I don't know the first thing about electronics, but damn it, I watch these anyways. Clive is such a swell guy that I enjoy watching him display his wonderful knowledge and skill. These are great videos, even for dummies like me 😄👍🏻

Two comments: 1. Re the risk of a cut from the smudger slipping, wood carvers use a single kevlar-fabric glove on the left hand to prevent accidental cuts. 2. Its interesting to compare the ratings of the three lamps, but I would also like to see one additional parameter - the actual light output in lumens.

Hi Clive, I bought the 10 watt versions of these as they had a good amount of LEDs. I then modified them down to 2 Watts by disconnecting one of the regulator chips and putting a resistor on the other for the minimum current. It obviously stops the LEDs being baked and produced quite enough light for my rooms. In this cost of living rise and the obscene rise in energy prices I don't have to worry about the energy costs for lighting. I was inspired to experiment with different LED lights to get something as close as possible to the Dubai bulbs you have previously shown.

What would be interesting to compare is the light output from the 13W one hacked to ~6W and the 6W one

How about a guide for whose bulbs are the most hackable?

The schmoo everywhere is akin to the 30w LED streetlight I bought a couple years back, took it entirely apart the other day, earth wire was just stuffed under the aluminium plate PCB with the bare wires all shoved into silicone goo, basically making it an insulated connection, and that was a UK-approved light too, can't possibly think why it was sold off cheap back then... :P

I enjoy the way you were able overlap the schematic

This design seems ok but besides the QC issue with the silicone I don't like how the capacitor is right on the board instead of being at least few mm away from the hot part. The different regulator chips might also be their general supplier diversification or a consequence of the chip shortage, using whatever they could find on the market at the moment

Always enjoy watching those hacks :) Lately some dead simple capacitor dropper lamps from my parents place fell into my hands and surely went into autopsy, to see if they could be revived and modified. Of course they have a too high AC-Cap (125J400V) and all died of one dead LED out of 5 total LEDS in series. BTW: As the main aim is to revive those lamps, I tried another attempt to open the E27 lamp base and hotair works just fine. A little bit of heat allows to separate the metal thread from the plastic lamp housing without noticable damage, thus the whole lamp can be reassembled after repair quite easily :)

Just bought some ASDA 14W (100W-equivalent / 1521 lumen / warm white) bulbs. Not only are they pretty cheap, (2 for £4.50) but claim 25,000-hour life which is longer than many. Teardown reveals two SM2082EAS chips running in parallel with each having its own current sensing 91 Ohms // 47 Ohms. The bulbs have 32 separate LED chips. Looks like a great candidate to reduce the input power down to, say, 8W and bring the life up while still having decent light output.

Oh wow - I'd got some of these, so I'm very grateful for what you've done because tomorrow I'm going to mod these just as you showed. Thank you very much, Clive! Best, ~Wendi 🌻

Thanks Clive. I’m great-full you mentioned the Spudger as yes, some are crap. 😀

Thank you Clive. I hope that you are well and happy.

I found that solder joints on these types of bulbs starts cracking after a few years leading to flickering lights. Sometimes resoldering works but not always.

One thing I find interesting is that your "100W" LED lamps are still 13W. Here in California, I've been seeing them rise in rated draw to, these days, typically 16-18W - without the lumen ratings changing. In fact I think the last 13W "100W" lamp I saw was the last aluminum-bodied Cree I bought, _quite_ some time ago. So they're still more efficient than CFLs, but not by nearly as much as originally.

Thank you again for the Jagermunion for my Mum in last nights podcast Clive. Meant a lot to me. Cheers.

its amazing how versatile and useful the spudgers are.

When i remember to note the invoice number, I return the lamp to the shop for a free replacement. They always fail before the promised 10000-15000 hours; the purchase date isn't even that far away. And of course they aren't on 24hours a day. Only returned 6, no questions were asked. Most were the round ceiling lights without replaceable LEDs. If everybody started returning lamps that died prematurely, I bet we would see better quality lamps. (The shops probably would avoid selling the cheapest quick-to-die brands)

I could not agree with you more in regard to the iSesamo Spudger you and I both use. I got a couple of spudgers on eBay that were half the price of the iSesamo, but they had very sharp edges as though the metal they were made from had not been debured at all, I ended up using emery cloth to clean the edges up to make them just safe enough to handle and like the cheap ones you describe, they just bent. iSesamo Spudgers are not cheap, but they are good and will outperform and out last any of the cheap spudgers. Some of the iSesamo Spudger suppliers had an offer which may still be available, where you buy a iSesamo Spudger like the one you are using, and you get a mini one free. By mini, it's the same width, but about 1/3rd the length and still has the plasticated body. It makes for a handy tool to keep on a keyring. KW.

As you pointed out in a ( previous ) video , the most efficient LED bulbs are those with the yellow / orange long " filaments " inside a ( usually ? ) clear bulb ..... it seems stupid to run the chip LEDs so hard that they have to be mounted on a heatsink , ( any heat generated spoils the bulb's efficiency , and may shorten their life ! ) ... the whole point of LED bulbs is to give the most light for the least Watts input ! ( Dubai lamps ? ? ? ) .... BTW , my favorite small mains LED bulb is the UK Tesco™ 1 Watt " fridge bulb " ( E14 SES base ) , perfect for use by the computer , etc ............. also ( above bulbs ) , take the damping resistor out , and you have a " nightlight " function ( in certain houses wired with a long switch drop ! ! ) ............

Great explanation, maybe you can get the time to explain the PF and the easiest way to bring it close to 1 for every device

It would have been interesting seeing them at the same distance with a light meter!

20W floodlight with PIR by LUCEC has two JW1691H IC's with 27K control resistors. Found the PDF for JW1691H without any equation for power, but evaluation circuit indicated 33K for 10W. My actual power was 19W, so I calculated 39K would halve the power and got 9.5W. I had to saw one end off the ally frame to get my knife into the silicone to remove the tempered glass. Going to use Loctite Extreme glue to waterproof reassembly - 50ml at Poundlnd £1 last week!!!

I wish you'd also measure the Lumens output on these bulbs, which frankly is the most important consideration for most consumers.

I've been this very weekend modifying a dozen of cheapo all-plastic Aliexpress bulbs, which have this same configuration minus the capacitor, the fuse resistor and the resistor to avoid residual glowing. I purchased some time ago a couple of models and it's been interesting: - The small 3w's, were actually only 2.2w, wich is quite nice as they give enough light barely producing any heat while having a small form factor. - The 6w's, on the other hand, are real 6w, but at the expense of some heat and a quite short lifespan, some dying after 1.5years . - The 9w and bigger, having a plastic body doesn't seem well suited for the job. The heat has no way to go. I just had a couple of those on barely used areas of the home, and modding them down seems to be quite necessary. I changed the resistor and lowered the 6w's to exactly 2.2w by pure chance, so I was able to compare them side by side with the stock 3w. A modded 6w produced aproximately a 20% more lux (measured using a phone app), and being bigger I assume will dissipate the heat more efficiently and spread along more led elements. In the same way, I modded all the other Chinese bulbs. I also purchaded some time a set of replacement led boards (the very same that come in the bulbs), which I've used to retrofit a lot of old Ikea's Ledare models, that in the 10w,12w and 15w values are dying like flies after a fair amount of years of work (pretty hot). Those can be opened with some excessive force and a good splunge, an when retrofitted provide a superb heatsink base. I might consider fitting eventually the missing fuse and 400v capacitor in those bulbs. I won't be buying more bulbs from China, as the plastic bodies are crap. I might get more replacemnt boards though to fit the surviving Ikea ones that are going to fail eventually.

The good thing about these LED bulbs is that they actually are pretty durable, because of the minimum components inside them, like i've tested this by thowing it at the ground a few times, pretty hard & it still works. lol

The silicon all over the leds is indeed interesting ... 😀 shows the quality of assembly ...

I like how the design seems to be maturing to a very simple standard. The first LED house lamp I ever played with was one I wired on my own, mostly similar but it did stay on because I had it on a circuit with three switches and the capacitive coupling through the cable was enough to keep a few LEDs on. I had not considered that that little energy would light them up, but considering the cure seems to be to create extra heat, I don't mind a residual glow. After a decade the filter cap I used degraded, and I suspect that will be one of the most common failure modes with these too.

The ICL1103 datasheet shows a slightly different schematic recommended. They recommend a MOV across the line and a fuse before that. They also put the 510K resistor directly across the LEDs and not across the capacitor. Very minor differences but one wonders why the lamp makers didnt slavishly follow the recommendation? Maybe the UK rules require a fusible input resistor or just a easily burnuppable one? I guess not using a MOV is a bit of a gamble that the AC power doesn't have a lot of lightning strikes or industrial surges. Long ago I worked for a company that made a medical product. They got some complaints from one clinic that the device didn't read properly sometimes. I earned my pay that day as I used an early version of Google street view. I wandered around the neighborhood and found: (1) An auto-body repair shop next door, a place that probably did a lot of arc welding! and (2) The next block over, large VHF antennas on top of a police station! I wrote up a report suggesting our device might be prone to RF interference. The original UL tests included a 1000 Watt RF test in a RF quiet room and it passed those tests, they said, but I suspect conducted or electromagnetic interference. I forget how that investigation was concluded. Well, I do kinda know. They decided the aluminum molds for the plastic cases had worn out, so it was simplest to just discontinue making and selling the device. Per FDA regulations, they probably had to send out bulletins to all users warning that it might misread if used in a high conducted or radiate RF environment. I discovered several other "interesting" design quirks to the device, like how they used several dearly expensive 0.1% or better op-amps, programmed with 1% or worse resistors, and several $12 tantulum capacitors where 22 cent aluminum ones would have worked just as well. But it was too expensive to spin another product revision due to the insane amount of FDA testing required for even the smallest of revisions. Kinda put me off from ever again working in the medical device field!

I use a hooked Stanley blade (they look like moustaches) to crack open these bulbs, I get good results but I would recommend getting a proper spudger to open them. The one I have currently open has only one sense resistor (RS1) at 40.2ohm, its rated at 5w but I am thinking of putting a 60.4ohm in there just to knock it back a bit.

Here where mains supply gets unpredictable when it rains I am trying to figure out how to reuse failed led lamps. They often only fail on one led chip - probably due to load shedding or switching surges - no spd’s here either! I have already recycled failed 1.5m striplights into 2 emergency lights powered by rechargeable AA NImH cells driving a joule thief circuit to produce the 40+ dc volts required. They run for about 5 hours.

I see those bulbs use the out-of-date efficiency rating of A+, which is equivalent to F on the new scale from sep 2021. Have you looked at Ikea's cheap led bulbs that claim a rating of D! 470 lumen for 3.4W, and £2.50 for a pack of 2. Is that better than the Poundlands?

It's a feature, not a bug! Those LEDs are pre-dimmed with that silicone!

Love these bulbs.. not for the money saving which is nice but for the reduced down time. We once calculated it cost 1250 pounds to change a light bulb. The labour is the cheap part.. the lost production and clean up is what costs the money

These lamps remain fascinating

I haven’t looked at Dollar Tree’s similar offerings of late. I haven’t bought any in over two years. Of course they’re all 120-volt and are now, like most things at Dollar Tree, $1.25 each. From the outside they’re very similar to these except designed to be screwed into an Edison-style socket. The last one I opened up didn’t have a current-regulator chip, but maybe the ones currently for sale have them. I should have a look.

Most of the bulbs I post-mortem have been manufactured with some failing in the cooling, e.g there's a bit that should be crimped and it hasn't been, or there's a place where things need to be squeezed together for proper heat flow, and it isn't squeezed - or there should be heat sink compound and there isn't. It's a shame - they're often lasting no longer than a tungsten bulb would. And it's not the fault of the LEDs themselves, it's all about heat flow and cheapness.

Every one of your videos is a treat. Thanks Clive

I always remember Maxim coloured GLS festoon lamps for civic Christmas tree lights from yesteryear

The one covered in schmoo definitely did not give out the required lumens.

Here in the USA, MAXIM, or actually Maxim, is a "lad's magazine", full of like your "page 3" kind of images, but a teense tamer. the pound stores have dropped "dollar" from their names or added "Almost a". I'm originally from Argentina, where the concept of a store named along those lines is just infeasible. They've had years with like 400% inflation.

I have been inspired to buy a spudger of my own also heading to Poundstretcher tomorrow to get one of those outdoor garden lights didn't think I was that suggestible but hey ho!

43 seconds ago yet theres comments from 9 to 11 days ago seems im not in the prerelease xD great video as always

BigClive always the light of my life! ❤️😁 You're so bright and lovely to watch (actually I honestly just listen to your voice as you are messing with stuff as I clean or tear something up myself)

Have you taken apart any smart lights yet? Might be interesting to see how they're made and cheap ones vs name-brand ones.

8:07 "Execute order sixty-six..." "The closest to sixty-six might be a sixty-seven... no, that'll be sixty-eight"

A little bit numbers: hacked 10W version lamp from local store. It was with 2 different resistors and BP2836D(not sure) chip. "removed" the smaller one. Manufacturer promised 800Lx, measured 600Lx, after hack: 450Lx.

I love your tear downs very well explained thanks

Can confirm that the iSesamo is the only spudger worth getting. The knockoffs are always too stiff or deform too easily.

Another really satisfying watch, thanks 👌

Clive, I love your videos. They feed my curiosity. Cheers.

Going back to the 1980's we used to buy around eight filament bulbs per month. Then the CFL bulb give-a-way came and well the bulbs last years. The only LED bulbs we have is the ones which came with up graded light fittings! I still have a drawer full of spare replacement bulbs in the living room, CFL's and LED's. cannot be alot of profit in it for bulb manufactures?

A very good Sunday morning to you sir from London

You know im beginning to get nostalgic for the old filament light bulbs kinda miss that warm glow . LED cost less to operate but no one has come up with that same warm glow .

When I started watching your channel 5+ years ago the challenge was to see where you had hurt yourself this time. LoL. Not that I wanted to see you hurt yourself, it was just you seemed to have a new bandage every day.

7:36 - about disabling one of the current regulators: Could it be that they have divided the LEDs into two identical circuits? Therefore disabling one will halve the output (!) but conversely not increase the lifespan of the lamp... Could you determine the tracks on the white PCB?

The first time I saw your spudger, I seriously thought that it said iSesame, as in Open Sesame. lol

Great comparison and explanation! I have a NOXGEAR TRACER360 lighted safety vest and it works great, it changes color and as many different modes, flashing and non-flashing. The circuity must me good for it has been woking for seven years, and the three "AAA" batteries run for a long time. Wish you could take it to bits Clive.

the led's here ive torn down had tiny transformers in them but the entire things are potted in a grey solution much like the Ludlum's

I'm surprised that the bulbs had such different construction between each version. I half expected them to be more or less the exact same circuit with just a few component tweaks to get the wattage. Disappointingly sloppy manufacturing though, but then again, how long are they expected to survive? - Perhaps all that schmoo on the LED chips is how they fine tune the light output?! 🤦🤣😸

Getting so close to 1M subs! I love this channel!

Always unpleasing when you uncover your bulb to find it covered with schmoo

Re using a butter knife: I used this mantra trying to prise off a stubborn plastic lid from a soy sauce bottle so I could recycle the bottle. Slipped, and ended up in A&E having my left index finger’s distal knuckle joint/tendon sewn back together.

Thanks, Clive!!

What I want to know is how one bulb knows it's neighbor bulb has started to flicker / expire. It's almost like they talk to each other and say "Time for him to buy more bulbs!" What's the point of giving an estimate of hours the LED's will illuminate if the circuits fail?

I would like to see what happens, if you cut the wattage of the 13W in half. Then, compare it to the 6W. Do you think they would be the same? or, would using less power per LED make the bigger one more efficient, thus, emitting light similar to the 10W? (both lamps drawing the same power)

I'm still waiting for DIY lamp kits on your homepage. If it's DIY you dont have to worry about recycling and liability laws.. Would be nice to have a pullstring to switch brightness :-)

Working in the medical devices business, my ears perked at 510k.

You need to check if they claim an actual lumens for the wattages. Here, the law requires lm ratings so you can select a higher efficacy "bulb" if you want to. Some mfg's now run much higher number of leds at lower current to get a better lm/w figure which helps sell bulbs. People choose the higher lm/w ones as they simply last longer. Unfortunately the caps still fail.

I have found that price is no guide to the reliabilty of LED bulbs. One Below, Ikea, Wilko, Pifco and JCB compare favourably with Crompton, Philips and Osram. Efficiency and electro-magnetic interference may be a different matter.

i have them in my house in every light for 3 years now there grand ive over 20 of them no problems

Nice Showdown...

OK for the One Below.. What about for the one On Top?

Ahhh having title with higher wattages would be such good clickbait! :) but like such lows ones, ahh you got me, errr tehehe.. yeah LEDS are still evolving... and also have diff wavelengths/spectrums, but cool stuff! :)

Great, looksee! Enjoyed watching and learning.Thanks!

1 million subs, nearly there big man.

Wow what a power factor! Most modern places they have fitted new power meters that will actually charge you fully for bad power factor products so there goes a heap of your savings. Most of my batten lights I bought to replace old fluorescent ones had premature inverter failures. I wonder If I could use them chips of a few bulbs to make them working again. I also have a good collection of TV back-light strips that are happy around 70V.

Hi Clive, I enjoy your testing and reverse engineering. Your LED bulb dissections got my attention because I've noticed how it is becoming difficult to find compatible dimmable bulbs to replace my tungsten items, whilst proving a comparative quality of light suitable for the most common primary domestic lighting- Ceiling suspended pendant lights. I did find suitable 15W dimmable bulbs from Diall, these were a good replacement, but the shelves have been empty of these for over a month. Non Dimmable's are still available, but installing a bulb which illuminates daytime nooks when required, would result in excessive dazzling during the evening. The spread of light from just one the original tungsten bulbs allowed a good quantity to reach a white ceiling, to be reflected, diffused and spread further; softening shadows and improving the feel of a room. As with the LED bulbs tested here, the majority now have this basic design, with a flat circuit board holding surface mounted LED's, supported on the white opaque plastic, capped by a hemisphere of diffusing plastic. The big problem with this design is that light no longer makes its way to ceilings or back to lamp reflectors, resulting in dull rooms with shadowy, high contrast light. Overcoming this may require installation of multiple lights and lamps. I suspect that this design is easier (cheaper) to manufacture, and may be the only way of enclosing "Smart" electronics for disco style colour changing. Others must have noticed the trade-off too, but I haven't seen any KZfaq comparisons of the most important feature required of a GLS bulb, which should be quality of lighting. Maybe people haven't realised the effect these will have before replacing their tungsten bulbs, would they return them for a refund? Do you or someone reading know of, and be able to link to a good comparison of filament style vs flat PCB, surface mounted "bulbs", to include quality of light, or compatibility with many of the lamp shades originally designed to reflect, diffuse, spread or focus this light. I guess Clive's lab and workbench wouldn't be the best location for such comparisons? The future's Bri---- The future's shadows and contrast

I tell you what Mr. Clive... aaand... I forgot... because I waited too long, got sidetracked, and stoned. But no matter. I had no major point to make; that I recall anyway... Well it's good to know you're out there, somewhere... You've heard it before, and you will hear it again: Your voice is comforting, Irregardless of the subject matter of a particular video or another... We know what we're talking about. rock on fellow space traveler, sir.

I always though it was called iSesame as in "Open Sesame"

I took apart a bulb this one time and did not make sure it wasn't glass...

what can be the problem in having too many bulbs in parallel with such a low PF? I appreciate any advice; thanks for your always great videos.

That's really coool! But why the led's are less and less bright over time untill they just stop working? Can you fix one light by just changing a capacitor?

What was the colour temperature? I prefer the cool white, at about 6000K. Would it be correct to assume that the bulbs look like a capacitive load? The early versions of LED bulbs were very heavy, with large inductors in them, with lots of reusable components. Are there any rules about the maximum power factor? It would be interesting to see if there is any residual visible 100Hz flash. My guess is that the plastic cover phosphor has a persistence that smoothes out any residual flashing. These covers often show a very long persistence when exposed to a pure UV source, glowing for several seconds after the UV is removed.

How about lumens and lumens/watt. And while you are at it, how about colour temperature and CRI? These are important variables for anyone buying bulbs. Since Brexit the UK will see more junk bulbs as in the EU we now have to meet the new Ecodirective about efficiency, flicker, colour rendering etc etc. The UK will become the dumping ground for this stuff.

31st …..happy with that ..Hey Clive I’m going to send you an Australian made ( I believe) LED lamp For your destruction it was quite new when it failed but I think you might be interested in the construction I don’t know your address but I know the town and the country so I’m gonna send it to there , hoping it finds you,I’ve been to the TT a few times …the last time was in 2007 When the Centenary was on …..cheers Ian

I use an old oyster knife to get into glued Makita battery cases.

never yet come across the 2 higher power versions, but got a few of the 6w types

I see there is a downloadable ICL1103 datasheet. It's brief and I don't think it shows or says a great deal more, except that the current can be set between 5 to 60mA and has overtemperature shutdown protection.

Very nice. Love LED's and BigClive

You need to do voice-over for the voice prompt hell I have to deal with regularly, the ones they have are so annoying, but I I digress, this reminds me to get bulbs and see which ones I can hack really really low for night lights in table lamps.

I have a big 20w lamp to light up a medium sized shed. I opened that lamp but discovered a different construcion: it had more than 100 leds and the power supply was in the lower body submerged in resin. All the lower body despite looking plastic from outside had an aluminum body on the insider, which made contact with the led board using a decent amount of thermal paste...no way it can be hacked. Probably this kind of hacking works only on small bulbs.

I have become leery of LED bulbs that give out more than 60w of equivalent light because they run then to hot and the life is not really any better than incandescent bulbs. The problem is all those LERDS throw off heat and they really have no real method to remove heat so the shole thing just cooks itself and either fails or the light output drops drastically after several months. The old COB versions were much more long lived because they drove the LEDS a lot less hard so they didn't bake themselves, you did have a better chance of getting dodgy ones because they used a lot o very cheap LEDs that had little quality control. I do have a couple of floodlamp LED lights that are interesting. The circuitry is built into the base whith the LED's in a plasic cloud the sits above the base on a couple of plastic struts. This keeps each module isolated from and heat the other module might throw off. These buls are barely warm so they don'e bake themselves. One of these is on a photocell that runs it from dusk to dawn and has been running for over 3 years and that is a lot longer life than any of my A19 form factor bulbs have ever come close to. It's plain to me that heat is the enemy here, if it runs hot iot's not going to last and it's light output will fall pretty quickly with use.

I noticed in your "land mine" lamp video that an external capacitive dropper will make that kind of lamp run at X watts, regardless of their design parameters. Can these particular lamps be similarly doobied?

So ... amount of light. I get the sense that this is a little like a radio transmitter. If you reduce the power of the transmitter by half, your signal only drops by 3 dB which is detectable but not won't usually make your signal unreadable (assuming your signal wasn't marginal to begin with - and this ignores losses and gains in your antenna system, of course). Are we doing the same here? When you sub in the bigger R and the light's output diminishes, are you dimming it "by half" or is it a much less perceptible difference?

Awesome Video big clive

How about a video on these people who can hold and cook a hotdog while being shocked! 😮

They were just really big fans of conformal coating. Nothing to fret about 😆

It is fun squeezing the schmoo all over now isn't it?

Big Clive, I've been a fan for at least a few years. I have an honest question that I was hoping you could answer for me. You mention there being silicone in the bulbs to seal them, but you pronounced it as if it was "silikin" (a word that doesn't even exist). I know the difference between silicone and silicon, as well as how to properly pronounce each one. My question is, why does almost every youtuber pronounce both silicone and silicon as silikin? It's a bit confusing for 2 unrelated words to be mispronounced as if they were the same word.