It makes me happy I am not the only weirdo who just loves this type of stuff. "I like watching some guy on youtube take apart light bulbs and such". Not exactly the best thing to add to your online dating profile!

Clever idea photographing then reversing the image as a reverse engineering aid! Great videos, the time & effort expended in their production is very much appreciated... always looking forward to the next episode, Thanks!

It's great to see an electrician actually interested in electronics. I work with loads of sparks, only me that is interested in electronics they all think I'm mad and geeky.

Thanks to your exploration of these bulbs. I have one in the basement near the roll-up garage door. I suspect the outlet at ceiling level was intended for a powered garage door opener but I don't consider the space adequately sealed for parking a vehicle with 20 gallons of liquid fuel in it. The big door is convenient for moving tools and equipment out and in for yard work (electric pole saws and battery weed trimmers are best stored inside). Having the motion sensor light means I don't need to leave lights on in that area when I'm working outside as that bulb will light by the time the door is halfway up so there's light for getting back inside. Some of your dissection does prove useful ;-)

With the 2 regulators, the 78l12 can take 36v, the 7533 can only take 26, also the dissipation will be shared across both regs. and yes, probably better regulation.

The reason that the capacitor is on the other PCB, is that mixed placement of wired and surface components make the production cost skyrocket. That is especially true when mass-producing such PCBs....

I learn something every time I listen to you analyze a circuit! Brilliant!

Thanks Clive. The diode hack worked a treat on my two lamps. From novelty to practical. (and novelty).

I bet the 4 pin / deported capacitor is because the led pcb is smd only (made of aluminum plate, isolant, copper tracks) and the other pcb is through hole. You just can't put a big cheap capacitor on the led pcb, and that's good for longevity anyway. PIR disable light detection when trigered to avoid turning on and off in a loop then the light is activated (creating a feedback)

About the trigger current (I'm looking at the Fairchild MOC3061 datasheet): the 15mA are only needed for very short pulses (1µs). It goes down considerably with pulse length (e. g. 1mA for trigger pulses of 100µs length).

For some reason I feel like these bulbs should only be sold in pairs.

Still don't understand what is going on. But I find absurd amounts of entertainment and information out of your content.

"Not even with a good thorough drink beforehand" - love it!

If you point an android phone running Google translate at the printout, it'll do real-time Chinese text replacement.

Lovely tear down, I've used a number of these bulbs over the last few years and had a couple with LEDs failing. I'll try running them with a lower capacitive dropper and maybe add a diode too 👍

Surely one of your best teardowns Clive. What would we do without you laddy. I take it those are the 5630 type LED. I bought 200 for next to nothing as per your recommendation, and am mounting on proto board to great effect.

I wonder if the reason for not being a switcher is noise affecting the PIR sensor

Moving that smoothing cap also lets the round board be fully pick and place, and the other board to be manually populated and soldered.

I've watched quite a few of your videos on KZfaq and have loved them all. I must admit that I get lost quite easily although I'm master plumber I have just become interested in electronics in the last couple of years. Your videos have been most helpful. Keep them coming and Thank You..................Savannah, Georgia....USA

was hoping for a new video yesterday but you posted on my birthday cheers Clive

Thanks that was great entertainment. As an analog electrical engineer it was fun to watch someone else reverse engineer a circuit.

"Note: This opto isolator should not be used to drive a load directly. It is intended to be a trigger device only." So the triac is needed. But it's a pity the diode is missing. And that capacitor for the PIR is huge :o

12V regulator is there because the 3v3 regulator has an input voltage max of 15V, giving 18V will kill it. They would use any regulator from 5V to 12V in making these, just because the 3V3 regulator will run off 5V to 12V. Whatever roll was cheapest on the day will be used to run off the batch.

Slight error in your video. You said an OR gate is one or the other. That definition applies to XOR. OR gate is one or the other or both.

it's odd what you said about running cost of leds the power suppliers and meters they still charge £20 + vat standing charge so soon they will start charging more and most people do not even know we still paying standing charges on top what we use

You have just got me wondering if theres a simple diode hack for the sound triggered version, I bought one for the bedroom as i can get into bed and then it goes out once i'm quietly in bed, where as a PIR one would come on everytime i rolled over and probably wake me up, but sound seems ideal, a click of the fingers and i can see to get out of bed without tripping up, but same issue, 30 seconds and it goes off and needs a whole second before it will re-trigger. must pop it open and see what its built from

many optoisolators i've come across overstate their required forward led current, or at least the current recommended is optimal for the highest speed switching but will still work at lower currents

Nice teardown Clive

ah.. can't sleep, cheers Clive for these late night vids :)

Before one might invest in power factor balancers one might consider investing in infrared motion activated switches for all your rooms & on key lamps etc. More energy is lost in light switches left on than power factor losses in the average household. Then LED lamps which will save you more money in the summer than winter.

Your love for Warm White even extends to your printer paper !! :-)

We all love the Springsteen classic _"Dancing in the Dark (Under a PIR LED Lamp)"_

I was going to post for you mod it with the diode but you did that at the end. Your knowledge is great and love watching your vids. Keep it up.

I like how you used "going off" twice in a sentence, each meaning the exact opposite of the other. I thought it was quite funny :D

That is one of the best constructed lights I have ever seen. Some engineer is going to get fired.

in Australia we do have a wireless power monitoring system that cost $50 AUD it just loops around a main wire to see how much power the house is using

yes here in italy, the meters also measures the power factor

Hi Clive, I think they placed the capacitor on the power board and not on the LED board because now the LED board is fully SMD, which makes it cheaper to produce. The power board already has lots of TH components so adding one doesn't increase cost much.

Allways an enjoyable teardown clive :-D. They have made a decent device but still kept it minimal, i like that :-D . Perhaps that 100uf resivour capacitor charges slightly higher than expected while the trigger circuit isnt timing, then it can supply the split second burst of current required to start the opto led, once lit, it says lit, perhaps. That diode did look like a (feedback while timing), may stop any i.r/light from the led lights getting back into the detectors causing trouble.

pretty neat little lamp n PIR, thanks

The substitution of a 10k for a 1k is probably to save the number of different components. I reckon they could easily have saved on the BOM by driving the Triac's MT1 directly. It's all at mains potential so isolation is unnecessary. Capacitive dropper power supplies are far from ideal when making products with a wide range input voltage.

Man-dee zhyow zhyow. ;) Maybe it's just my minor OCD tendencies, but I absolutely love compact, modular designs like this. Also, I'm forevermore calling these "Predator Lights." :D

Re: your comment regarding power factor/simple calculation billing for electricity - I've never heard of any benevolent energy supplier anywhere in the world, so you can rest assured that they'll be billing you for whichever of the two measurements is higher.

Thanks for the detailed teardown. It was an interesting circuit to see how it worked. I'm wondering about the PIR lens you mentioned. Is it far-infrared like predator or near-infrared like a night vision camera? Either way, do you think the lens could be removed and used to replace a camera's normal IR blocker to block visible light and make an IR only camera? Thanks again for all the things I've been learning from you!

in Germany big companies get billed for apperant power, too. Home users only have to pay the real power consumption.

FYI: In Germany private households only pay for active power. Only (commercial and) industrial consumers have to struggle with reactive power.

I think they mounted the smoothing cap on the input board because it's bulky and through hole. Yes, they could have used smd caps but I think they aren't compatible with all pick and place machines and it would still be bulky!

The 2 linear voltage regulators may also have something to do with power dissipation. After all that small smd regulator may have difficulties dropping the 15.7v all by itself.

Horray for modular manufacturing!

Can you make a short video explaining the hack to get it to stay on? I'd like to share it elsewhere but you definitely deserve full credit!

do a teardown on that pen u use

That belongs on the leg light from Christmas Story :) that's a nice looking headlight

23:10 - Smart Meters where I live in the States (Nevada) are mandatory. If you refuse to let them remove your old analog meter and install the new smart meter, Nevada Energy just turns your power off at the pole. However, they are only using the meters to monitor power factor at the moment as the Nevada Public Utilities Commission hasn't approved charging residences for power factor yet. The meter I have according to the label is an iCON Sensus. This mandatory installation policy however is hardly universal across the States and many individual states have prohibited their local power distribution companies from installing them pending further investigation.

re power factor, i think with new lighting such as led draw so much less power than incandesants, that even with such a bad power factor they can live with the line losses, as pretty much all devices include correction with the exception of most domestic lighting.

About that diode - sure, it could just be "works fine without it so leave it out" cheapskateness but there's another thing to consider: whether it's present or not only matters IF the lightbulb turning on affects the light sensor, and that's by no means a given. The sensor and the lights are actually in their own bubble domes each so one doesn't necessarily affect the other directly, and since no consumer light will actually put out anywhere close as much brightness as the sun, if the darkness threshold is tweaked to detect day/night conditions it might well not be affected just by the lamp turning on - in which case the bulb would retrigger even without the diode. Of course, this may not be the case for that particular bulb if the variable resistor in the schematic is left at "max sensitivity" (if there's a variable resistor at all)...

Mandyxiaoxiao? my cats name is xiao xiao. means tiny in mandarin.

I like Big Clive's videos. I haven't got a clue what he's going on about but I do understand that roughly translated it means Don't buy shit of Ebay

Google Translate app on Android works very well. It uses your phone camera and will translate images of text from one language to your primary language. I haven't tried Chinese, but it says it can. If you have the app, tap the little camera below the box that says "Touch to type". It puts the translation of the words to be translated on your screen overlaying the text. Wild stuff.

Hi Clive, here in Italy the power meter ("contatore GEM" if you wanna see a pic on google) measures everything, but we are not charged for apparent power. Only industrial contractors need to keep a good power factor or they will be fined

bottom kinda looks like philips one. philips one is metal and actually gets kinda warm for led i think.

So um, yeah. Good video Big C!

Brings up a question: if there are so many capacitive droppers which really screw with the power factor, and there's all these "power savers" which are merely capacitors, would it make sense to have a "power saver" which was inductive instead, so as to counteract the poor power factor of these capacitive droppers? Of course, that all depends on whether the supplier cares; there and here they don't, but you say maybe in Italy they do.

Awesome hack sir! Thanks for these vids! Great to have something of interest to have on while I'm knocking about the den.

Great, i love the mod, now it is how it should be from the manufacturer.

"Not to worry-- That's what you expect on this channel." Well, you have to explain why these things matter!

It really sucks the seller won't ship to the US all of the sellers that do only have the SMD versions of this lamp and I love thru hole tech its old and post its prime like me.

The moment you introduce phase angles, you are talking crazy stuff. We are simple linear monkeys that don't handle time as a dimension at all well.

I love these videos so much knowledge to be had.

I'm so pleased you added the diode and improved the functionality. What diode did you use. Is it just a signal diode? I'm going to order a lamp now :)

Even in India the meters read the PF but we need to pay only for the power consumed and they don't consider the PF

Hum, 111ma @ 240V. This sounds like a job for the 47MW (0.5A) Power Fixer you showed a few days ago. I wonder what you get with both plugged in? (Hum, both capacitors. Yep, not going to 'fix' a single thing.)

the mobile version of google translate can replace text in images with the built in camera

could someone explain to me why you'd design a capacitive dropper power supply that always pretty much shorts half the sine wave with the zener? Why not put the normal diode in front of that zener instead of behind it?

The world of Bladerunner has arrived

Excelent explained ! Thank you

I have the highest and lowest expectations for this channel. I guess that means I have no expectations.

good job it wasnt pink coloured, if you know what i mean!

Why is a bad power factor problematic for power companies? I know that for regular users they don't even measure it (in most countries, dunno about the Italy thing) but they do measure it for industrial users.

Very comprehensive video. Do you think the LED's would still come on if the lens for the PIR was missing? I'm trouble shooting one that has had the lens removed, and it does not turn on...

Maybe you should do an basic electronic school? Or maybe not. There are those around, but you seem to have the skills to do that.

What is a buffer in this context? Is that a special kind of transistor which introduces a delay or something?

Nice hack. After adding the diode from pin 6 to 3, did it affect the heat factor? Is a there a danger of overheating if left on to long?

+bigclivedotcom What was the value of the zener you put between pins 8&3 please?

Hey Big Clive, love your videos & thank you for doing them & helping all of us out with these electronics, a perfect gig made for you. Also before I forget it again, & I know it has nothing to do with this video...I guess but I jumped up one early morn. at around 11:30 pm & had to make a red LED with a 1K ohm resistor attached to it & just 2 AA's in a battery holder on the 20th of December & as of now this thing is still running, & it's only 3 volts. So how long can something like these red LED's last on only 3V? I know it differs from the manufacturer but just an educated guess, because I never would have guessed that it would last over one week. Thanks, Tom.

some of those 3v regs dont like being above 12v, thats maybe why they put the 12v one in first, one 3v reg springs to mind thats only rated to an input of 6v!, had a few arduinos die in car projects at the usual 14.6v etc, hot days cheap 3v reg and 14v=death. used a 3v nano and the common 5110 lcd as a voltage readout on the dash. dead in a month....

Heya Clive, just so ya know, I believe that 'xiaoxiao' bit, from my knowledge of Chinese, is pronounced 'Sh-ow[Ow as in 'Ow! That hurt!'], and just that twice.

Interesting to see the LED circuit is fed via a capacitive dropper and is switched with a triac. A capacitive load is about the worst thing you can use a triac to control and whenever I have tried to switch a LED bulb like this the triac blows after a short time. I suspect this is due to the high initial current exceeding the triac's dI/dt rating if it turns on at the peak of the sine wave. The lamp I tried to switch was an older LED bulb with 5mm LEDs and used a 0.22uF 400 volt capacitor with a series resistor to limit the current, the triac was a z0103ma which is a TO92 type like the one in your bulb. Your bulb uses a 1uF capacitor and no series resistor so the stress on the triac if it turns on at the peak of the sine wave will be much greater. I would be interested to see how it performs on a long term test. Is there a 'best way' to switch capacitive loads with triacs? Regards Richard

thanks a lot for sharing. does any one know why they placed the zener diode in front of the rectifier and not after? according to my understanding they completely shorting one half wave of the input voltage. does this make sense?

Very cool hack.

XiaoXiao was either the title of an old set of stick figure fighting animations or the pseudonym of their animator. Perhaps a fan named Mandy. Or it's just a Chinese faceroll name, either way.

Sorry Clive, I asked this question on your other video. I bought some of these PIR LED bulbs and they seem to fail after about a week of use. Have you any ideas as to why?

+Clive, would you say, generally speaking, that these are safe to use in the home?

I'd like to increase the timeout on one of these to 5 minutes, is it the cap on pin 7 (ct) that needs to be changed?

Might have been said already but the Google Translate app can translate images in real (ish) time. Might be usefull!

Ordered some. Any special diode I should use across the pins? I'm tempted to use a UV LED since I just bought a couple hundred.

I ordered that light :=) now what diod is that that you put in? I guess it have a name ^^

On this video I decided to have a wee drink whenever I heard the words "And" or "Or".... prolly nt a goot ideee=====a...... (*thud*)

I have got one motion sensor bulb similar like yours except there is no bump on the bottom of it. but when i checked the circuit inside to my surprise i found only one light sensor PR in it there is no separate IR for motion sensor. They used the same chip as you have mentioned which is EG4002. The problem with this is the light keeps triggering even though there is no motion. its very sensitive i guess. Is there anything i can do to modify it?

Can you cycle the power to keep it keep it awake? I had a few motion activated outdoor lights that worked like that.

How much power does it use when off?