest I'm in the early stages of thinking about it. I want to be able to control lights remotely and I'm starting wiring the place from scratch anyway. Coupled with my suspicion that introducing a transformer at one end and a rectifier at the other end will have the effect of introducing two more components into the circuit that could fail, you can see why this is my idea. Okay, perhaps one extra component... as you rightly pointed out some kind of voltage regulation would be required near the LED. (Not to mention current limiting for that matter.) But yes the real issue here is that I want to dim, and dimming properly means PWM. I was going to use cheap arduinos and transistors. 3W per bulb, max 6 bulbs per circuit. If I send eg 18V down the line (Dell chargers of which I have a tonne of old ones supply 19.5) would mean a max current of 1A and you can get a 1A ultra tiny switch mode regulator for £1.85 each. Those things supply perfect 12V out and regulate down from 35V if necessary. PWM dimming, soft start, the whole shebang for ridiculously cheap and not that much power loss over 15m with those numbers. What do you think?
If you do it as an experiment you shouldn't bother with what others think. You learn this way. Long ago I was just like you. But after decades of doing this as a job, I stopped having fun. In the recent years fun was not to be required to send the service team to fix what the installation team did wrong.
FYI, until about 20y ago the normative for low voltage installation forbidden over 24 V in wet conditions, that including bathrooms (that's why what you want to do is not that strange or rare). So in every new building, in every hotel there was a 12/24V plug, for shavers usually (voltage differed from country to country). That became 220/230/240 0.5/0.25A later.
So have fun, do whatever you want to do, that's my advice.
You should always buy LED corn bulb with plastic covering over it.That common sense for safety handling so for the live current doesn't used your skin as a live insulator to shock you and the bulb doesn't cost much more like 50 cents more for a U.S.bulb or a U.K. bulb like a pound more.Been using these LED corn bulb with plastic covering for the last 10 years.Has to changed these LED corn bulb only once.LED bulb are very efficient designed in low energy wattage consumption and one bulb can last you like 5 years or more if you uses less options.
The shocking truth about incandescent lamp: I burn my fingers when unscrewing the bulb, I get sharp piece of glass when I hit the bulb by accident, and the filament give me nasty electric shock when I try to unscrew the broken light bulb. How did they ever get certification?
Thank you very much for making this video.
"The *shocking* truth".... I see what you did there!! :D
great job explaining the voltage leak and how your measuring it! Very convincing.... excellent video!!
Aaaah, even more pants. :-( These shouldn't be allowed on sale. Like you say, if you had an earthed fitting in one hand with that corn-cob lamp in the other and it was plugged into a live socket, it wouldn't just be that lamp which lights up! :-O
We've all done it...... You change the lamp, thinking the fitting is off, and hey presto, as if by magic, the bulb lights up in your hand as it's pressed into the lampholder.
_"That's bizarre, I thought I turned that off!"_
It happens most with pull-cord operated lights, like the one in the bathroom, as there's no visual status of the switch, followed by the two-way-switched light upstairs.
With lights that are operated by one switch (like in a bedroom) at least there's some way of determining the position of the switch, but even then.......switches can fail!
Nah, I AIN'T HAVIN' IT!!! I can feel some poppage coming on......I WANT FLAAAAMES! :D
If you're not going to send these to Trading Standards (or Mr. photon :D) then please do something flammable with them, just for the LOLz and the sssatisfaction of seeing and hearing them pop.
Why have a _"flame effect"_ lamp when you can have a lamp with REAL FLAAAAMES?! :D
Yes, it is a shocker that these are being sold. Those who designed these and then made them obviously have no ideas on the basic principles of electricity and electrical safety.
Thanxx for showing. I am sure it took a long time to set up all that equipment and to do all the video editing! :-)
-BoomBoxDeluxe.
_17th March 2014, 12.55_
Nice vid as always AintBig! Where'd you get that socket with a RCD built in? I used to test washing machines that have been outside for a long time and sometimes they trip the fuses, so it's nice to have one of those :p
Could you test the radio interference that these things put out on for example longwave/mediumwave/shortwave/dab? A philips led bulb i bought a while back is completely quiet when the radio is 1 meter away.
There's no high frequency circuitry in these cheap lamps so I wouldn't expect any interference.
Some of the cheaper ones do emit a lot of radio interference, especially the dimmable ones. Some of mine make a loud buzzing sound on the radio on the other side of the house. Others are perfectly quiet even with the radio on the same circuit.
I would like to see some proper tests to find out just how bad some of them are.
Thank you very much i'm assisting village communities in Asia who need to know this stuff - very responsible of you .
Al
To be fair the bayonet fitting itself is hardly safe considering you have two large un-insulated pins at the bottom that can be energized and easily touched!!
+DNA Electronics There are protected ones available. Those to BS7895:1997 (such as MK ShockGuard) de-energise the pins when there's no bulb fitted.
So is the CE mark not worth anything?
+Tangobaldy not unless Trading Standards and I suppose HMRC take a harder stance on counterfeit CE marking.
Thanks for taking the time to do this.
Good story. Thank you. Up until recently I "assumed" that Amazon was populated with reliable sellers who sold what I'll call "storefront quality" products. I'm not finding that this is not necessarily the case. There are people selling defective junk which is shipped from god knows where. This causes me to worry that my personal information is ending up god knows where. You have to be as careful on Amazon as you do eBay.
+chanel #9 Yep, you'll find "upgraded" SD cards on Amazon as well. Same crap, different marketplace.
Very informative video, good test set up. I've been advising friends from purchasing cheap E bay electronics for some time now. Your video highlights how dangerous cheap LED bulbs can be. Its shocking to know how E bay and Amazon can get away with listing these products. One of the scariest E Bay listings I have seen, is a water boiler that's passes mains electricity through the water and boils using electrolysis.
Damned right. This is why, amongst some other reasons, I'm wiring up my new home with mains rated wiring only to use it with 12VDC. With the excellent range of 12V COB and other types of LED light on the cheap ebay market in GU10, MR16, and E27 fittings, I'm planning to wire every light circuit to a central location and drive the LEDs from a bunch of arduinos and transistors. PWM for dimming! Give me one good reason why not!
Voltage drop, although this will be reduced by using 1.5mm² instead of 1.0mm² cable (which I always find too scrawny, I always use 1.5). Planning the system to minimise cable distance between controller and lights may help. You may even wish to have a master controller for one floor and a slave for the other, with each controller placed as centrally as possible and having 2.5mm² to feed them (or provide each controller with its own PSU).
Sounds like it could turn out nice. Good luck!
***** Voltage drop can be an issue re performance of the lamps, but more likely current rating of the cable will be an issue. Consider 200 Watts of lighting: at 12 V that will mean close to 17 Amps through the conductor. That 1.0 mm² is no longer going to cut it.
I've seen 2 of these tests now, on the SMD GU MODELS it's 50/50 if you receive a shock if you touch the surface of the light where the positive and the negative meet the thinly insulated chip board, how companies can sell these without even warning consumers is criminal
Great video exposing the dangers of cheap led lights, not worth the risk if you have kids or if they arent in a enclosed fixture.
what u are coming to say.....led buld has chance of creating shock.Then pls clarify me does the corn led bulb consumes more watts than mentioned in the bulb.pls reply
+hajaaa100 Badly designed LED bulbs with non-isolating drivers and exposed metal contacts are an electric shock risk. If the driver was an isolating type (like a conventional switch-mode power supply) or the LED contacts were out of reach then it would be fine.
The power consumption of the bulbs tested was similar to what they were supposed to be.
Thanks for your time.
Fantastic vid, thank you. I will be careful what I supply to my customers.
interesting. makes you wonder how this quality of LED bulb is allowed. Good Video.
+Ken Rawlings It isn't. It's certified to be safe but is actually breaking the certification rules.
A very valuable warning! I get all mine from LedHut and they seem to be ok. Will be sharing this video, well done mate.
There are some nice things coming out of China. I got a wonderful pair of custom made shoes and a rather ingenious Bluetooth charger clock recently. But there is a lot of dangerous crap as well. Don't buy anything online before thoroughly researching it. Programmers like me are working hard to bring this information to you. Take advantage of our work, and save yourself the grief.
Unfortunately a lot of these sellers are simply buying oem chinese products to resell, so it really doesn't matter if the sellers are based in places like the uk. And of course they'll print the CE marks without actual certification.
they started putting clear hard plastic cover over them on eBay ones, I bought 2 from same company but had sleeves
Thanks i was going to buy one but have soon changed my mind. Have you done a vid on the high power cfl bulbs 125w, 250w . They have a tendency to set fire
Now THIS one, vice the "Hot Wet MOT" video; THIS one was quite good! "Fine Business" - do you UK guys still say that? Back a few years ago, I worked with some British EaPats in Saudi and to say "Fine Business" meant praise. Anyway, this is a good one ...
glad i saw this before purchasing these things.. i'll stick with the other type for now. the allure for these was obviously the light coverage that they seem to give.
Couldn't this problem be easily remedied by simply putting a clear plastic cover around the bulb or would that retain too much heat? Never mind, that question was addressed in the video. I didn't watch the entire video before asking the question.
+ElGatoLoco698 Newer ones tend to have plastic covers.
Wow thanks for the demonstration, just got one of these corn cob led lights, and now know how potentially dangerous they are thanks to your video. Probably saving some lives, not sure how they can sell these things if there so dangerous.
in my country we have to have a switch on the wall to turn the lights off before changing the bulb, we also have a switch on our cars so we can switch the engine off before changing the fan belt
In my country we have pullcords where, if a bulb is blown, it's not possible to tell whether a light fitting is live or not.
I can think of only two reasons why you'd be leaping to the defence of those importing dangerous light fittings. One is that you're doing it yourself. The other is that you're completely clueless when it comes to electrical safety.
@@AintBigAintClever guess what in NZ light pull cords are banned because of that reason instead of banning the bulbs ban switches that dont indicate whether they are on or off
Cool vid, I am just now exploring LED tech and this presentation gave me some food for thought. Thanks.
+Mark Coffman If you're looking at DIY ideas you may wish to take a look at czcams.com/video/jLia59KfkSw/video.html
Commercially there are LED "ceiling tile" panels that are probably on a par with fluorescent. If you look at some of the most recent webcasts from Powys County Council these are from a fully LED-lit council chamber, mostly strip format around the sides and above the desks, with a single 24" square tile in the apex. www.powys.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/217173
AintBigAintClever not so much interested in how to, just keen on knowing the tech behind the LED for in home and commercial/industrial use. Especially the plug and play 4 foot tubes for multi-volt fixtures. I am an electrician and my company is starting to experiment with the LED for overhead lighting in areas that are difficult to reach above machinery. So on that note if you fell the desire to rip open a Philips 4 footer I would be greatly interested. Thanks for the response, and I"ll keep watchin'.
i wonder what does philips led driver looks like,would you make a video ?
AintBigAintClever I have to disagree with 82mA only giving a nasty shock. Anyone with a pacemaker or undiagnosed heart condition could be in for a very serious problem. Directly across the heart it takes less than 6mA to cause either fibrulation or outright cardiac arrest. I was taught that 20mA across the chest was the threshold for "seriously dangerous". Therefore 82mA I would argue has a reasonably high potential for being lethal.
Stop whining please! There are just a few people around with a pacemaker and they would all be exposed to electrical hazards to make a very low impact, people with pacemakers are dead men walking anyway. Piss off!
The LED bulb I got from China had a plastic casing around the whole thing. So... that kind of solves the whole issue.
Crikey! Thanks for posting this video. Was thinking of buying one of these but I won't now. I hope the retailers in question have withdrawn this from stock.
How do they get to use the CE mark if they are so obviously dangerous?
They don't get to use it. They use the label without permission to do so.
Very good, I wonder if this would make them stop selling the crap.
them gel leds are actually made for cars! Halfords sell the yellow gel strips for your bumpers
This LED corn bulb is Non-Isolated, it is very cheap in Chian , Isolated LED driver will better
that's why i only use philips led light
80mA can easily seriously kill you. It only takes about 4mA to be in the range that is not safe.
Good works, sub. How come they dont have these warning on the TV ? Oh wait the voice is on brb ....
KM Ly czcams.com/video/M0fqceT9n5Q/video.html
Thank you very much indeed for testing and making this video!
Great video! You saved em from purchasing a 35w corn cob LED bulb. I believe I’ll instead purchase a CFL.
I know jack about electricity and even I could understand what’s going on here.
There are some safer ones on the market now, but not all (someone commented the other week that they had one with a live metal frame). Those with a plastic shell are safer.
If using in outdoor applications LED would be better than CFL as CFLs can take ages to warm up in cold weather.
I bought one E24 type led bulb from V-tac, rated 15W from a local company and I dont want any more (though the light was really even brighter than what I wanted for my little room)...
It lasted months only and it violently exploded, even melted the metal contacts of the E24 socket, and send the whole power OFF.
After all it only has a bloody crap resistor between the socket and the inside electronics, and that resistor is always VERY HOT.
I had other lot more expensive branded E24 LED Light Bulb, it was rated 10W and it had just the right brightness for my room, I had it for more than a year and had no problems, though I offered it to a friend. BUT it still suffered from the same problem, the socket was a lot hot too so I'm thinking its another resistor that will blow some day, YACK...
E26 or E27 is the standard size, no such size as E24
great video. plastic casing or not, i still prefer handling them with power switched off.
£5 is bloody expensive for a 7W LED corn bulb though. i got a 10W (100LED) corn bulb from aliexpress for just £1.85 shipping included, 7W model selling £1.8 or even less. ok, i just realized your video is from 2014, probably got much cheaper since.
Does your 240v come on one wire with a neutral, or is it 120v on two wires at opposite ends of the AC phase?
+Anona Mouse one wire with a neutral, 230-240V to ground. Larger buildings have three-phase supplies which will be 400-415V phase-to-phase and 230-240V phase-to-ground, although I've seen some with two-phase supplies that are either 400-415V phase-to-phase (120 degrees apart, i.e. two phases of a three-phase supply) or 460-480V phase-to-phase (180 degrees apart, i.e. a centre-tapped 460-480V supply).
+AintBigAintClever
Residential wiring in Canada consists of a comparatively lame 120v + neutral with 120 + 120 + neutral for ranges and clothes dryers.
If it were up to me it would all be 120 + 120 without wasting any copper on a neutral.
Commercial wiring is similar to yours except our 3 phase starts at 120v phase to ground which gives us 208v phase to phase.
I'll give your country a point for the extra efficiency afforded by higher residential voltage but I'll have to subtract a point for compromising safety by putting all the voltage on one wire :)
"Driver circuit"? You have a RC current limiting/snubber circuit in these. I am surprised they would spend the cost on higher voltage LEDs instead of dropping the voltage with a buck transformer, using a lower voltage and cheaper cap and then running it through IC full wave rectifying bridge. You can get full duty cycle instead of less than 50% off of each LED. Twice the brightness for less cost!
Perhaps their designers never got that far in college?
Excellent. Thank you for exposing the dangers.
Good reminder that the LEDs are live with high voltage but, seriously, does anybody touch or change a bulb with the mains on? Let alone pull bits of the bulb off?
What about a bedside lamp in a child's bedroom? You can feel that a bulb is hot before touching it. You can't feel that a bunch of bare LEDs are live before touching them.
Also it's not always clear whether a fitting is on or off when changing a bulb. Think pullcord-operated lights in bathrooms, for example. Putting a bulb in for it to suddenly light in your hand isn't an issue if that bulb is electrically safe to touch.
Saved by someone who knows/discovered true facts! TY!
5:43 why is there AC on LEDs? nobody powers leds with ac!
I must interject a statement here as I deal with American 60 hz 240 volt 1000 watt corn cob bulbs. I have had the pleasure of dismantling several of them and found an auto transformer that reduces from 240 to either 28 VDC upwards of 96 VDC. Notice Volts Direct Current! Am i missing something as an L.E.D. or Light Emitting Diode works on D/C voltages. So I know that you get quite a kick out of 48 volts D/C( actually i kinda enjoy the coppery taste my fillings give me ) but to say that an L.E.D. type bulb will shock or kill is over hype. I never saw you test actual voltage on the L.E.D. strip anywhere. Here in the states we have circuit breakers similar to what you shown here. It appears as to be a G.F.C.I. type(American name is Ground Fault Current Interrupt) or earthing current? Current on the earthing/grounding conductor. Unfair test IMO. I am a Master Electrician and a Journeyman High Voltage Tech. I deal with shock hazards every day. I have as of yet to receive even the slightest tingle from an L.E.D. corn cob bulb. Please correct me if I have made an incorrect assumption here. Are all corn cob/L.E.D. bulbs D/C or are those type represented here A/C? The L.E.D.s that is not the Mains voltage.
The LEDs will be DC, fed in this case by a rectified, non-isolated supply. To run LEDs on AC I believe you need a diode (or another LED) in inverse parallel, presumably to avoid issues with the AC waveform exceeding the peak inverse voltage rating of the LED. In this case half of the LEDs would light on one half-cycle, followed by the other half. I'd expect flicker to be a lot more noticeable than on a capacitor-smoothed full-wave-rectified DC supply.
As for testing actual voltage on the LED strip there's a test at 4:54 showing what you'd be exposed to if touching the LED whilst also touching the ground. Voltage ACROSS the LED strip is irrelevant as even if you're touching across say half a dozen LEDs (so about 20 volts) you'll still be at a far higher voltage relative to ground.
The BBC show "Fake Britain" also covered these lamps (later than I did), but the lab they took them to performed a virtually identical test to mine. czcams.com/video/M0fqceT9n5Q/video.html
some of those LED light will have that efect but is DC voltage, i been handling them for a lot of time and i have never felt any shock out of them handleling them with my bare hands and bare footed
+angel rivera
Amps is amps, and 0.5 of an amp across your heart stops the heart. It's possible the amperage is flowing the length of your body and not across your heart, otherwise we would be reading your ghost's post.
Here it is 6 mA =0.006 amps.
I just bought one of the larger sized corn bulbs from amazon and would really like to know if it is safe. I do not know much about electronics so i do not know what to look for, but from your video and your top comment i have looked over my bulb and even though the boards look exposed, on close inspection they seem to have a plastic/rubber film vacuum wrapped to them. I only noticed upon looking closer at the solder points of the chips where the plastic appears to have tiny air bubbles. Also from what i can tell by the faint tracks running along side the chips, they appear to be running in groups of 6 chips, with 12 chips per board on the sides and 18 chip on the top, again running in 3 groups of 6 chips. i am not sure if that makes this bulb safer or not though. I have open up the base to check the main board inside and it is a very minimalist looking setup. consisting of a few capacitors of varying sizes, a resistor, a few chips and a larger black plastic cube sort of thing with what looks like yellow tape wrapped inside it and around it. I have not plugged this bulb in yet as i want to be absolutely sure it is a safe product before hand. I would very much appreciate your help on the matter. Thanks :)
A lot of the lamps made since this video was made now come with plastic covers, others still have exposed boards but have isolated power supplies. Take a look at bigclivedotcom's videos as he may have tested a lamp of the type you've purchased. The cube with yellow tape on it sounds like a transformer, but whether it's an isolated design depends on the rest of the design around it.
Thanks for the speedy reply mate, i have looked at bigclives video but his was a different unit. I have had another look at the board and googled the largest chip on it and found that the whole board is advertised as a "Cost-effective 220V Non-Isolated LED Driver BP2836D Constant Current 280MA 8W 15W 18W 25W Power Supply Transformer" on AIiExpress. Again i do not know much about these sorts of things, so i still do not know if this driver unit even make a difference to how safe the bulb is for use. if you put this heading into amazon you will see the bulb i am dealing with. " High Power E27 50W LED Light Bulb 4000LM (300W Equivalent) , Not Dimmable, Warm White 2700-3300k, AC 85-265V Super Bright Lamp [Energy Class A+] " If it had a plastic casing i would be less nervous about it, but as it has more or less an entirely metal housing for the led boards, i remain very unsure about plugging it in. Also it has no marking to indicate CE or its voltage requirements :/ thanks again for replying.
Ah yes, found it. Amazon said "No results" but then suggested this anyway. The box bears no relation to the lamp itself as it doesn't have the voltage and power options suggested. If those LEDs are exposed (i.e. no hard plastic cover) I wouldn't use it in a fitting that was in a location where the lamp could be readily touched.
Ah, ok, that is a bit disappointing. I suppose i can make use of the leds and make a sort of LED panel if i can find a tutorial on it. thanks again mate.
Nothing to stop you testing it like I did, though. You'll just need a pygmy bulb, a bulbholder and some wire. Connect one end of the bulbholder to either neutral or earth (neutral may be better as you're less likely to trip any RCD or RCBO feeding the supply). Bare the end of the other and use it as a probe. If when you poke the LED lamp (plugged in of course) the bulb lights, it's dangerous to touch (and therefore not CE compliant) and ought to have an Amazon review reflecting this.
great video.
For those china LED lamps, how hot do the LED's get and how are they cooling them. From the video, they did not seem to have much of a way to cool them.
PS, electricity is nature's calorie free energy drink :)
Yeah I agree some bulbs out there are utter crap they should not be put on sale
If I was getting 1 the first thing I would do is get the 1s With the plastic or silicone seal cap on if I had never seen this vid I'd still do the same its just using your common sense knowing they have live exposed parts especially the smd ones.
Keep up the good work your vids are great Thanks :D
why should you get a shock off the fitting, its not earthed.
i got a es led fitting off ebay, the ceiling rose is earthed but the fitting isnt, also the scew holder part of the fitting was the live :(
Excellent review, a real eye opener, thanks.
It was me, or you touch the ground at the power suply connector? The "+" is usually inside of the connector, and I think that was the reason nothing happened.. am I right? Thank's and nice video
Not sure what you mean, what time in the video are you referring to?
At 3.40.. You say "..nothing will happen, exactly the same if I touch the end connector on this small power suply". From what I know, the exterior of the connector in the power suply is the GROUND conector, so, there's no tension and it's not alive, or anything even close to that, because the potential is 0.. Why do you didn't put the probe test into the power suply, connector where "vcc" is ( or positive potencial)? Thanks
Ah, right. The point I was making was that the power supply was safe to touch due to it being isolated from the mains. You're right, I should've poked the lead inside as well but it would've made no difference anyway.
By the way, you're right that the inner contact is usually Vcc on those power supplies, but it's not always the case (a few weeks ago I had to rewire one with the output reversed to run a child's illuminated globe which expected a centre-negative plug).