After seeing Adrian Black explore a dollar store lamp on his channel it made me realise that I've not taken a look at the most recent Poundland lamps.
That has now been rectified and the results were very interesting. The highest power version of the lamp is similar to the one Adrian took apart, but optimised for our higher voltage.
These are the first 36V 12 chip LEDs I've seen. If you look at the lower power modified lamp at the end of the video you may see that one LED was visibly dimmer. I probed it with a meter and found that it was an 18V six chip LED to fine tune the voltage.
These lamps use a power supply that acts like an electronic resistor, so it's most efficient to get the combined LED voltage as close to the mains voltage as possible with a small margin for regulation.
Here's Adrian's video:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbFmecSdycw
Very interesting and completely hackable lamp with the intriguing feature of pre-heating its own PCB for easier component modifications. With a higher value sense resistor the current will be lower and the heat of the LEDs will be reduced to the point that the lamp could potentially last for a very long time.
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:-
http://www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm
This also keeps the channel independent of YouTube's advertising algorithms allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty.

13 thoughts on “Dollar tree vs poundland led lamp and hack.”
  1. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Bruce Inraleigh says:

    @Big Clive: Considering all the wonderful work you do I think you should show yourself! We'd like to know the man who has given us so much for so long.

  2. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Harald Lönn says:

    I would like to know how much RF interference these different lights give. The smog produced by different lamps means that radio equipment does not work well.

  3. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars User User says:

    Your first snack has St Nicholas on it , not the pope 😂 , they are from Belgium . A lot of continental countries have him at Christmas including here in Ukraine even with it being the orthodox church . Not sure how that works

  4. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Monchi Abbad says:

    It's Saint Nickolas whose birthday is on the 5th of December, and in the days leading up to the fifth of December he leaves small gifts and or candy in a shoe put at the fireplace with some food for the horse the saint uses to ride over the roofs. On the eve of his birthday he leaves bigger gifts that the kids had on their wish list.

  5. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Rich Ernst says:

    Dang, wish I'd seen this video before the one I watched yesterday and lamented on how difficult it was to disassemble. I'd have known what to expect. BUT, mine had a glass globe 🙂 and there was some sort of silicone-like substance all within the lower shell and under the screw base. If I find another, I'll try dismantling it a little less destructively. Otherwise, mine is like the first? one that has transformer, etc. on vertical board that plugs into the LED panel.

    Now to go look up Adrian's video… 🙂

  6. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Marcos Lucas says:

    Clive am falling in love with your videos. Yesterday I found the same led lamp as you showed. You answered all my Doubts. Thank you so much!! Keep the good content up!

  7. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Bradford Risbert says:

    i have a 9 watt led plate. i completely removed the current sence resistor and it became a dark night lamp that provides just enough light to find my way around in the dark and not disturb my sleep. my style of tweaking components here is by placing it over a candle at reasonable height and then using a tweezer to remove things. then when soldering tiny things, i may mask the surroundings with some paper tape to not overflow solder in the surrounding areas. they also place these things over an iron and perform surgery.

  8. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars MementoMori says:

    The gate on the audio is incredibly annoying lol

  9. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars JaniLintu says:

    Easy way to remove the "screw housing" is to screw it into a lamp socket until it starts to tighten, then loosen it a bit and just pull so that the housing gets stuck in the socket and you can easily unscrew it.

  10. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars lookoutleo says:

    20 ohm sense resistor , mines 2.7 ohm the chip looks very similar, might try a 20 ohm , it's strange , mine has 10 LEDs in series and meant to be 10w

  11. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Jason McKain says:

    thanks Clive. RLTW!!

  12. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Damascus Squared says:

    I've seen self regulating ones where the light board only has the LEDs and resistors and the regulating circuitry is on a breakout board shoved into a slot under the board and down into the socket

  13. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Dara Parsi says:

    The 27 ohm resistor may be used as inexpensive fuse specially when is covered by heat shrink .

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