It's another Temu product not a sponsor. I've just been buying various things from them just to take apart for our entertainment. This one is described as one piece outdoor camping lamp with tungsten filament LED bulb for emergency Nate market and Street store use I Think the key things here are camping lamp with tungsten filament and it's available in three different shapes and it is rechargeable. The price varies according to the shape and the price does include shipping, but there is a bit of a thing there about abusing the shipping system.

It comes in a box like this with the light itself and a USBC charging cable and has helpful tax in the side that is completely all just mushed together. They've removed a lot of the species and it says products used to dim the lights should be prohibited during charging. That doesn't make sense. Charging time is approximately four to six hours with the type C charger or a computer.

Do not leave the battery unattended while charging when charging is complete please. Also it move. The power supply has discharging function excellent. This is all good to know in use.

It has what they call three gears. It's got the little USB charging port, the flap and a little red LED to show its charging charges at 500 milliamps. and when you press the button it lights at full intensity and you'll see a slight posted modulation and then you click again. that goes down to the lower intensity, a bit more puzzle modulation, then click again it goes to the lowest and maybe a bit more enhanced pulsive moderation.

It's still useful levels of light, however, the battery doesn't last long. I've tested it I left it for several hours at the low level and uh, it seemed to go down to a lower intensity quite quickly. But that's okay. we can hack stuff like that.

It's worth mentioning that by swiping it brows and forwards while uh, it was lit I showed that the well I found out that the full intensity is actually 50 pulse of modulation duty cycle. So theories it could have gone to higher brightness. The middle setting is about 25 and the lowest setting is about 10 ish percent uh, impulsive modulation. Okay, let's try and open this and it is a little that just squeeze the button there.

Oh, it does actually I Thought this was glued. This is good. It is unscrewing. This is nice.

This is what we want. Good access. Uh, is there glue in there? I Like the way the filament is mounted on these uh, springy supports to give it stress relief. However, it's probably not designed for the stress I'm about to expose it to by getting a screwdriver screwdriver and then just randomly Levering it out.

Is this going to come out without a struggle? Or is there going to be a struggle? It's kind of coming out. Oh, this may be destroyed in the process I'm not sure if there's something I should know here. Is there a hidden screw? It does have a carabiner in the top, which is the one that uses the off-center pivot Points to actually provide the springiness I Don't know if maybe hold on? No. I don't really see what if I push down that.

No, that's not helping I don't know what's holding this in. if it breaks, it breaks I Got this for our exploration. It does feel like it's actually held in. Maybe it's just held in at the sides here.

This circuit board does not want to move. That makes me wonder why what is holding this in place. Has it been glued in? I don't see any sign of a screw. so I'll just keep prizing and you know what's the worst could happen.

It'll break, it will break at some point, won't it? Okay, so that was just a friction fit. Then where here's the cell. Here's the oldest circuitry. Oh, it's a standard double A sized Lithium cell of unknown, uh, specification.

The circuit board looks very straightforward. It looks as though it's got the well. let's take it apart and well. I'll take the picture and we'll analyze it.

We'll take a look at the circuitry and that will, uh, tell us all we need to know one moment. please. And resume isn't hindsight a wonderful thing. It would have been so much easier getting the LEDs out of the base here if I'd known that it kind of been a caps in, But at the factory they must have a tool that bridges over the filaments and there's a couple of pins that go down into here and they basically put it down and then rotate it and that locks into position.

I could try that right now. No, I can't because I got wires in it now, but it does I Tried it earlier. It goes in and it rotates and that's what locks it in place. Then they put a little sliver of glue in it and this screw this bit in and it locks it all in place.

The Lithium cell I've tested it 282 milliamp hour is not good capacity for this, but not to worry, it's got loads of hackability. Let me Zoom down on the At circuit board and we'll explore it. Very textbook as the classic eight pin mystery microcontroller with the classic pinout of the Pic 12. and uh, it's quite interesting.

It's a nice enough design. It's interesting that they've just used four pins in it and they've just chosen the four corner pins. Power at one end and an input and an output at the other end. There is the classic Lth charge chip with a 2K resistor that programs account about 500 milliamps.

There is a resistor for the two charge indicate realities. there's a red one and a green one. Didn't know at agreement as well. just like if patients not letting it charge up fully.

There's a push button and there's a standard Npn transistor but it could take a mosfet. However, they've used an Npn transistor and a couple of 1 ohm resistors in parallel to give half an OHM Um, the coupling circuit for the processor 10 Ohm resistor capacitor Let's take a look at the schematic. Here is the schematic: I shall Zoom down even further in this. No great surprises.

It's very textbook, but that's okay. It's a nice product. It's a nice design. It just needs a few tweaks.

It needs hacked and modified to suit yourself. The USB is USBC Unfortunately, they've Not Included the two resistors that let it indicate to Modern intelligent USB power supply that it should be put now current so it doesn't uh Supply the 5 volts. Uh, you're gonna have to plug this into a dumb and charger if you wanted to charge. There is a decoupling capacitor across that which is good.

It's part of the textbook thing for this. There is the classic one resistor going from that incoming positive Supply So let's call this plus 5 volts. I Will call this 2.42 4.2 volts because that's actually what it is and zero volt down here. So the resistor goes from the 5 volt Supply to two LEDs The red LED is switched to the zero volt rail by this chip when it's charging, but then it switches off when it is fully charged.

So what actually happens there is that one is charging. The current flows through this resistor through the red LED that pulls the voltage down to about two volts across that. which means that the green LED can't light. When the charge is completed and it turns the red LED off, the voltage goes up higher.

and then the green LED can lights. Very, very simple. It's a a one pin, two color, one resistor. Arrangement Very neat.

There's a 2K resistor that programs the current. There's the output to the measurable Lithium cell that they'd actually soldered onto the ends. I Wonder if this is a recycled cell? I Wonder if it's basically just a bin re-sleeved just because it? You know it's an end of Life Cell Because this size should have a much higher capacity, but there is loads of options you could. There is space in here.

it's kind of optimized for the size of cell, but there's also the position for putting a rectangular cell in so you could actually even cut some of the plastic away. And you could stuff this with as much Lithium cell as you could fit in there. Loads of potential. There's a decoupled supply for the microcontroller, so it's not affected by the switching.

The pulsive modulation of the the LED which causes a slight fluctuation so it's a ternal resistor. I Measured there is the capacitor in circuit is roughly 5.5 megafar closest 5.6 but that testing circuit that could be affected by the microcontroller and this one also tested roughly 100 Nano which is about right for that, but that again that was in circuit. There's a button pulling to the zero volt rail. Here is the transistor: I Thought this was going to be a mosfet.

It's not. It's a standard Npn transistor. it's a Y1, but it does have the normal component arrangement for a mosfet. 10K Pull down resistor 1K control resistor and it dropped 1.3 volts and used it.

was dropping a higher voltage than these resistors which is just odd. There's a two resistors too, one Ohm in series. Although the transistor is doing all the current limiting because it's being pushed quite hard, it go up to about 30 degrees Celsius which isn't dramatic, but it's not ideal and there's the LEDs uh scope for hacking. Aside from upgrading the Lithium cells greatly, you could replace this with an A2shb.

Probably a suitable mosfet if it's pin compatible. should be pin compatible. Let me just check this out. Uh, get uh, yes, that would work emitter and collect that uh gate.

Dimension collector, gate, source and drain. That would work. Yes, Interesting. I wonder where my A2shp's are a big strip of them and I've lost them but loads of uh potential.

And then of course you can change these resistors if you wish, You can increase the capacity, you can make it more efficient or keep the existing transistor. Arrangement You could cut one of these resistors off if you wanted it to last longer or just adjust it to whatever sort of intends to battery versus uh, lifespan run time you you wanted. But there we go. Uh, it's actually all right.

It's a good starter project if you will. I mean that's quite a nice product I Do like this so probably going back together again I may retrofit it with a better self now. Another option you have here if you're looking for something more decorative, lower current even. You could replace the filaments, but there you could actually just tack in some of those uh, copper wire LEDs the ones that are just soldered along cover one.

You could just fill it with those just to create a cluster of little Points of Light if they do that. but the filament itself looks quite nice and with enough hacking, this could actually be a very useful camping light is the option of just recharging it from a suitable five volt solar panel. So uh, it's not bad I quite like it. It's a very nice little device.