HA HA I could just imagine how Bob Ross would sound if he were Doing electronics. [ whispering ] " And over here, lives a happy little transistor" "and we just dab on a little solder, right here, like this.. Dap dap dap dap" "there we go.." and maybe next to it lives a big, tall Capacitor"

Maico 👏 👏

Just solder a USB lead on to the battery contacts. The extra half a volt shouldn't bother it.

@@woofer2121 not sure if the battery contacts will take the solder though.. perhaps it'd be better to take out the circuit board, remove the battery contacts and solder the USB wires directly into there?

@@vimicito yeah some of the crappy "chrome" contacts won't take solder

@@woofer2121 lightly sand them, should be good to go

@@vimicito could always just solder it where the battery connections connect to the circuit board.

I'm waiting for that on every video. One of the many 'living in hopes' I have about Clive's offerings.

I feel like i would do that way to often

That’s funny cause I was so hoping he would. Even if it was to just show where he probed at.

he said he has done that once already

It's quite obvious where the track goes without probing: The negative power pad (where the U1 label is) goes under the chip to C1 (decoupling cap); therefore the other track must go to the pin in the corner as discovered with probing. But I think BC probed it to show how to find such things for those of us who need to know! I wish BC had been my tutor when i did my Electronics HNC all those years ago! :-) Thanks Clive, keep them coming!

I kept seeing them as actual holes in his bench! It was messing with my head, especially when he would move it. :)

HA! ..he has stereo vision there

You should always avoid huge screw holes. They result in very unsatisfying sex. 😀

@@BedsitBob Tossing a hotdog down a hallway is definitely less satisfying.

Note that it only works with the parallel strings. But you can run several from one powerbank or plug-in USB supply.

Although it has been used informally for a number of years I believe the blob (and hence the good blob and little blob respectively) was finally recognised as an SI unit at the the 26th General Conference on Weights and Measures, yesterday in Versaille. Unfortunately it seems the announcement was overshadowed by the new definition of the kilo, mole, ampere, and kelvin. :P

The correct terms, in ascending order are: Touch, Dab, Blob, Gob, Lump, and Turd. "Look at that huge turd of solder on that joint!"

A good blob is a little more than a smidgen, but less than a touch.

It's the Plebian System of weights and measures. Also includes one glug of wine, one shake of salt and a gnat's nadger of chili.

Mark Eckelkamp would be an interesting experiment!

most microcontrollers have "fuse" settings that select internal oscillator vs external crystal which the programmer must set. (They are called "fuse" because ages ago they were a one-time "blow the fuse" setting, but modern parts typically use EEPROM or flash memory.)

I would need to be reprogrammed.

Sylvan Butler Agreed, either a hardware fuse would need to be set or, alternatively, the appropriate register would need to be toggled to switch the local oscillator source on the fly. Given that most of these very cheap microcontrollers are OTP (one time programmable) you are very limited in terms of after the fact alterations. Sometimes it can be done to an OTP micro if the new fuse settings just happen to align with the old as the default state for uninitiated bits/fuses in E/EPROM is typically logical “1”, so if the change *only* happened to require reprogramming an existing fuse that is logical 1 to 0 and no bits/fuses already at logical 0 required flipping back to logical 1 then you may be able to make that change after the fact provided they forgot to set the security bits to prevent reading the existing program state - but odds are you would also have needed to reset hardware dividers and such as many internal oscillators run at 4MHz and you would be installing a 0.032768MHz oscillator in its place, so the timings are going to change enormously (122 times slower!). Otherwise, adding an external oscillator would almost certainly be akin to just soldering random disconnected parts on a PCB that effectively go nowhere and have no power - they would just be decoration rather than active components.

@@Sylvan_dB The dirt cheap micro mentioned is (at least listed as) one time programmable. Might of course be available in EE versions as well.

@@blitzwing1 Anything that happens to it is easy to fix and get parts for. I also thickened some of the traces with solder. I only wish they would use an iron with a little more mass. Have you tried the tweezer soldering iron accessory?

Or, of course, you could just add a 32.768kHz crystal and be done with it, which is probably what I would do in the same situation again. But it was fun to learn about the compensation registers.

Many of these timerds do use the crystal. Even with the calibration enabled I found the PIC microcontrollers drifted too much with time.

@@bigclivedotcom Fair enough, it's a pretty crap RC oscillator :)

i did indeed once probe the picture on camera.

@@bigclivedotcom i would call that a brain shart

Which video was that.

bigclivedotcom Have you ever probed yourself 😂

that certainly would work, if you do this mod you can do this. you can also use the box to provide a little string relief for your usb power cord and your resistors would not require heat shrink tubeing. I suspect Big Clive just didn't want the extra bulk, it is a bit of a cleaner looking without it.

I should also add, I love your wire strippers. Who makes them?

It depends on the number of LEDs you use. 100 ohms would give 20mA, 47 ohms would give about 40 and 20 ohms as used here gives about 100mA.

Nope, just on and off nothing else and the hand crank was tied directly to the 3 button cells and from there to the three leds. Ask Clive and he will surely tell you that you can't recharge lithium button cells (the kind you have in your computer but maybe 3mm around at most). It was pure fake as hell. btw, the Hand crank in the off position did NOTHING, as in the LEDS did not light up no matter how damn fast I cranked it, and I tested 5 of them so I know what I am talking about here.

Did you verify they were CR (single-use primary cell) cells and not LR (rechargeable secondary cell), LR is a rechargeable Lithium coin cell?

I was going to add that I ask because I have a similar unit from Amazon (though it cost more than a dollar from China, but then I only bought in quantity 2) and it’s battery is a very small rechargeable Lithium-ion coin cell located behind one of the three LEDs. I’ve not taken it apart but I would estimate that the battery is roughly a 12x2.0mm size (by sight). They do not have a lot of storage capacity, then again the LEDs don’t draw a lot of power (not terribly bright, but still enough to be useful) - but it is indeed rechargeable as I have run it down before just to confirm that it can be recharged.

@@johncoops6897 Why not? Clive has done videos on fake solar recharge led flashlights. The solar cell was real but did nothing. The light was operated by batteries inside. Maybe the purpose was to charge more for perceived extra functionality.

Well, the "mistake" might explain why it was being sold off at Dollar Tree. More cost effective to just send them to such a retailer and get a little money back, than spend labour hours reworking them and selling for the original retail price. Smacks a little of the "fake" solar cell calculators some other rather more rabid youtuber has spent a couple videos on "debunking". I mean, what really do you expect for $1 / £1, but eh, seemed the inclusion of a fake / nonfunctional / not (correctly) wired in solar panel was the more important thing for the guy rather than the fact you were getting an otherwise complete and fully functional calculator plus one or more button cells (that would cost about as much to replace, minimum) along with... Anyway, they were either wired in series with the (non-rechargeable?) battery, or not connected at all; either way, they didn't appear to do anything to power the calculator, sometimes not even if the battery was removed and its terminals shorted. However, I do wonder; the cells might not be rechargeable, but they surely still conduct some current once they're dead, right? My experience with devices that end up with a mix of charged and dead batteries in them is that the whole pack voltage is within sigma of the sum of the individual cell voltages, indicating that the good cells were still able to "push" power through the dead ones. In which case, once the batteries die, you should still be able to power the light with the crank as per a common dynamo powered light, it just won't stay lit when you're not cranking, unless there's also a small capacitor in there somewhere. IDK what the internal arrangements of the crank-lights I've owned were like, but they sure seemed to act like they had either a reasonable amount of capacitance inside them, or a very low capacity rechargeable cell that could be charged at a pretty high rate but was delivered in an uncharged state. Seems weird that you'd just include primary cells instead ... maybe, from a wholesale perspective, they're somehow cheaper?!

We make our own sequencer PCB for our parols - we are all +12VDC inside, using an AC-to-12V adaptor. No mains voltages into the body of the parol.

Around 350C, but go by soldering feel and not a displayed temperature.

Gadgetboy - that’s a very old trick!

Probably not though of course the festive season occurs during the worst time of year for the change in the day length as that festive season occurs near the solstice when the rate of change is at it's minimum. That said there will be a location where the rate of change in the day length is exactly 16 minutes (And thus the change in sunset time exceeds 8 minutes per day) however changes that extreme only occur within the arctic and antarctic circles even around the equinoxes when the rate of change is at it's most extreme. At this time of year the lattitudes where this would happen already have 24 hour daylight so there is no sunset in any given day to keep up with.

It works both ways. By using two quarter watt resistors with half the desired resistance value you get the full value but spread across two quarter watt resistors giving a half watt rating.

Phil S The big display Amical died some time ago.

@@johnfrancisdoe1563 if I remember correctly the rotating switch just feel apart

I've got a replacement mechanism for it. It'll be back soon.

@@bigclivedotcom an escuse to make a video about a multimeter teardown?

@@alfoncejean8826 BOLTR?

Or it may be an input pin with pullup, and tied to ground to tell the firmware NOT to use the crystal?

@@the0844 You know what, I like that!

I've not tried them yet.

@@bigclivedotcom I used the wire splice with crimp with the heatshrink casing and the "glue" / "sealant" to make them moisture resistant and oil resistant, on a f wire harness on a 99 7.3 l diesel injector wiring harness. That's a pretty tedious but very important part of that feul system / engine. So it was important to you use something reliable and it worked fantastic. I have not tried the connectors with solder tho.

I used a few on some LED shop lights in the basement - mostly just to try them because I was so curious. They were very easy to use and have held up so far (about 2 years), but they are indoor so I never expect trouble - even if I just twisted the wires together and taped them :)

@@raymondmucklow3793 these crimps come with a low temp solder lump already on them but the problem is that the connection could become very weak if a short circuit appears. These connections are usually only good for low to medium amperage or to simply make a good watertight connection. Everything has it's ups and down's. Hope this helps.

They work alright, although if you heat them too fast or too much they tend to burst since the ends tend to crimp shut before the solder melts. I've had best luck with a regular lighter on those. They do work quite well and seem pretty water ingress proof. I typically use the crimp connections with a built in heat shrink and hot melt glue, I get through a bunch since I deal with a lot of trailers and trucks running in brine half the year.

Diodes are rated In Amps since the forward voltage is sort of constant. Eg the omnipresent 1N400x can handle 1A. That should be enough in most cases where you are replacing a battery supply and they are amazingly cheap. But certainly something to take into consideration.

I figure it might be better to just use the original control board, as it has the necessary voltage regulation on it already - and it's designed to take input voltage across a pretty wide range, from about 3v through to a little over 5v (fresh out-of-the-box alkalines can run high 1.6v's each at low load, and if you have the super-power/lithium based AAs then they're over 1.7v), and should power the LEDs at something close to their ideal voltage. Just connect the output of the USB cable to the battery input terminals on the board... either cut off the battery pack section with a dremel, or put it in some alternative housing like a tic-tac box or the like.

I've made a video about the 4000mAh charger (actually 3000mAh). Not come across the sound activated lights yet.

Oh yes, forgot about the charger vid, could have sworn it was a smaller one. They also do a QI charger in the same range.

The timer drift is most likely down to the lower voltage of the rechargeable batteries. I expect it would run faster if Alkaline batteries had been use instead.

With a splitter and separate resistors per string you could run them all from one powerbank.

sorry, wrong account and Response :-)

It is being rather harsh on the microcontroller.

That would work too.

It was me disturbing the shelf the camera is mounted on.

The URL was UNILAD.CO.UK

yeah Action (coming from the Deen family in Hoorn) already has branches in other countries but I fear Brexit will not make it work for them to go to the UK

For some things, yes, but a vast majority is less than a pound.

me too 👍