eBay 150W LED floodlight? FLICKER WARNING
Vložit
- čas přidán 6. 03. 2024
- A quickie video made just before travelling to make things more relaxed.
This is a typical eBay facilitated grey import floodlight.
Spoiler - I did leave it running and it gradually crept down to 75W with the regulator chip area of the PCB getting the hottest. Those linear regulator chips automatically regulate down when they get too hot. This may actually help the LEDs last a bit longer, but I still regard these lights as dangerously non compliant and short lived landfill.
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:- www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm
This also keeps the channel independent of CZcams's algorithm quirks, allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty.
#ElectronicsCreators - Věda a technologie
My money is on loose ground wire randomly shorting live.
It's a feature, It'll let you hone your troubleshoting skills 😅
That's funny and relatable. Once I had to replace plug on soviet heater, so I decided to connect ground wire to metal enclosure. After some time this thing burned without tripping anything, as house had NO ground.
I asked a Chinese supplier is the lamp earthed, and the reply was WHAT IS EARTHED! So good luck with your question.
No sh1t, because its called grounded not earthed
Ask again then
Ask if the intended use is to safely bury in the ground.
Too me it seems, you are in urgent need of a pink multimeter ... just as a companion to the calculator
mink pultimeter
@@youdontknowme5969 Careful, that might attract us furries. X3
Ultimate in technology, the air gapped earth
Airth..
Clearly, an isolating spark gap device.
This idea deserves a debunking video. May be Clive was wrong the whole time. :D
Is "Air Gapped" anything like [told] "NO [direct] Connection to internet" or election servers abroad? *8{|*
_at least_ *Clive is Based.* (Earthed, _"Airthed",_ grounded)
thanks for the spelling, R6AAO.
@@kareno8634Air Gapped is a term for transformers, where the core is not continous.
Love the component designators - what part is faulty? U1... erm... which U1, there's 15!
I don't know why the Chinese don't just use 2 core cable and be done with it. It would make it "safer" without the earth floating about.
Yeah. Also it's sealed everywhere. Except for where the wire's are located. LoL.
Fairly sure they do it to save money. They probably sell the same lamp but with proper checks for the western market.
The idiot buyer who buys china unofficial led ligths to do the job more than once would not but the ONLY TWO WiRES inferior variant 😂@@ShawnStafford-1978
CE sticker says device must have ground wire. So ground wire included.
@@pfefferle74 LoL that's true. Reminds me of old TV products advertising. "Some assembly required"
Perfectly useable when used indoors, earth connected, heatsink(s) added & powered through a rcd breaker. I've used the growlight version for a few years. Keep your fingers away from the white mask on the pcb though..... It's not a perfect mains voltage insulator (don't ask!).
Without a HUGE heat sink, this light will die an early heat death quickly ...
Put a loop of fine thread under the board, use that as a cutter to get through the adhesive.
Dental floss is the ticket here.
or black fishing line
Maybe let it get nice and warm too
Excellent idea!
Not bad! If it was properly grounded and in a proper enclosure, I recon this would be pretty useful. I also do like when you draw out the schematic in the video. But I know some of them are quite the puzzle to work out.
I guess the power of this floodlight is quite acceptable. They probably glued the aluminium PCB with some thermally conductive glue. Nice video once again!
Kafuter electronics silicone from China claims to have impressive thermal conductivity, akin to basic white thermal paste. I have used it and it's certainly thermally conductive and acid free, but i can't exactly say how thermally conductive it is.
when 100W doesnt seem warm by touch, i guess it is thermal insulator
@@viperwizard491It is not a heater. And LED is very efficient light producing devices. I think i read it somewhere that the led efficiency could reach 70%. So in this case, only 30 % is converted to heat.
@@era7928including powersupply? when packaging still promote LED over tungsten efficiency when these things are no more
I bought this exact light from Aliexpress for £2.50 posted. I haven't opened it yet, but I did do an earth continuity check and wasn't surprised to find it unconnected. Certainly wouldn't fit it outdoors, but might be OK in a shed with an RCD and never left unattended.
You can surely crimp a connector onto the earth wire and bond it to the metal?
Outdoors that "floating" earth wire will end getting better electrical connectivity to the metal housing through the dirty and/or rusty water.
That is a hell of a lot of light for that price. Connect the earth wire to the chassis, give the wires a glob of silicone and maybe it would be okay. I'd be interested to see how hot it gets running for a long time in a hot environment
@@ruben_balea It won't last long enough to rust. lol
Definitely, but I was thinking more about the overall 'quality' of the light.@@camelcasee
I love Floodlight videos explained very well as ever good job Clive.
Brilliant in every sense of the word. Best used indoors such as in a warehouse, if used at all. Thanks for the insight.
"You know WATT?" great name for the series.
I bought a uv one of these for charging my sons glow in the dark nightsky ceiling, and it was exactly the same as this, earth wire just stuffed under the circuit board.
Only yesterday did I split a similar unit down though fitted with purple/black LEDs which I wanted to illuminate fluorescent paint . (8x12 LED matrix and 5 regulator chips on the right)
Exactly the same earthing derangements though!
I stripped it to fit a longer lead from the stupid 2 inches supplied, I drilled a hole adjacent to the grommet to feed the earth wire on my longer lead back through and secured it to the frame for earthing. Then silicone sealed the hole around the wire. The purple version seems to get quite hot in use though.
Mine too, I have a white 50w version. Same thing as Clive's. Hot as hell
I don't understand why the Chinese aren't able to attach that clearly present ground wire to the chassis somewhere.. would that be *so* much more effort? Or do they just not care about the lives of people?
They just don't get the earth wire concept in China.
@@bigclivedotcomYes, exactly. They often don't have earth wiring, so they think Earth is just a western tradition to make a ritual sacrifice of some copper to the safety gods by using a 3 wire cable.
No care for live, deception is why the green wire is there
Prior year 2007, the Chinese didn't had switching power supplies and Li-Ion/Li-Po batteries.
At the same time, they hated main power transformers with a passion, because of all iron and copper required to build them.
I have some Chinese rechargeable torches, small appliances, toys, light sources, etc. from that time. The batteries were all miniature Lead-acid, but not gel, AGM or dryfit: they had liquid acid in them. The power supplies were all made with a capacitive partition, i.e. a big capacitor in series with the bridge rectifier, connected with the main. Some torches had a jack to get power from the battery inside to power a calculator, a radio or other devices, and one terminal was connected to the HOT of the 240 Vac if the plug was inserted in a certain way.
There are building codes in China that direct the use of a ground wires and RCBs, but they are widely unknown, and just like fire hydrants or fire alarms - they are considered wasteful and useless.
A lot of these really cheap products aren't designed by EE's or even enthusiasts, but sometimes just some employee or the factory owner's son. They just don't have the safety education or understanding of why you'd want the chassis earthed. Clive has definitely taken apart a few designed by some EE or hobbyist and those have a screw for the ground wire, whether it's used depends on how well trained the assembler was.
As someone who uses tons of neopixels. 200 watts of LEDs is blindingly bright too.
Having commented on the lack of earth wires before, this still amazes me. IF there wasn't an earth wire, at least one may deduce the potential hazards, but the fact that there is an earth wire that is not connected, is to me a deliberate attempt to deceive. That represents a whole heap of issues.
Anyway, I like your videos and your subtle sarcasm. Keep up the great work.
Goes to show their mentality, which is sickening
The 3 WiRe LED is "upgraded" superior version, do not buy the only two wire plastic sealed variant 😂
Going out on a limb and saying no and no.
you would be right and sorta technically right but not as correct as you might have thought.
"Trapping moisture in" I am amazed at the number of dome style security cameras setup this way. Even with all the extra seal goo and desiccant packets we would get puddles or fog in them, especially the ones with built in mini-heaters that supposed to prevent it. Often you will see outdoor ones with a small hole drilled in them to allow water to run out.
I purchased a few similar units a while back with the intension of using them to light my mum's garage but having seen some of your posts, I'm kind of relieved I never managed to fit them.
Wow glad I watch your video as i was just about to buy one thank you
Wire wound guitar strings with the ends wrapped around dowels are perfect for sawing through glue or foam tape. Old autobody trick. Dental floss sometimes works, and less chance of scratching paint.
At 100 watts, it will generate about 50-60 watts of heat, which has to dissipate from that area of aluminium on the rear of the lamp. Unless that is a 3C/W heatsink (and it doesn't look anything like that) it is not going to be very long before some of those LED's exceed their maximum temperature and go burnie-burnie.
The current regulator chips self-regulate the current down when they overheat. So the power will drop with temperature.
Aha, the old placebo earth wire.
I have 3 of 110v versions is use to grow “tomatoes”, they do get very warm but I use that to heat the grow space during the winter.
I bought a couple of these to add some extra lighting above my lathe. They are out of reach so the earth issue is no bother to me and so far they are working great. The light output is really excellent and they are still going strong after maybe 24 hours solid use so for the price then they are fantastic
Awesome Video Big Clive 😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊
I got the uv version about a year ago. Replaced cable as soon as i opened it also added a big heatsink to back. Its great for setting uv resin and it was less than a tenner with same day delivery.
Thanks. Kinda wish that you'd removed a few resistors to see how much the current drops.
I reviewed an early 50-watt version of this on my Channel way back in 2018. Amazingly my version really was earthed but sadly the front was riveted not screwed. It also, almost made its rated power. It also got VERY hot, too hot to touch. It also only lasted probably less than 10 hours. No big bang or smoked just would not light.
Yes, this will melt in a moment. There is zero heatsink capability in that sheetmetal.
Nice exploration BigClive 💘💘💘💘💘💘💘💘💘💘💘💘💘💘💘💘
Got one of these from Temu like a year ago but is a grow light. Does work nice for the 7 bucks i paid. Also i filled the back with some heat-sinks and a fan now doesn't get as toasty.
I did the same, using a PC CPU heatsink & fan. I use mine to recharge the batteries in solar powered watches. Runs much cooler now & is quite good for the price.
OOooo I need one of these over my work area.
No more lost mini screws!
😁
That lamp is going to get rather hot dissipating 100 Watts. That flimsy backing plate isn’t enough. I’d say it’s a likely fire hazard.
I think some designers just was to see the earth burn….
Nice MCPCB, but the lack of a filter cap and this utterly lousy excuse for grounding really drag this product down.
Ah booger man, They forgot to fill the case with fresh soil for the ground. I mean they even designed it with the water trap to keep the soil moist and conductive
Good work, Clive. (For the algorithm)👍
For the cost, I consider this floodlight a good source of some good LEDs. If you try to buy the LEDs from a distributor for a project of yours, you gonna pay them 50x more - if you gonna buy them from LaBaja, you get scammed (I got 50 x 10,000 μF 35 V capacitors; inside the aluminium can there is a tiny 10 μF 16 V capacitor)...
I'm not sure if they are good LEDs. They might only live a few monts due to overhating.
Thanks for specifying. Yes it's probably "grounded" (signal ground-wise). Probably not chassis ground to earth
I recently had a very similar light to this from the infamous Temu, except it was a "growing" lamp for.. certain types of fruit.
Anyway, while it was ungrounded, very cheaply made, and smelled faintly of moldy bread, it did a surprisingly good job with the..fruit.
Well...I guess 2/3 of the stated rating is way better than the normal 1/4 or less usually encountered from Chinesium manufacturers
You need to distinguish between goods made in China and foreign companies manufacturing goods in China.
Apple make most of their iPhones, iPads etc in China.
A big chunk of the spare parts needed in the US defence forces are made in China.
NASA makes a lot of its components and spare parts in China.
Even Harley Davidson has a motorcycle plant in China.
So when one says Chinese manufactured it’s code for Western Corporations exploiting workers in China and taking advantage of lower environmental and safety standards to maximise profits, shareholder returns and CEO bonuses.
Remember it was the US that funded the Wuhan lab work on Gain of Function research because GOF research is illegal in the US. So is stem cell research from embryos.
This is done because the markets are in the West - especially in the USA.
Drug and medication use is a good example.
The US barely makes up 4% of the global population yet consumes about 85% of drugs. The US also consumes about 1/3 of world’s resources and produces 30% of world’s waste and pollution.
I wonder what the problem is?
@@PetraKann
I wouldn't own any Apple products either
@@PetraKanncareful.
You will wake up lots of angry Americans that don't like facts
It is not tho.
The power output will drop way below 50% because there is no heatsink.
I bought a UV light in an identical format (no idea what the actual power is) with the small exception that they used 2 core cable and didn't even bother to pretend to earth it.
That is actually safer because at least you can see that it is ungrounded. It is even worse when they sell extension cord with grounded plug and socket but with 2 core cable.
I think you should release a single called 'One Moment Please' All in leather n shit A mess of computers everywhere...
For growing your "devil's lettuce" indoors. I know, not the ideal spectrum, but they do work. And cheap. Plant's earth is floating, too, so compatible. 🤔
Considering that the back of the case is likely intended to function as a heat sink, it seems quite likely that the board is actually attached to the case using thermal epoxy. If that's the case, you pretty much will not ever get it off without damaging something. (I wouldn't expect them to use silicone adhesive, because that is actually an extremely good heat insulator, so would really completely undermine the usefulness of the metal back for dissipating heat)
They do have thermal transfer silicone style compounds. I think it might be that.
I got the LED board off fairly easily so it's not thermal epoxy. They sometimes use metal oxide filled silicone adhesive. On mine there was a thin zigzag of glue, whatever it was it was more of a fixing than having any use for thermal conductivity.
I enjoy seeing those various Chinese light fixtures taken apart and analyzed. At this point, nothing you find inside surprises me. 😂
I just got today this exact lamp haven't even tried it yet. I guess I'll watch this video before, just in case 😅
Was just thinking as you were trying to lift that board, next time you're doing the charity/bric-a-brac shops/websites see if you can find one of those old "bone" handled long pallette knives such as those used in baking etc. If you needed to, you could put an edge on it with a stone or a grinder to slice through sealants etc.
That's awesome and really bright. Thank's for the flash warning. Disappointing the ground wire is loose. Not sealed where the open wire's are in back. 🤷♂️
Bought 10 of these. First two fitted under a roof shelter lasted 3 years. They went faulty (just glowed) so replaced. The next 2 lasted just 1 month.
Other than damp air, well put of any rain. Will replace again and see what happens. I operate them via a Titan relay system so wonder if they overburden the relay switch. Another 2 aren't used much and are fine
That metal plate can handle maybe 20 W of heat. Considering the LED conversion efficiency to be 50%, it means that the 90 W used when the floodlight is first turned on, will throttle down to 40 - 50 W after few minutes of operation.
The LED life is stated as 50,000 hours, but their cycle life can vary widely, depending on the temperature excursion of each cycle.
Here, with hard temp limiting, the temperature of the LEDs is pushed to the theoretical maximum of 90 °C, where you can expect delamination (phosphor layer detaching from the InGaN die) to occur after about 5,000 cycles in the best case, or 500 cycles in the worst case. Practically, the flood light would stop operating after one year of use...
I've gone back to halogen for some security lights because of how "consumable" LED flood lights have become. Even though those bulbs are only rated a few thousand hours, they still outlast the LED units.
The LED efficiency is never 50%. On a wikipedia article it is written that the theoretical maximum efficiency is about 40%.
@@spxza I hoard halogen, fluorescent and basically every other lamps that are not LED until I can buy them.
I bought some Kafuter electronics silicone from China - its thermal conductivity is alleged to be rather good, similar to white paste. I don't know if it's QUITE this good but it certainly works.
the cree 150w hood i have is WAY bigger and has a dedicated external ballast, if these are cheap this could be useful for reasons :)
Thanks :)
COLOR ME AMAZED it was actually near its advertised number an the ever not surprising lack of a ground
Need a little Lux there Clive.
;)
You need something like a steel baking spatual to spudger bigger things like that circuit board. Slide the metal spatula under the entire width of the circuit board and pry.
Cheese wire...
Have to admit, I didn't see "Flicker" when I saw that title
I have one as bench light too. Gets really hot and flickers just like this. It was a 2€ 50w model. Got 3 actually. I can't recomend it, but I can assure that it is fairly bright.
I keep on meaning to hack the small LED floodlight I've got rigged over my lathe. I get a cowboy-movie "wagon wheel" strobe when the chuck is rotating at the right/wrong speed but as far as I can tell I could run it from DC. If that works I could use a FW bridge and chonky smoothing cap (robbed from an old computer PSU) and feed smoothed DC into the floodlight to get rid of the flicker.
I was a tad disappointed you didn't check the other two earth wires. 😞
Hello, I enjoy your videos. I do not know if you have heard of this phenomenon, but in the U.S.A our city LED lights that line the roads start off as a WHITE light, then slowly morphs into a PURPLE / VIOLET light. I have actually seen this happen. It made the news on several news cast. Any chance you might be able to get a hold of one of these lights maybe see why they changed. According to an article there was a delamination of the film that makes the lights white.
I've been trying to get a panel from one, or even just close up pictures. It sounds like the phosphor has detached from the violet emitters.
No, but it is 🤷♂
great video 2x👍
I am just waiting for the next generation of products, that take penny pinching to the next level.
Introducing power cable with 2 copper coated steel conductors and a green-yellow PVC filament earth substitute all sheathed as 3 core cable.
Manny already have copper coated steel cables labeled as genuine Cooper.
It's all over eBay and Amazon.
Especially HiFi cables for cars or aftermarket cables / plugs for home alliances
These lights are glued with silicone as assumed, with no thought as to the heat management needed for the panel. The case is powder coated, so is thermally insulated from the light. Lots of reviews exist where the light fails after running for approximately a few minutes. I ran mine (50w) and got too hot to touch after about 5. Pcb(?) Is way too thin to give this half a chance of surviving
It looked like one of those alignment studs went through one of the PCB tracks‽
I used a similar light over my workbench, the current drivers slowly died , as each one did she lost brightness untill it didnt light. tbo it was horriffic with flicker, but did produce a lot of light. I have another 2 of the same pannels on a tripod as a worklight, and they are holding up ok. I opened them and the earth arrangement was the same. kinda expect it these days TBO.
I had hope you hooked it up to a scope - I am interested in why it has a .8 powerfactor and whether and how much these things 'pollute' the net.
The unsmoothed linear regulators have a good power factor because they ride the sinewave. They also have very low electrical noise.
"I hope people are not buying these and using them" Hahaha Neatly sums up the appraisal! Thanks Clive!
I bought couple of them from AliEx and I did not test whether the earth was connected or not (because I wanted to mount it at the entrance door). I fixed it with hot glue and it has remained stuck for more than one year now. Another one has the top plastic lens misaligned but I could not correct the error.Overall I am happy with them.
Always nice to see that these chinese products use hyper modern wifi earth connection.
the board is nice, heatsinking disappoints, switching out the resistors to make it a 50w light and putting a better heat sink on you would get good efficiency
Big C...would there be a way to Earth the circuit W/O redesigning it? Just wondering. Best DVD:)
A separate earth could be added to the mounting bracket.
Curious what the color temperature of these things is. Looks like some grow lights I've seen. I would enjoy seeing some content on that sort of thing.
Thanks!
...The answer to that may not be straightforward;. More importantly for any application where CT might be a serious consideration - is the spectral output continuous? - It often isn't!
Earthed? I bet 100 CZcams points that it is not. I'll watch the video, then we'll settle the bet.
And, it's not earthed. That floodlight manufacturer owes me 100 points. :-P
Can you make a video, how to upgrade this lamp repairing earth and maybe something else?
So, it flickers, is unearthed, isn't the rated numbers, yep, it's a cheapo LED floodlight from the land of chinesium... :P
Slight OT. Any chance of a followup review of your Doogee S98 pro now you've been using it for a while?
It's been absolutely fine. There are a few bugs in the firmware, and the camera is fine, but not implemented as well as it could be. Battery life is still stellar and it performs as well as the day it was bought.
PT4515 is an LED driver chip, apparently
Datasheet on LCSC but no stock from them. Easily available in China, mostly in SOT89 and TO252. Y0.5 (about 0.5p GBP) in TO252.
It looks like it's intended for a scale model drop ceiling... What a weird thing!
There's no way that's enough heatsinking for an 80-100W light. I've built a LED light made from LED tape and a reasonably large extruded heatsink, it draws about 20W at full whack, and if I don't use my PWM dimmer, it gets too hot to touch in less than 5 minutes. So I imagine this will regulate down a lot more if left on for much longer. With that basic aluminium panel for the heatsink, I'd want to reduce the power to 10W at most. And I expect it would still get very hot after a short amount of time.
CZcams automatic subtitles, "Ladies and gentlemen, place your bats please …"
🦇
Ive got pink one. Few of them. It needs cooling, even with fan on them, it burns out after 1-3 months.
btw clive you are welcome to share those photos i sent you from the lightning strike hope you found the carnage interesting :)
Pre-viewing predictions:
150W-equivalent : ❌
Grounded/Earthed: ❌
Live/Neutral Reversed: ✅
Barely Acceptable Weatherproofing: ✅
Overdriven LEDs: ✅
Hackable: ✅
Well, it certainly is quite bright, might be comparable to 150W flood light. 0.9 power factor was certainly a surprise as well...
I was searching for a receptacle tap with USB charging on Amazon last night. Found one that looked reasonably decent, even saw a photo of the interior showing three MOVs and a gas discharge tube. I was actually a bit excited at first, thinking it was well-made. Right before I clicked "Add to Cart," I looked closer at the photo and found the PCB had solder pads for all sorts of components that weren't populated, and that the MOVs and GDT were simply Photoshopped into the photo. So, a hard pass. Then a quick scan of reviews showed one customer plugged two LCD monitors into theirs and it failed immediately. Other reviews stated the green "Surge Protected" LED went dark within a few days' use. Whew, glad I didn't fall for the photo!
It is more of a DIY project, utterly unusable as supplied. I got a purple grow light version of this for my chillis. Normally I wouldn't consider something like this due to the awful flicker. Mine had exactly the same construction. I threw away the crappy metal back plate and replaced with 3mm aluminium plate and additional heatsink. Gets quite warm with just 30W. Also replaced cable and added cable gland and earth ring crimp terminal.
I suspect if all of the current regulators were populated, it might in fact be 150W (assuming suitable LEDs were fitted of course).
Grounded no, but boy is that thing bright even I am shocked was not expecting it to be that bright!
A live doodle 😊
For other PT4515 SOP-8-EP (eg. PT4515CEESH) the resistor calculates as I(LED, mA)=600mV / Rext, i.e. 600/6.8=~88mA.
My bets were 20W non-earthed. Now off to watching if I'm even in the right ballpark.
I think i'll actually buy one of these for use as a bench light. I'll attach a large heatsink on the back and connect the earth properly.
Note that there is strong flicker that will be detected by a camera.
Ive got some 22uF 400V capacitors. That should reduce flicker.
I have the 50W version, and the earth wire is cut off right where it enters the casing.
Big Clive's bingo game
Picked up a Lifemax Light box. What you think? Gets you away from LEDS.
I've tested quite a few cheap lights with the ground wire clipped off. One had a metal frame that was advertised for use in wet locations. It had a place to land the ground wire but the manufacturer was too cheap to spend a dime and have it done right. As an electrician, that really pisses me off.
I have a very similar light, though mine is a grow light and the CCA in different. Mine came with it's own DC power supply brick, which I suppose makes it safer. The power supply is very light, I am afraid of what is inside.
Considering the origins, is the mains input flex rated for 250 volts? We've had Chinese mains IEC leads on computers that tripped earth leakage breakers all by themselves (not plugged into the PC), and self-destructing cables (it actually exploded)
The only known thing about the flex is that it is cheap and probably mostly aluminium or steel.