This is glorious, been searching for "emergency lighting batteries 6" for a while now, and I think this has helped. Have you heard people talk about - Eenseh Unthinkable Expediency - (search on google )? It is a good one off product for discovering how to get emergency light without relying on batteries minus the headache. Ive heard some super things about it and my friend got great results with it.✅

Harold Smith (just joking) did you made the design 😎

Well designed and manufactured items are no fun. No random electric shocks or explosions... massive disappointment :P

Joop Terwijn Nope.

I'm sure John Ward would have found something bad to say about it ..... Another really enthusiastic KZfaq video blogger is AvE ..... if you can understand what he's saying ;)

This is a British Exit Sign. It's probably 95% Chinese components. Usually found mounted above doors secured with thick chains and a big padlock.

Steve Henriksson hey that’s really cool. I’ve seen a copy online, of the notes Kubrick sent out with the Shining.

+

yes. Good design needn't cost any more than bad design

@@mans_z1177 jep!

All that would require is a bit of the USB powered remote control RGB LED tape.

Now that's a cool idea for repurposing it Clive :)

I'll send it to Electroboom for evaluation immediately. He loves over-unity stuff.

I had an office in a facility that hadn't converted its exit since from Tritium. Part of the facility was used on weekends as an AirSoft play range. Some of those signs got shot out :( :( :(

@@patchvonbraun Because the gas is heavy hydrogen, the mean velocity of the molecules at room temperature is very high and the diffusion rate of the gas in air is extremely high. It is virtually impossible to experience even a measurable dose of beta radiation from tritium when one of these signs is broken, let alone a dose dangerous to health. There have never been any recorded cases of significant health impacts to anyone as a result of their breakage so far as I am aware.

I kind of fear that the actual price difference ( not to mention TCO) between a Chinesium one and a proper one is not that great on the manufacturing end.

The other day my son and I were aimlessly wondering around Walmart, in the Christmas lights section we found one of the "fake candle lights" that Clive took apart months ago. I'll wait til after Christmas and see if they go on clearance. There were $4 american dollhairs. I think the equivalent that Clive took to bits back then was 7 bucks. I'm betting same guts on the inside. My point being not much of a parts difference.

Watching too much of AvE, you two, I see !!!

@@BPantherPink There does seem to be a fair amount of fellow travelers between this channel, AvE, and EEVBlog. Can't imagine why. :D

@@BPantherPink Impossible!

more likely the MOV is for surges and the PTC thermistor (Self resetting fuse) is used for short circuit protection

@@DazzaDirect or overcurrent for when the "junktronics" fail and overload :))

It's happened before. That's part of the excitement.

If I recall the video I saw was with a plug that he promptly dropped saying " _fucking hell_ " don't remember which one exactly though! *edit* It might have been one of the bug zapper videos

@@ollieb9875 I had a cheap "tennis racquet" bug zapper. My 40 year old son asked what is that, I said hold your finger out and showed him. Fun times.

@@dsloop3907 evil! Hah hah 😱🤣😈 justified. :)

across one finger or hand is FAR better than a big hit from arm to arm or arm to other part of body ;)

That's the same scenario as annual EM testing on any lighting circuit. It's a roll of the dice, the regs say they should be tested at "a time of minimum risk" but is that through the day when there's natural light (in some buildings) or through the night when there's less people put at risk (in some buildings). They then have to obviously charge back up just like this one. I do 2 floors in our building, the floors are shared among the shift sparks, and test monthly in sections, around 15mins per section. Then the annual test comes along and I have to do a quarter of a floor per 3hrs in a night, obviously risking failure due to actually running the batteries to death (very common) or some power failure emergency happens before they're properly recharged (far less common).

You’re thoughts are right. I can tell you that “professional” auto test emergency lighting does indeed have randomisation of duration tests to ensure em lighting isn’t compromised as a result of synchronised tests. More advanced systems will allow remote monitoring/ triggering of tests which can be used to schedule tests at specific times on an individual basis.

Randomisation of the duration of the test wouldn't be the right thing to do. The duration of the test must be 3h and the interval between tests must be less then one year. So the only variable is the interval between tests and the random value must be subtracted from the year to make sure the interval isn't longer then one year. Another problem with small embedded systems is a source of true randomness. Most of the time there is none and they are completely deterministic. Today in the office I had to press the test-buttons of similar emergency exit signs, just to see if they behave in the same way as the one shown in the video. It was exactly the same, but I didn't wait for the long test to finish. ;)

zvpunry No you misunderstand. They Random seed the start date of the duration tests, not the test length, then 3hr tests still occur every 12 months, they just won’t happen all at the same time.

I had to read it again and you are right, this would prevent the tests being started at the same time. I somehow read "randomisation of duration tests" as "randomisation of _the_ duration _of the_ tests".

The best way to do that T.C. is to change out all batteries every season changing of the daylight savings time. Works well for me, all clocks as well & have no more problems.

At least your hunt was for an actual alarm! Some months back the Red Cross started running ads that featured an actual beeping smoke detector and that only ever seemed to run in late night time slots (as in between around 2-5am). I got so fed up trying to find the damn smoke detector that was beeping every single night in the wee hours (around 3am most nights) that I replaced *every* smoke detector in my house only to still have that damned beeping smoke detector early every morning. It was a good two weeks after I replaced them all that I finally discovered that the incessant early morning beeping was an on-TV smoke detector because those high frequency beeps bounce off every hard surface so they sound like they are coming from everywhere - and with the screen itself turned off you do not see the ad at all and the ad has no voiceover to it, just the beeping smoke detector! I’m still a bit peeved that the Red Cross would run late night TV ads that featured an actual recording of a Kidde smoke detector. I was half tempted to send the Red Cross a bill for the cost of replacing 8 smoke detectors, and probably would have, but they were getting close to their 10 year estimated service life so I was planning to replace them in another year anyhow. To me running ads featuring an actual smoke detector beeping, especially late at night, is just as bad as playing a recording of an EAS broadcast emergency tone - if playing false EAS tones is against the law then so should be real smoke detector alarm recordings!

If it was relying on a track to a round pad on a support pillar I'd be concerned, but in this instance there is a large island of copper shunting the three earth connections together and effectively making the connector into a commoning block. That does have the slight weakness of solder joints, but it has the huge advantage of solid mechanical connections to the front and back, and the ease with which even the most unskilled electro-labourer can provide a good connection to that common earth.

@@bigclivedotcom Hi Clive, it's in 61347-1:2015, clause 9.4 (called by the control gear standard, 61347-2-7) - "earthing of the luminaire or other equipment via the built-in control gear is not allowed" - I know what you are saying but that's been a European standard requirement (based on IEC standard) since 2013... out of interest I looked back at older version of the standard, it was added in amendment 2 in 2013, I.e. 61347-1:2008+A2:2013. Before that it was not really clear if it was permitted or not, 61347-1:2001+A1:2008 simply says if a control gear had and earthing terminal it should only be used for earthing the control gear, but earthing of the control gear via a fixing to earthed metal was allowed, it wasnt clear and im guessing the OSM-LUM, ETICS or another comittee raised this and had it clarified in the A2 amendment.

BSI Tester, wonder if this was designed/ sold before or after that standard was withdrawn. The design is also an example of cost reduction ( & maybe waste reduction)If you were the designer you might argue that the long PCB is just the gear tray and part of the luminaire and therefore luminaire is earthed by the gear tray connector block. Problem is they have then intergrated the control gear in to the gear tray. If they would have put the control gear on a separate pcb then the controlgear would then be powered by the luminaire gear tray, resulting in a compliant design. But the overall construction wouldn’t have fundamentally changed. And if anything more material is wasted with the potential to end up in a landfill. I love and loath standards....

Coaster Labs When Code only requires a certain number of hours of runtime then that is what these fixtures will be built to reliably deliver. LEDs have allowed designers to greatly reduce battery size since LEDs can deliver the same lumens of usable light for just 10% of the amp-hour rating the old incandescent bulbs delivered and they even save a good bit versus fluorescent bulb fixtures since they don’t need a high voltage inverted stage anymore.

If you search my videos for the word Cliff you'll find a video about it.

No it's not going when there is a blackout. That would create panick, there's rules (no blinking)

My channel is best enjoyed with a drink.

Thanks. It's greatly appreciated.

There are some design videos up, including laying out circuit boards, construction, etc. I wouldn't recommend a beginner rolling their own mains powered gear, since the penalties for getting it wrong include destroying your expensive gear, fire, and electrocution.

@Branden Allen go look at David Watts channel, he made a little battery operated "Cricket" that you could hide and at random intervals it starts to "chirp" and then stops before ya can find the bugger, then it does it again a bit later......who you trying to committed ?

Dazza Direct New cells? Single LiPo instead of 3 NiMH with different charge control? 2 PbAcid cells?

I had a 10w cealing light which just started flickering

Dan Coulson Does anyone know if the purplish light said to be emitted by end-of-life phosphor LEDs is UV light? I.E., perhaps the junction was designed to emit UV to energize the phosphor, and continues to do so, but the phosphor becomes incapable of converting it to white light. If yes, is the emitted UV dangerous/harmful?

@@haroldsmith45302 it cannot possibly be harmful first because of the low output, second because it's all blocked by the housing. Also, UV is not a visible light so I doubt that's the case.

Eemergency lights have to be certified in the UK, and elsewhere in the world, part of that certification involves what is known as performance of LED modules, LED modules have to comply seperately and are tested for RG (Risk group, usually RG-0 or RG-1) ,Blue Light and UV, the UV is very low and not harmful, even at end of life where it has considerably dropped.

Harold Smith Only the very earliest white phosphor LEDs used UV - and that was well before incorporating them into light bulb fixtures became a thing. Aside from those very, very, rare early phosphor white LEDs, all white phosphor LEDs use blue light. Otherwise they can produce white LEDs that do not diminish over time, provided they are run at conservative power levels with ample coiling, by using actual red, green, and blue LEDs instead of phosphors, but they are not as efficient and cost more to produce and run per lumen of light than the more common phosphor white LEDs. But for signage like this it would be very practical and would allow for simple battery replacement. Unfortunately, we have become a throw-away society of late!

Look into balance charging systems (hobby chargers). I use a 4s lipo battery in my quadcopter it has a wire for each connection and can drain/charge any battery in the pack simultaneously. you would need a 5s capable charger for 5 cells (I've seen 8s chargers i'm sure). Inside some of the battery packs i've stripped for parts have what looks like balance charging built into the pcb. I hope this points you in the right direction.

#samfisher, look at TP4056 chip, packs of 5 on ebay for £1 , charge and then put in a holder or get a 5S charger for about the same price on ebay too, @Julian Ilett #JulianIlett has a few videos and @Adam Welch #AdamWelch #SolarShed great starting point video HTH kzfaq.info/get/bejne/iLBombyj1MrOn6s.html

No offense intended, but if you are needing to ask these questions then this may not be the right project for you just from a safety perspective. Getting things wrong with a Li-ion substitute can burn a house down whereas that same mistake with NiCd or NiMH batteries just ruins the batteries. The charging requirements of Lithium Ion batteries are very exacting compared to those of the NiCd and NiMH batteries they will be replacing. On top of that it is not as simple as just swapping out 18650s for the existing cells either as your new Li-ion batteries must also be rated for the discharge rate of the intended application and power tools can have rather high discharge currents (some can draw in excess of 25A - or up to about 13C for 2Ah rated cells) and that means that the battery chemistry must be matched to the intended use (in other words, low discharge rate laptop batteries are not necessarily an acceptable substitute in a cordless drill type application, for example, as not all Li-ion chemistries are the same plus some chemistries, like cobalt Li-ion, are more prone to fire than others). If you do tackle this project regardless, you are going to need battery protection circuits that can safely handle rather high sustained discharge rates - some power tools can draw upwards of 20-25A - and that are designed to disconnect the power from the tool if the tool draws too much power, the battery pack gets too hot, or if the battery voltage falls below about 3.2V/cell under load (over discharging Li-ion cells is not safe either). The battery protection must also disconnect from the charger if any one cell’s voltage ever exceeds more than a few hundredths of a volt greater than 4.2V (for most Lithium Ion chemistries) as much beyond 4.25V and the risk of fire becomes unacceptable - hence the razor edge in Li-ion batteries where we often want to charge them to 4.2V/cell but just a few hundredths more and they can catch fire! That is also why charge balancing becomes critical during charging when you have multiple cells in series because not every cell will charge at the same rate nor by the same amount without active balancing and why the battery protection circuit should automatically disconnect the battery from the charger if any one cell’s voltage rises too high as that means that either the charger has failed or the balancing circuit has failed. You will also want to use Li-ion cell’s that are similarly matched in terms of actual capacity and impedance (equivalent series resistance) so that they charge and discharge more or less at the same rate to one another - something to be wary of if using otherwise random 18650s from multiple sources or if using used batteries that may no longer deliver their originally stated capacity. About the simplest way to get all of that is to buy a Ryobi 18V One+ Lithium battery and charger as their 5-cell batteries are about 1.8-2A, depending upon the model, (they also sell larger 4A 10 cell and 6A 15 cell batteries) and usually sell as a pair of batteries for about $50 or singly with a proper charger, but that gives you a pretty well engineered battery plus charging system and does not depend upon any smarts in the cordless tool to provide protection. Otherwise you may have to select from systems geared towards RC drone type applications to get the higher power handling needed. Also be aware of the fact that Ali-ion cells tend to maintain their voltage much better than NiCd or NiMH under high draw, such as heavy use of a power tool or a stalled motor, and that fact can potentially destroy a converted power tool if there is nothing to automatically disconnect the power (either a properly tuned battery protection circuit or a fuse) since the Li-ion batteries will supply far more power to the motor under such loads than the originally intended batteries ever could - at best motor speed controllers burn out quickly if stalled or in heavy use, or, at worst, the motor or brushes can self destruct if power is not very quickly interrupted. However you go, I wish you all the best.

@@ethanpoole3443 I just wanted some ideas from Clive that all. I know what I'm doing

A simple "Thank you" would have sufficed.

That turns the beeper on or off.

Cliff quick test. Yes, there is a video if you search my channel for those keywords.

@@bigclivedotcom Nice! I will see it tonight. Thank you! Keep it up

It's a good idea to change emergency lights after at most ten years as they degrade over time. You may be able to get a replacement rechargeable battery pack for the light, but the circuitry itself might be aging.

I can do that. Possibly a high pressure sodium variant.

I'm guessing you're looking for an electronic HID ballast. The old-style ones are just a core-and-coil transformer object (iron core and lots of copper windings), generally a capacitor (paper in oil, probably), and perhaps an ignitor/starter. The new ones are much more interesting, dealing with a fair amount of power and voltage with solid state electronics.

It's not extortion. The new meters can measure current to voltage relationship in a programmable manner. It means they can measure VA as opposed to W. That means that certain items in your home like LED lamps, time switches, microwave and fridge controls, interference suppressors and other low power equipment that relies on simple power supplies will potentially cost between 2 and 20 times what they did before in yearly electricity consumption. Their power draw is low compared to the primary electrical heating loads, but it could still add a lot to a yearly bill.

Yes I still find it hard to grasp too. Does it take more energy at the power company? Would a ups be empty sooner? Can we easily correct it at home?

Reactive energy (VA) is rarely billed to consumers. If it is, yes, you can correct it. VA is billed to companies/factories, and they have "capacitor batteries" (battery in the meaning of "a bunch of" as opposed to "a power source") to correct the factor and bring back the VA consumption close to the Watt consumption. You can DIY if you know stuff about electronics. But the first step you gotta do is ask your electricity company bill you based on the watts or VA you consume. If they no not bill you on reactive energy then you don't have to worry about your electronics taking 20 times more VA.

I carried a purple Sharpie with me to mark mine,

Silver Legend - BUT, BUT, BUT, surely their “1200mAh” power banks (actually around 950mAh upwards) are better value at £1?

Probably cells on their last stand

I've got one in test mid-video. 500mAh per charge for four consecutive charge/discharge cycles. And the chip on the PCB is a full power bank one capable of recharging it if it had the extra circuitry.

I think those are also £2.. The cell inside has no protection PCB itself, but otherwise looks like a metal cased phone battery.

Could it be anything like the Tesco " *POWER HIT* " that was featured a while back? kzfaq.info/get/bejne/a9GfpbqiqMnXeHk.html

There are still products and people who understand the full thing fully. But so much electronic equipment relies on software these days that there is a distinct divide between the departments that design the hardware and software. Maintenance has become mostly board swapping with a minority of engineers capable of doing component level fixes on older equipment.

Codingale lol I normally don’t look at the comments but I wondered if anyone else noticed it too. I wonder what makes the high pitch noise. Those old cathode ray tube televisions are a noisy thing too!

You get lights that have a second mains input for use as switched maintained lights. The modern versions usually use a resistor, rectifier and optoisolator to detect the other feed.

Some of them do yes! Or a different signal similar to zigbee

The LEDs all appear to be in parallel with a resistor each.

In some houses they are standard.

@@bigclivedotcom I feel they may become a feature in my new house (once it's built) to replace the generic ceiling roses our homes have, and those terrible plastic efforts that IKEA supply on their ceiling lights. I assume the whole assembly can support the weight of a light fitting?

I have a few French models, and save from them 20 years old ones, they have all serviceable batteries. They are either the old bulky LR20 type or newer "cordless phone" type, but they are all removeable, either mounted on a removable chassis, or instead of being attached with zip-ties like here, the battery pack is stuck between large plastic tabs. It's not as easy to replace as a battery holder, but it's more easy to replace. Remember, those units are for safety purposes. Unless you use them at your house where there are no regulation regarding emergency lights, you want those units to be in a correct state. Forcing the customer to buy their replacement batteries from the manufacturer ensure that after battery replacement, the unit is still up to the original specs. If you had a battery holder, what would prevent the owner of the unit to replace the original 800maH batteries with cheaper 300 Mah batteries?

All certified emergency luminaires with built in autotest are required to meet the clauses of Annex K which calls parts of 62034:2015 - one of those is the EMC testing 61547-1 EMC immunity requirements, criteria being no unwanted tests, no change in mode of operation etc, there are radiated, immunity, conducted, induced dips and surges etc usually carries out. all public buildings via regulations have to be approved these days.. would depend on the strength of your pocket zapper as the test are only done up to a specific most likely everyday condition than you doing that lol

It has three connections and the style of an IR sensor.

@@bigclivedotcom I doubt a IR sensor would be useful in that location. There is light sensors with 3 connectors that "look like" an IR sensor, but has a clear lens instead of black lens, to let in visible light too. IR-sensor has VCC, OUT and GND, and same for a light sensor. They work exactly like an IR sensor but with the difference it reacts on visible light instead.

It's a common eBay LED magnifier from China. The hardest bit is finding the correct keywords for them.

I usually reassemble and test them and then store them or give them to local friends.

On one hand it makes sense, but it does sound like an environmental disaster when they could standardise and swap the battery and LED strip in situ.