Let's take a look at a rather neat uh bright LED Beam light bar by the brand prism. This one came from a local shop called One Beyond and it's incredibly cheap for what it is. Let me show you it if you notice the sound is different uh, and the appearance is different. It's because I'm in a different location from normal I've just switched this on, but that's okay.

it is Bach operated. It takes three ablea cells and this thing coincidentally cost 3, which is actually quite surprising. It's a bar that is designed to mount onto the wall. I Suppose you could just leave it freestanding and IT projects three beams of light.

Now it's not going to look too bright now because it's being swamped out with the lighting. It's just an ambient light. but I shall show you it. well.

I'll show you it right now. one moment, please. This is better. It has a red, green, blue, and orangey colored.

LED This is the Diest one. Um, but that's a hackable. I Think we'll find out when we open it and it basically projects these beams up a wall and where they intersect. you get the color mixing like a sort of yellow color here.

I should have checked the color balance before actually doing this. Not to worry, but as you if you point it a w, you're not not going to get these three beams. What you're actually going to get is something looks like this. the circle overlapping, creating.

uh, ultimately, as I pull it further and further away, just a wash of sort of pink colored light. It's attractive in its own right, but this thing has uses, right? Okay, watch your eyes and bring the light back and we'll take it apart. Begin the exploration. Don't hold your breath.

This is not going to be terribly sophisticated, but that's okay. It makes it more hackable in a way. So I shall take out the screw at Each corner I Can't believe they're actually selling this for 3 one! Uh, Beyond is kind of like a pound store that was originally uh, Pound World, but then they sold it to an investment company who then destroyed it and then they started again as a one below and then it changed to one. Beyond So if I take the cover off, this is it going to fall to bits or all the lens is going to pop out.

It's not too bad. so the positive from the battery. Well, actually it doesn't really matter here because the two connects to the battery are red. Here are the lenses.

they just pop out useful enough and don't go back in again. They will go back in again. And the circuit board it has has 1, 2, 3, 4, LEDs little, uh, the 2835 type ones and then four resistors. Let me just check the Val of those resistors assuming I can find my magnifier one moment please I have checked the values.

They're wildly different I would normally expect for the lower voltage LEDs because there's more voltage to be dropped, you usually have a higher resistor in reality because the efficiency of Gallium nitrite. LEDs The green and the blue have much higher values than the Uh red and the yellow. So I have drawn the schematic out here and it looks like this: Make sure this is in Focus We have the red and yellow LEDs which have a 12 Ohm resistor and they're pushing quite a lot of current through them. The green because it's the highest visual output color is 390 ohms which is massive and the blue is 200 ohms.

So in a way it would be kind of nice to hack these to just use all Gallum nitride colors because you could lower the current dramatically because Um I would expect. Well tell you what, I'll measure the current through these and draw onto the schematic one. Amendment The tests have been done and it's a staggering current variation because all the resistors are different value values for each Led. The red and yellow are being driven at much higher current.

For instance, they have 12 ohm resistors, the green is the 390 Ohm and the blue is a 100 ohm and that equates to Uh 150 milliamps the yellow one versus 3.8 milliamps the green one that is 12.5 times the current for the dimmest LED versus the brightest. and the blue at 12 milliamps is a fairly sensible level. The red has being pushed really hard at 106 milliamps, so they have abused the LEDs to try and get the intensity up to match the green and the blue. It does seem to make sense that it would be viable in.

well, maybe forer cars would have been a better option for that. The blue chips with the yellow and red phosphor could have been a lot brighter. I Know, the the phosphor base yellow tends to look quite good, but that's interesting. It's certainly hackable.

Certainly, you could, um, remove these LEDs fairly easily. It's a single sided circuit board. um, the red one yellow one are being pushed so hard that you know they might not last that long anyway. Um, and you could replace them with something more appropriate.

It wouldn't be too hard to sold onto these and then change the resistors to match as well. but that is it. Well, 2022. That's not a bad.

The 13th day of the 10th month. All the dates and everything. That's quite good, But there we have it. Uh, for the money 3 It's incredibly cheap.

It represents good value just for something to play about with. and uh, have some fun modifying if needs be. Pretty darn good.