A while ago, i took a look at this led lamp, and it was quite unusual because it took one of the led filaments and instead of doing a spiral thing, you know like the traditional carbon filament lamps. It actually had a glass tube with the filament going around inside and it was quite attractive and one of the other things that really impressed me about this is that the box they shipped it in had a facility to have a lock ring. So this base was put in and it was clamped with a couple of lock rings and it meant that it was held central to the box, but it also meant it was quite a big box, and this is glass. I saw some others recently and uh.

Well i'll light it and show you it there, it is it's quite nice. This one is diffused. It gives the option of the clear or the diffused uh tube and it was like really complex shape. There were stars christmas trees and i was thinking how on earth are they going to thread the filament down inside that tube and how do they frost the glass tube? Well, they don't uh.

If i take this lamp out now, you've seen it lit that's important. If we take the lamp out uh, it came in this box and well it's it's not going to get damaged because it's plastic and the way they're threading it along. I don't know if i can separate this or not, let's get the spudger out and see if i can separate it, but the way they thread it along is the fact that this tube. I think this is glued.

I think it's glued, but it doesn't really matter. That's not really something that's going to concern us when i rip it apart anyway. Aren't we but um that's how they managed to get the uh a the two options, the clear or the diffuse, but also how they managed to lay the filament in because they've laid it in and then sandwiched the two bits together and because it is so robust. It's not going to be as breakable as this one, so the power of this one is 4 watts.

Let me demonstrate to the power of this. One is 4 watts by bringing in the hoppy i shall unplug my fetching pink silicon lamp holder and grab the hobby. The hoppy, which is all tangled with my meter's, leads but not to worry. That's fine activate the hoppy with super flicker vision, plug-in it lights up and it is displaying a power of well, let's zoom down this, so you can actually see it's displaying a power of 4 watts.

Power factor is 0.57. That's very typical for these. It's very simple. Circuitry well i'm saying that i've not seen the circuitry, but it could go one of a few ways.

There are some clues, but for what, nonetheless, it doesn't get too hot. I left it running for a while. The power remained constant and uh after i'd run it for a while. It felt warm to the touch but not hot, and when i took it out the i was expecting the base to be worn, but the base was cold.

Maybe i should run it longer, but i didn't right well now we need to see what's in here, so this is where i have to somehow get this out and it is crimped in onto that plastic. So this is going to be destructive right. I shall have a go first, oh tell you what before we actually open it. Let's take a look at the box right, so the super thin box that came in it alludes to the possibility model.

Ml-806 uh color it's available in 2200k. This is 2700k slightly colder white, but still warm pink, red, green and blue, and it's available in three voltage ranges: 110 to 130, volt, 220 to 240 volt or the universal 85 to 265 volt. I went for the 240 volt version. That may mean the circuitry is simpler in here, but there's one way to find out.

Firstly, i'm going to liberate the little stud at the back, because that's how these things are usually made. Let's zoom down in this, so you can enjoy the carnage and watch me making a dick myself or even uh slitting my finger horribly while trying to get this apart. So the rivet comes out revealing a wire. So now there's nothing going to hold that in it'd.

Be nice if i could get the spudger under here, but i don't think that's going to happen. I think it has been pressed down tightly into that crimping machine. So i fear there's going to be a bit of destruction. There is going to be a bit of destruction, begin the destruction.

This is where i could just pause, but you guys will complain about pause. You can skip forward past the destruction if you wish. Having said that, maybe the destruction is going to take longer than expected, because this is really really crimped and super tight. What if i just mash right through there is that going to help not really no.

This is this is tight. It's tight, but that's, okay, we'll just keep nibbling away. I guess this is steel. Nibble, nibble, nibble right, tell you what i'm going to bring in the big shnips.

Oh the whole plastic. The plastic thing is going right down the middle of this. What about these blunter snips? Are they going to grip it better? Misusing tools? That's okay, these particular site cutters go in ebay and look for electronic side cutters and you'll find them super cheap, look for cheapest, first they're, so mass produced in china. They use them by the bazillion, the uh they're.

Just you know, they're a disposable item, they're cheap, you use them, you break them. You get another set because uh, it means you can do things like this with them. I like the fact that that plastic housing is going all the way down. This is a well designed light so far, i'm seeing that.

Maybe it's not well designed like maybe it's crap inside but we'll find out once i get it open. That really does go all the way down inside. That is pretty neat that provides extra insulation from the side for the circuitry and also means that if they do a bayonet cap version for the british market and other countries that use the same been cap system, it means that it provides a insulation from the side. Because in our lamp caps the well, let me show you one.

Let me show you one, this cap, where the two end contacts are live and neutral either way round, but this bit here can be grounded in some fittings, but it's not actually uh used as an electrical connection. It's safer. It means that people fumbling to get lamps in don't put their fingers in the contacts. Look at this, so is this going to be a capacitive driver.

There is the other connection, just folded up the side here. So is it going to be a capacitor dropper, or is it going to be a linear current regulator or a little switching regulator, so many options so many options? Indeed, this is taking an age. My apologies it's out. What do i see? Well, i see a little capacitor there's not a lot.

There is not a lot in here. Oh, do you see what i see? I see a little linear current regulator. It must be a linear, current regulator. Is this fully discharged? Let me put my finger across it.

It's fully discharged right, tell you what tell you what i'll take a little picture of this such that we may take a closer look together. One moment please and resume with a very broken lab. This thing isn't going back together, but it has sacrificed itself for our greater knowledge, there's still a bit of the filament inside, because it really is glued together. It doesn't come out very easily.

So let me bring in the schematic and show you what's in here. So here is well not the schematic. Let's take a look at the circuit board, so i shall focus down on that and i shall zoom in so we can scrutinize it in greater detail, including its oddities, so live in, neutral, live comes in on the end of this uh few, this fusible resistor. That's sticking out here and then it goes up to one pin the rectifier.

The neutral goes straight to the pineart farm, the positive negative amount, and they go straight to the capacitor. For smoothing. There is also a 105 105 105 105 at one zero and five zeros. There's a one mega ohm resistor across that just to clamp it down.

Stop it doing that ghost glowing thing that sometimes happens, particularly when you get multi-wave switching where there's capacitive coupling between the wires and the lamps don't quite go out, because leds are so ridiculously super sensitive, particularly these little flip chip ones are ridiculous, they'll just glow. If you look at them and well, i wish they did. That would be quite handy, but you know i might one or two microamps and they'll glow. That also means that when you turn it off instead of like fading away super slowly, it will this resistor will make sure it just goes off that lower transition.

It just goes down quite quickly. There is a linear current regulator, which is a simple system whereby, as a 51 ohm resistor to the zero volt rail and a direct connection to zero volt rail and then the leds go from the positive uh to the uh pin over here. And it will measure the current going through the leds and that resistor and when it detects a certain voltage across that resistor, it will regulate it back. It also means that when it gets too hot, which it might do in a long period of running uh, because it's dissipating, i estimate about half a watt uh.

But it's got a heat sink plane. I'll show you that in a moment, but if it uh gets too hot it'll then add on to that resistor internally it'll effectively self-regulate, it down itself down to keep itself cool. There is a zero ohm link here. This is perplexing.

You see this dotted outline here is the heatsink plane and it's in the back of the circuit board. There's a bunch of plated through holes under here that couple onto that heatsink plane and it basically just divides all the pads and just goes around the circuit board. Like this, oddly, the root of the negative connection is such that, if they already had the negative plane there, they could have just basically put a plated through-hole there and gone straight onto the negative pad, but they didn't there's this zero ohm resistor link is this: for Thermal isolation to try and avoid baking, the resistor: are they relying on this hot tab here coupling onto this, but not actually be able to spread the heat across that thin film of carbon? And maybe that's uh connected over to there? I'm not sure it's a strange arrangement, let's take a look at the actual schematic and then i'll show you the construction of the led stuff. The schematic is absolutely ridiculously simple: live and neutral, not necessarily in that order.

10 ohm fusible resistor to limit in rush current to the capacitor and protect the uh bridge rectifier and also in the event of something catastrophically feeling that resistable blow the redirect far converts it from the ac to dc. There's the discharge resistor here: there's the 3.3 microfarad 400 volt plaster. I didn't notice any flicker, so that must be doing the job okay, but this will also be dynamically compensated for flicker and then i estimate that the leds are actually 100 pairs. There's 200 leds, potentially in that filament, but as parallel pairs along it, and that would mean there's the voltage drop across.

It's going to be sort of 280 300 volts, and so the led filament may vary depending on the voltage of the lamp. Then we get the pt4515 and the 51 ohm programming resistor, and that is it there's really not much else to it. Let's take a look at the actual filament itself and i'll show you how i counted the leds in it. So, let's take a look actually at the filament.

How it lays in this is interesting because i recently featured some led filaments and i've suddenly realized. It would be quite easy, especially if you used a square section or just a boxy, slightly tapered section just for easy printing it'd be easy to print 3d print, outlines that let you just lay the filament into a channel like this and make similar things, and if You did matching pairs, they could be glued together and this was glued together in the factory. I'm guessing, there's, probably some elderly lady just whizzing these in at very high speed, but that is typically how it goes in. You just lay it in and it's sort of enough of a fit that it kind of holds itself in place, and then they sandwich the other bit on and glue it.

I'm guessing attach the circuit board in here. It almost looks like it's designed to take a little round circuit board as well, maybe they've, just given themselves options, um the leds themselves. Let me zoom out just a little bit. Oh, i completely failed to stay zoomed out there.

This is the strip, as laid as you see it. It's laid in right now. The reason there's black dots in it is because i counted it and uh. It counted one two, three, four: five: six: seven: eight 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.

14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21.

22. 23. 24. 25, pretty much 25 from corner to corner.

I reckon there's a 100 pairs, then, because each one of those dots represents a pair. This is the same strip but processed to make it more visible and i've drawn on the flipped chips are actually hidden under the resin that well, it's not resin. It's the silica gel silicone gel with the phosphor in it, and you can see there are pairs of chips and those pairs of chips are then hooked. So they're pairs like that, but then they're hooked in series with the next pair and then in series with the next pair.

So it just basically connects pairs and sears along the line, so that will be effectively around about 100 pairs. 200 leds all in series. For a high voltage, so this strip instead of the colorful three volt one i got this one - is working at a fairly high voltage, just working the best part of 300 volts in this case, so that is it. I have destroyed that lamp i may buy another.

I may buy the star one in clear plastic just to see how it compares, but it's pretty neat. It's a very nice evolution. It's a very distinct evolution from the one that was made of glass that just looked it looked fragile, although it shipped okay and it needed that bigger box for shipping. This one really doesn't need a big box.

This one is pretty much indestructible. It really is. I mean the flexibility of that stuff and the resi rigidity, but but still malleability of the plastic. It's not really malleable.

Is it, but it's got some give it's not going to break and the way it's inserted into the base is all very clever. It's quite neat. It's definitely evolved so yeah that is uh those i shall provide a link to the listing. I got this from from aliexpress because so far the the alex best sellers, unlike the ebay sellers, have not price gouged with they've not put rammed the price up with demand.

They've actually kept it fairly constant, so we'll try again with this one. So if you want one of these, you can get it from the exact same source i did, but this is a perplexed. Little circuit board. There are the things about the design that just for such a simple circuit board, it just makes me think, did they make mistakes in the design or or could it have just is it? Is that resisted there literally as thermal isolation? But it's interesting.

It's a very nice light, very neat and it looks good when it's lit up.