I would like to see more pirate electronics on this channel.

I grew up in the small and unique town of Bolinas, on the west coast of California, about 50 minutes north of San Francisco... Bolinas is basically a peninsula; surrounded on three sides by water, and fish. back in the Cretaceous era, when I was about 14, I saved and purchased a commercial fishing license, so I could go out fishing with some of the local fishermen. we fished Chinook salmon, halibut, Dungeness crab, and "rock cod" (various species of small basses). fond memories of many an adventure... and was the hardest work I've ever done. a couple of years however... I discovered music, girls, and pot... as one may. peace be upon you, sir.

"Well worth taking apart" - a sentiment I can relate to.

I'd think that they put a sealant in the track for the glass that cures after the glass is slid in. Seems a very intelligent design choice for an electronic device that is expected to be used in harsh conditions. But yes, that does effectively make it unserviceable.

As someone who goes off road all the time the best thing I've found is to take the light bar apart right when you get it and just smear silicone on every mating surface you can.

I started my electrical and electronic journey in around 1974 by taking things apart to see what they were made of and to try to figure out how they worked. Thanks for reminding me how interesting that is.

All Hail Clive as our Lighting Overlord!

Got your self a new video light then Clive! A bit screw and glue happy that one, no wonder it survived the Irish Sea most things don’t for long.

I really miss your troubleshooting and fixing videos. Love them! Hope you and all those Irish fishermen are doing well.

I managed to remove the glass on a small version of one of these floodlights. I noticed that the black rubber strips had a few millimeters sticking out of each end, so I was able to pull both these ends - not to drag the strips out, but to stretch them to a reduced diameter, thus reducing their grip on the glass. The rubber strips had been fitted dry. There was no glue or cured sealant involved.

Thank you, Clive and Jiffy. o7, LED light.

Good review. As use is for the ocean cannot fault them for over designing seals. Since the the tiniest leak would be disastrous.

Ive been hanging out for so long to see one of these led light bars on this channel. Many thanks to your friend for the contribution.

CLIVE YOU NEVER LET US DOWN WHEN IT COMES TO LEARNING COOL STUFF OFF YA!! YOU BLOODY LEGEND.. ; )

Me hearing Clive say "Louis Sr.", and thinking: "That's a bit random to just shout out a name, even for Clive... Oh waaaaaaait...... LOW ESR!" ;-)

I just love when the dremmel makes an appearance

Finally. I was waiting for you to get an led light bar. Offroad light bars are one of the largest offenders for over rated stats. Every single one I've ever purchased has drawn less power then stated. Having purchased "name brand" bars, and eBay specials.

Now, do a new "super computer" with the reflectors

Wait, they weren’t cooking the LEDs and the housing was well put together? It’s got to get up doots for that at least.

Great teardown! Now you have the perfect lamp assembly for the fridge! 👍

This is the kind of stuff I like!! Great content.

Thanks for sharing. That's a different design to the LED bars I've pulled apart to reverse engineer. All the bars I've stripped have all the LED emitters in groups of 6 series strings. Each series string comes on it's own PCB (a module if you like), complete with separate boost drivers for the 6 LEDs on that module. Using this module design, means the LED bars can be made into different lengths, in multiples of 6, with 6, 12, 18, 24, 36, 42 and so on. The only difference between them being the length of the aluminium extrusion, the length of the glass, and the number and design (spot or flood) reflectors used. Additional this LED bar uses sealing compound to seal the glass, end caps and cable entry point. All the bars I've pulled apart have used greased O rings to seal the polycarbonate lens and the extrusion, with additional O rings sealing the end caps, the cable entry being the only area sealed by compound.

Well pleased as always!

This thing lools nearly identical to the bar I recently installed in the grill of my mom's minivan. The reason for the lensed LEDs on each end of the Bar are to act as Fog Lamps. By rapidly turning the power switch on and off you can switch between 3 modes, 1 where the entire Bar is lit, a 2nd where only the center bar is lit, and a 3rd where only the lensed clusters of 8 at each end are lit. Its a pretty good little light for the price. Really illuminates the Deer and Raccoons on these country roads out here in the Midwest Wasteland. :3

Nice catch Clive! 😜

60 seconds in, excited to see the guts. These are very common Stateside, and I’m curious to see the innards! Edit: potting! Heck!

Wow this is amazing !

Many thanks Clive, quite interesting.

A faulty MLCC strikes again! I wonder how much much electronic equipment is sitting in land fill with just a faulty MLCC?

I had a single row version that I had taken apart a few times due to moisture ingress. The trick is removing the endcap then using needle nose pliers, pull out the silicone rope/string seal. It stretches and pulls out easily, then the front glass will slide out with ease. Putting it back is tougher though sliding the glass along with the silicone seal pulling along with it and not ending up with a lot of stretched out seal in the ends. I took out the lenses on mine that covers the leds, which allows some side spill so I can see more at the sides when turning on mountain roads.

ARRRRRRRRR...BigClive goes to Sea, Billy!

Great thanks Clive

Only the solder joints being affected means that while it is water proof, it's likely not 100% air tight and the corrosion is from salty moist air getting in.

amazing this is exactly the type of tear downs i like

It looks like the light was not built on the cheap, such a shame it failed for such a little component.

Honestly alot of the offroading/at lights are good nowadays. Used to be a mechanic and ive worked on ranger vehicles that had 800k km on the clock, most their in or partially underwater and I noticed within the last 10 years things like spot lights and light bars just seemed to slow down on failures and even some of the cheap ones ceased being mobile water reservoirs. Was good to see inside one though most are sealed like that and if I had to replace them the customer always wanted them back so they knew we changed it....despite the fact it was usually a different brand or style and going some water filled not working to brand new and working should be pretty clear proof the job was done.

Oh not even 2 minutes in and this is already gonna be good. (yes commenting before I've even watched the whole thing.)

For as much of a pain in the rear-hinder it was to get past the glass, it _better_ have been clean and dry inside.

Hi , very interesting, many thanks.

As always, interesting. I have an idea for a kit project. We'll call it 'The Talent Distance Checker'! It would consist of a tiny sensor with a tiny light on attached on a mic stand. The talent would discretely wear a second part on their garment at the front. The sensor light would eliminate when the talent moves away from the microphone thereby warning them they were too far from the mic. Sounds easy enough ! Up for the challenge Mr BC? I'll buy the first one off you!

Only the Irish would think of using an off-road vehicle light on a boat!

I fixed one for a friend few years ago. It was a 50" ebay chinesium one. The construction was similar but much easier to take apart and back together. The glass was held by 2 strip of aluminium screwed with a ton of screw in the body of led bar. The fault was only after 2 -3 min of use all the led bar went out except a small group of led on one side. Once open, the fault was easy to find. The power cord was solder to the board and traces power all the other power supply. They added small wires over the traces because the lamp draw a lot of current. At one place close to the power cord a wire was solder on the + trace, 2 inches of trace vaporised and another wire going to the rest... I solder a piece of 14 awg solid wire and it was fixed, + a lot of silicone to put it back together

Hehe someone thought they were gonna keep Big Clive out. As if.

Pity about the fixture, but water ingress is a stubborn one. Good to know about the MLCC fault mode, though -- I hadn't seen that myself yet, but it totally makes sense. 👍

Im amazed at the water proofing that’s normally what kills those lights if they are cheeper

I had to repair one of these and on both edges it had a solid copper wire for the positive and negative that was maybe a 10 gauge, hardest thing I've had to unsolder the aluminum housing was acting like a heatsink and I didn't have a heat gun, it ended up being a broken trace cause the thing heats up so much and expands and contracts

Excellent! Thank you DVD:)

that black stuff is most likely a self expanding foam rubber , quite popular now as its cheaper than ordering a custom size orings and gaskets

Almost positive these are sold in Australia through the retailer Anaconda, under the 'Dune 4wd' brand, I have one on my Landy and it does its job incredibly well!

They use those same Epistar style LEDs in the cheap 1$ flashlights sold at Dollar Tree here in the US.

When you counted the ten LEDs, did you expect less or more at the other side? You carried on counting to twenty. 😂

Good morning all.

Good Friday morning to you sir

I was expect the bigclive X-ray machine to come out!

I, too am half lit sometimes. ❤

Quite a difference between a "Poundland" fixture and this marine-grade/off-road build. it probably did it's time and served the owner well, for what it was.

I have one of those I wanted to make a flood light. Was going to remove the glass to sand blast it to make it frosted to diffuse the light… guess I’ll just tape up the whole unit and do it assembled ha.

If you want to put this back together, 3M 4200 is the most economical marine adhesive sealant for the job.

Very interesting.

I saw the vice of knowledge make an appearance, but the star of the show has to be the Dremel of Determination.

I had a similar one to this. Supposedly 250W, but only took 10A with a 12V supply. Marketing watts = real watts * x, where x is whatever you think you can get away with. Still really bright though!

Best advice I could give you guys is when you buy LED lights such as this, before you even install them on the vehicle take clear adhesive sealant, !NOT SILICONE! and go all the way around the light. Put some under each screw everything. For me it works best if you can somewhat disassemble the light first. I've never had water intrusion on any of my light bars since I started doing this years ago. Oh and make sure to put dielectric grease on the wires because the light will absolutely 100% wick water up the wire.

it needed the capcitor since the inductor needs to source its current into a cap and that is what that cap will do as its part of the chip . its hidden because you normally see it after the shottkey diodes and it still is if you explode the inside of the chip. so thats why it wasnt working and thats why replacing it worked.

We missed seeing him putting it all together again.

Very nice screw driver, the small one

Interesting. I would have guessed that most circuit boards that go out on the sea have some conformal coating applied to survive a bit longer if the case seal does leak. Guess they saved a few cents there on not having to wash the board after soldering and not using a spray robot that manages to avoid the LED lenses while coating the pads...

Interesting approach of using the same kind of diodes in parallel. Guessing this translates into a cost saving.

it would be intresting to try to re- seal it up ... sealing for salty water is different than regular water mainly becoz of the salt residue and the fact that salt will eat up and erode most of the sealing compounds

To clear such subborned glass use a thin steel wire to cut the seal, kind of like they do when removing windshields

That was well worth taking apart and autopsying! Since you managed to get it fixed, that large LED panel is just screaming to be re-used somewhere else. I'm thinking as a large panel for a desk or work bench? Or as a low voltage workshop/garage light?

Re differences in corrosion, would electrolysis be a possible explanation? Salt water in atmosphere + current in circuit. Possibly heat differential from hot leds W colder climate? Rig a diffuser panel across the top of the old extrusion, that could be an interesting indoor/covered floodlight. Maybe lower wattage to bottom limit to make that more reasonable?

@4:00 likely a thermoset plastic adhesive, permanently set by the heat of the LED's upon burn-in.

Ah yes the Irish Sea is full of salty items not to mention very salty sailors. Now if the glass is not broken one could get a tube of that 3M windshield adhesive and rebound the glass back into the housing. Its rather expensive but if you know someone who has an automotive body shop, they might have an open tube available. Interesting power circuitry. Those multi layer caps can be found as decoupling caps on the final transistors of RF circuits on some equipment. When they fail they usually take out the RF power transistors they are soldered to as well as cooking the circuit bord underneath them.

Wonder how they will work with the cheap 5 watt lamp beads in the same fixture

We engineers can get fooled when a schematic gets turned upside down, but what you have here is a conventional buck regulator with a very small "twist" to it: no output filter capacitor. LEDs need regulated current, not voltage, so the TB99B controller does away with the unneeded (and sometimes unreliable) output filter cap. If you turn Clive's schematic upside down, you will see a standard buck regulator but without an output filter cap. Of course, you need to reverse the polarity of the catch diode, and swap out the NFET for a PFET, after which Bob's your uncle. Probing the drain of the FET, you will see a rectangular voltage waveform whose duty cycle is Vout/Vin, although in this case, Vout is referenced to the positive power rail, not ground. You see this kind of arrangement with the load referenced to the positive power rail rather than ground in a lot of LED mains-fed switchers. It crosses many engineers' eyes when they first see it, but that's what's going on. Beginning engineers think everything must be "ground" referenced. That's not necessary. Electrons don't care what your reference is. "That's your hangup, not mine." Not sure why the ceramic filter cap on the output of 7.5V regulator failed. In my experience, ceramic caps are usually quite robust. It may be "just one of those things."

Well you now have a Hugh camera/workbench light 💡

I think they might have slid the glass in an then spread sealant in the groove and squeezed the rubber bead in to seal it. Removing that black bead might have been the move. Like a car windscreen. I am replacing security lights at the moment with led versions a 1/10th the wattage but 30% more lumens. I got a complaint that they are too bright lols.

I wonder if that corrosion around the capacitor and those LEDs is related to incompatibility between the plating on the components and the solder used on the circuit board? And also how could we tell?

"Over-miniaturized" is right, that board is relatively huge for the components they decided to use.

Will you be installing .5 Hz flashing leds to make a new supercomputer?

I have one of these generic light bars on my work van. Bad part, is it is extremely RF noisy. I can be listening to a full quieting signal, turn it on and it goes away after a "KSHHH" squelch crash. Ive tested it as causing nearly 40db desense in VHF at about 146MHz. Its also only 8-10 inches away from my VHF antenna on the roof, so thats definitely not helping me. I havent bought another one because Im reasonably certain they are all like that. If they are using these on a boat, its likely going to reduce the range of their Marine VHF radio. It'll still talk out as far as it normally does but the range it can hear will be reduced.

I have one of them on my Ford Focus.

Thanks Clive. Great tear down. I learn something new each time I watch one of your videos. So on electronics for dummies 101 can some one explain how to check likes of that faulty cap while still soldered to the board ???

That type of led bars thats on very many cars in Sweden.. Mine included.

Three schottky (?) diodes as reverse polarity protection? If they had used four in a wheatstone bridge it would have worked with polarity in either direction.

I wonder how this compares to the extremely expensive Rigid and VisionX brands. I'm guessing they're very much the same.

I'm a bit bemused by the 22 ohm resistors. They are presumably intended to drop about the same voltage as one LED. That implies a current through their two LEDs (and presumably therefore also through each set of three LEDs) of around 250 mA, so nowhere near the suggested 2 W per LED. Of might you have misread the resistor values?

On your next visit to Poundland i suggest that you ask if they have a small, battery-powered screwdriver. Could reduce the risk of RSI and, even, cut the length of your videos by 15 seconds :-)

How had would it be to change the led s to 365nm uv lights 🤔?

Thanks Clive! Competing with 'Waterproofing' & Fixing too. Things aboard Boats should be a bit harder to take to bits - Not for Clive.

The word "vessel" amazes me. It means something like ship or barrel. All I can think of is the German word "Fass" = barrel. But not everyone lives by the sea.

Great Video: Capacitors seem to be the main failure point in loads of circuits, can somone reinvent them so they last longer ?

They put those things on bull bars in Australia

i've seen issues where silicone is used to seal the enclosure and it releases acetic acid whilst curing which can be traped inside. So copper tracks can be eaten away over time. I've got to seal a box for an antenna tuner and i'm trying to work out how long does the acetic acid get released for if i use cheap sealent. Maybe after a week with the lid off it might be OK to close the box.

Please make a "how to de-pot (Chinese) circuitry" video ? I have some small soft start modules which are stupidly expensive and am dying to know what kind of rare elements they used justifying the cost.

Clive, would love to see you talk about mechanical chasers. I only found one video (v=yhKqC3MHZ6Y) on KZfaq of someone demonstrating a mechanical chaser. To think that one of those was whirring someplace any time we'd see twinkling lights on The Price Is Right or other TV game shows.

Did the boat not have a proper sacrificial anode? It's a bit of a stretch, but the solder corroding... might be a good idea to see if BoatyCaptain McBoatFisherman has other sealed electronics presenting the same corrosion. Would suck if radio / engine management electronics fail at inconvenient moments.

So, what was the cost in quid to illuminate the squid?😁

Could the glass of been bonded in place with heat afterwards Clive? Intresting construction 👍

yeah every four wheel drive in ausutralia is plastered with these light bars simliar failure rate