I Think it's time. We followed on with tradition on this channel and took a look at another of these camping lights that are sold in pound shops and this time it's branded Grundig which is an ancient brand. It used to be like valve or tube radios and it's been bought up and applied to generic products now. I'm going to turn this on and I'm going to warn you, it's going to be flashing.

so first mode will be high, next load will be medium or low really, and the next one is going to be strobing just so you know that. So there's a strobing. and of course, if you press and hold for a long period of time, it goes into SOS mode. Does it? Yes, it does.

It's gone into SOS mode. It seems to be doing the proper SOS Although that seems to be controversial in its own right, some people are saying that the proper way to send is SOS Suppose that makes sense. It's fast, but these things have evolved continually. Not one of them has been identical, and it's always interesting to see how hackable they are.

So they typically take three AAA cells in one of these little cartridges, but you could easily adapt this to Lithium if you wanted it. An inside is that? Well, let me shine a light down there. You're not going to see otherwise. One moment I'm just going to zoom down a little bit and shine a light in there.

Let's not swamp. that's not bad. I'll cut the intention down a little bit. Uh, it's got a central contact and then a contact to the side which makes contact with the Springer center pin in this and then the metal ring around the outside.

But the bit were really interesting. Here is what's in here: Is this going to come out easily? because it's different every time is it going to come out? I might have to screw that on for extra Leverage And uh, really, when it comes to control, I've screwed that on the wrong thread? Maybe I should just force it on like so many people do. right? Let's give this another go. Is that gonna come off? there? it's off.

And once again, the circuit board is completely different to what's been there before. Uh, it's been through two stages. We're just at one: 4.8 millimeter Straw Hat LED Do I have a straw hat LED I Do have a straw hat LED right here. fumble fumble.

one of this type of LED the other one was one more LED I Just so happen to have a one Watt LED here as well. and now we've gone on to three of the two. eight, three, five, three, five, three to ever order. they are in and what? I'm seeing here straight away.

there's the contact at the back, the three LEDs there's other contact, the little problem: flashlight chip, a resistor for The Limited current through the LEDs and then the little push button at the side. Okay, one moment please. I'm just going to reverse engineer this I Don't think it's going to take long. One moment please.

Reverse engineering is complete. Let's explore. I Was going to take a picture of this, but I Thought, you know, let's do it anyway for continuity, so to speak. So we have two connections coming through.

We've got the positive connection, which is a metal plate that is on the back that has been pushed through and then the tangs just sort of folded over. And then we get this little coppery strip that has also been sorted through a jaunty angle and it's clear that when this is put into position in here, it's fed through and then someone just stops a finger down and just pushes it over Inside we have the three LEDs Common to the positive connection, we have the little chip called a five, one, one two, uh, the switch, and then a 2.2 Ohm resistor which it turns out is quite a low value of resistor for these LEDs Now, these are not on an aluminum substrate, which is going to make them easy to change, but it also means that I tend to limit the current to about 20 milliamps with them. so at 4.5 volts at full power, it draws 400 milliamps. It's driving them over 100 milliamps each.

At low, it drops down to 85 milliamps which is better, but still not ideal. and at flashing, it's obviously a 50 50 ratio. It's about 400 milliamps at 200 milliamps for just half the 400 milliamps at 3.6 volts at typical discharge voltage of nickel metal hydrate cells. It starts off at full power at 160 milliamps, low is 36 milliamps and flashing is 80 milliamps.

So to be honest, I'd recommend increasing the value of that resistor if you want to last any length of time. Let's take a look at the schematic because ultimately it's just this little six pin flashlight chip or a bike light chip. many uses Universal chip. There's the batteries three times AAA and that gives about 4.5 volts at zero volts here.

So here's the chip: I've put the pin numbers on 5112 I should look that up. Maybe it's a standard chip now because it certainly used to be that these had Rogue numbers on them. You could never find where they were. We have the push buttons which pulls pin five to the zero volt rail.

Excuse any questions in the voice: I'm a bit under the weather at a month. we've got the three LEDs in parallel and that nefarious 2.2 Ohm resistor. Uh, so what would be a good value of that resistor based if you were going to use it 4.5 volts or if you were just going to use it for normal use. So um, if we're working the basis that we were going to use it with rechargeable cells and we're going to put in our own LEDs Which is easy because uh, these will be very easy to soda with just hot air or a sojourn and tweezers.

Because it's not an aluminum substrate board, it's not going to pull the heat away. although the positive connections here do have quite a lot of heat sinking effect on them. But a better value of resistor. Let's say the LEDs are dropping 3 volts, 20 milliamps.

We want about 60 milliamps. Um, so that leaves about 1.5 to drop across the resistor. So the resistor value would be 1.5 volts divided by the 0.060 milliamps we wanted. it would be 25.

So it's like really, they've really used up very very ridiculously low value resistor here to push these as hard as possible and that is going to fry those LEDs So the applications for this: if you change the LEDs to well, a color of your choice. The people who perhaps want that low impact on the Irish bread light that has come with us astronomers astronomers is that right. I was going to say astrologers that wouldn't be right Astronomers: you could use red LEDs which would then have afford voltage about 2 volts and which should leave a slightly higher voltage. but you could adjust the resistor to match.

but that means that you could basically make a nice little layer. dark room or astrology astronomy type like I'll stop mixing those off at some point. Another thing you could do is you could maybe have for just decorative garden lighting. you could put green LEDs in because they always look good and just place it on the ground in front of foliage.

and I suppose ultimately you could just leave the front off if you want is around. it would just splash a bit more light out, but they could certainly be hacked to an intensity of your choice. You know you could even put 100 ohms in if you wanted just the LEDs to run at very low level for a very long time. but that is it.

Not really much to say. the circuit board changes in every single one of these. Uh, if I've seen ones with a little rectangular strip I've seen ones the little square circuit board and this one is the most, uh, full-bodied one that fills up the inside of this. So interesting.

Very interesting evolution of a very standard light. Um, certainly very hackable and useful. And of course, if you wanted you could change this to a 3.6 volt. Well, 4.2 volt.

Peak Lithium cell. um with suitable charging facilities. just improvised charging facilities. and you could even with a bit of modifications.

Suppose you could turn it into a little solar light with that separate solar panel, but it has lots of potential. Um, good as a base for building your own custom layers. I think is the best thing for these, but if you are going to use it as a camping light and you get it off the shelf as a camping light I Would recommend rechargeables and I'd recommend not running it at full power for too long. I'd recommend switching it from the high to the low setting and there is a little bit pulse of modulation or a bit of flicker, but um, it's not too bad.

um, however, that is it. That's the latest evolution of the pound shot camping light.