Let's start this video by taking a look at this small dancing flame candle that we're about to take apart. This is the simplest little unit I've ever seen and it came from a Hardee's Hardware in um Cathcart Road Glasgow So now we've seen operating, let's open it up. So looking closer, this is the classic dancing flame effect. It's got this moving flame on a support wire with a slight dip near the back so it centers um Biden gravity just near the back of the candle.

In front lighting it is an LED and from the lurid yellow I Thought this was going to be a standard gallium Arsenide type yellow LED but it's actually a Phosphor LED which means they could have actually used a nice natural Warm White for this, but they haven't. The Power is an absolutely miserable set of three LR44 style alkaline button cells and they, um, basically just power everything well, as you'd expect, and they're not really going to last that long. Also, do you see it glitching there? Sometimes it does that. it just randomly glitches until it stabilizes.

Seems the circuitry is very minimalistic. Let's pop the bottom of it and this is just pressed in and once you've got the bottom off that you can then press the top out and it just pops out to reveal the module. And to be honest, this is worth getting just the module alone. However, the module has a little socket board in here with the coil underneath for deflecting the flame magnetically and then it's got the LED going up here.

And if we prize this open if I can price this open, let me grab a pair of pliers and we'll just inherent try prizing this apart. It's just pushed together, it's not glued in any way. This is good. So here we have the circuit board with the LED and we'll take a closer look at the Hat.

Now draw you the schematic. Not, there's much a schematic. And then here's the wire. which is just basically it looks like a bent staple.

It's basically just um, placed into two little holes in this casing with that recess at the back. So it really does look a bit. oh, I've just dropped it. It does look just like a staple you could post if you're a 3D printing one.

you could actually use a staple for that or just a bit of Benchmark The flame itself is a little counterbalance weight. It's kind of well balanced. and then it's got a new dim arm Boron magnet in the bottom in the middle. Uh, to be deflected by this tiny little coil.

Here, the circuit board is not that exciting. It has the looted yellow LED that's the first thing that I'd change in. This is uh, I'd put in a more goldeny, warm white one that closely matched candle color and then it's got a little blob chip and it's got a coil. Let me show you the schematic for this.

So I'll move that stuff out the way and bring in the schematic. This is take two I Really messed up. take one. but the time I'd opened it I thought we only might as well just uh, continue on from where I left off.

So here are the button cells. There's the switch and then the LED is clamped right across the Button cell. so it's relying on their internal impedance to limit the current so that ends up about three volts here. That's why if I turn this on, you may see if I point this at the table, you may see it dips rhythmically I Don't know if that is showing is the definition, but um, what's happening is that the the capped three volt Supply I mean to be honest, I'd want to put a resistor in line with this LED and particularly if you decide to convert this to see a USB power supply.

but the supply then Powers The Blob chip just basically a little resin blob over a chip bonded directly onto the circuit board and there is a 370 ohm coil and roughly up just this. Just visually assessing from the dipping on the LED I think it energizes the coil one in four so that basically for a count of four, it's energized for one and then off for two three four one two three four one two three four and it just keeps dipping it like that. It may be one and eight, but I'm not sure it's going to be a binary number because this thing will have an oscillator in it and then just a binary counter and then some logic. And the fact that, uh, it sort of glitched initially when I turned on there suggests that the logic is not initially stable, but once it's stabilized, it will get into that rhythm of one in four and that is it.

So it's a very simple thing. The best bit of this is this module because it does let you customize it to your own requirements and uh, once you've done that, uh, you can have your own, your choice of color, and, uh, perhaps even adjust the by putting a resistor here. You could also adjust the Um Force position which the flame was detected. You could tame it up or down I'm not sure what the maximum voltage of this will be because if you were to splay this with a a USB power supply um and then put a resistor in Sears the LED It means the voltage up there a bit higher.

I'm not sure what this will be rated for. Maybe it is capped at three volts by Design or maybe it would accommodate that higher voltage. You could always add a diode or turn in series just to bring the voltage down, but that is it. It's a very simple, nice little unit.

It was very cheap. Very cheap indeed. It was only about two pounds. Um, but it is.

You know it just needs these improvements done, because at the moment it's that classic, lurid yellow. Even though they've used the Phosphor LED and could have used any other color, it just seems that they've stabilized on thinking for some reason electronic candle should be bright yellow. But there we have it. The cheapest dancing flame LED candle ever.

It's actually pretty neat.