I'll start this video by showing you what these lights look like and before i turn the light off, so you can actually see what they look like in the dark. I'll warn you they are flashing, so there's going to be a bit of flashing going on. Let's take a look at them in the dark and i have to say it's a nice enough effect. It's a really common effect for the chinese lights.

They tend to use just alternating, color, red, blue or green red, and it just alternates between the two colors one of them, though, where is it i can't there is there i decide to do red and green simultaneously, so it's actually putting out both colors at once And not flashing, which is a nice enough effect and someone right, okay back to the main video, so the reason i bought these lights is. I was quite taken by the covers, and it's nicer still that you can unscrew these caps. They can be reused and inside is the classic mains voltage style light. It's got little resistor in series of six the caps and then it's got a focused, led uh on the end that shines through this sort of slightly grubby.

Looking it's it's not a nice finish in the plastic. I wonder if they could clean up, but it projects that pattern. It's okay in a dark room. It's not too bad um.

The listing for these. Let me just grab that they came from ebay, 12, led stage fairy garland string, lights, wedding, christmas party, decor, uh, hot sale, etc. Again, the price has gone up since i got the m8 pound 75. It's a wee bit cheaper than that um and that's about all.

I can really say about them: let's take a look at the power supply, so i shall unplug these. I plugged them into this little adapter, because when it arrived they were dead and the wiring is excruciatingly thin. There are components that cause me a bit of concern. This is a one amp using it.

It lessens the bang. You guys want a bang, but that's fine you're, not getting one. This instance not yet anyway. So that's it flex.

Is it connected with excruciatingly thin cable to this little power supply, which uh? The fault was that the excruciatingly thin cable had actually detached in there. It was just floating on the main side, but inside here let me just uh zoom up in this and then focus on it. That's all you're, getting it's a bridge rectifier with a capacitor across the output. I thought it was going to be a very simple capacitive dropper using a very pushed capacitor, but instead that is across the outputs that little capacitor there is seeing the fuel mains voltage, but it is low value.

It's only 10 nano farad, let's uh zoom back out and go back down to there, so that then feeds the usual arrangement. It's quite odd here, because there's three wires coming out. This might just be so it holds its shape better, but there's three wires coming out, but it's basically just forming a series loop around these and of the six caps. The first five of them have that little resistor tucked inside and the resistor is tiny.

It's one of the little eight sport resistors and the value is quite high as usual. With these, the color code is yellow green red, which is quite odd, and that suggests, if i'm reading it from the right end at which i will be here, because that would be enormous, otherwise, yellow green red is going to be four five two. So four five and two zeros four thousand five hundred ohms and that's fundamentally it the leds they're using the self-flash leds. The reason they've got that little capacitor across the output is because, if they don't have a certainly some capacitance as the mains crosses the zero crossing point, these would all reset they just stay in one color.

Can i demonstrate that i could demonstrate that. Couldn't i i wonder what if that would be like? Let's say: let's do that one moment please, so i just hugged the capacitor and they are actually still flashing. It must just be the capacitance of the cable. Uh is enough to do this because, usually with these things, uh you'll find they.

They alternate backwards and forwards, particularly the color change ones, and then they just keep resetting randomly to the first color, but in this instance they seem to be doing. Okay, that's all right! Another thing i found out: sometimes these lights, when sunshine hits them if you've got them strung up in a room and some light comes through will actually interrupt their operation, particularly if they're on the edge with this, so that little capacitor wasn't super needed. Okay, tell you what i'm going to show you the schematic for this, so you can see how they're wired and here it is main supply coming they're rated for 220 volts, i'm just going to lick my finger, and this is probably unhappy, but no. The clouding appears to be inside of that, or is it the solvent that's been used as actually the vapor of the solvent has actually made the plastic a bit sort of matte.

It's not it's, not optically good, but it's good enough. You can see the sort of effect the the studio light shining on it. Uh do you know what i also want to try now i want to get this off and stick a light in the end and fire it through it and see yeah. It creates dots.

It creates a nice pattern and you shine a decent power light through it, but anyway redirect far converts the ac to dc. There is that little capacitor to try and improve stability. Then they've got these uh resistors in the first of the six leds and then it's just the leds in series. For some reason they did include that extra core that just basically runs in parallel.

To one end, it's very strange, but if you work out the six four thousand five hundred ohm resistors and the fact that hopper is displaying an rms value about eight milliamps means that the dissipation works out as roughly 288 milliwatts per resistor. Let's say 0.3 watt. I would only rate these resistors as being an eighth of a watt. It's a shame.

They didn't actually put a resistor in series with every single one, but i see this a lot in the cheapy chinese lights. They're almost designed for those resistors to fail - and you do see, sets that been in use a long time, strung up in shops uh those resistors have gone black inside the sleeving and failed uh. Maybe it's just a way to make them feel quicker. That sounds conspiracy.

Theorist, doesn't it, but that's it. I got them for the covers. The covers are not as clear as they could be, but on that it's quite a nice little cap and it's designed they've obviously put the wires through. I don't think they've yeah they've put the wires through and then they've terminated it into the sleeve.

So it then can't come back out again usually arrange a big blob of soda, huge blob of solder inside that resistor. But there we go. They were worth getting to take a look at they're, not particularly inspiring, but having said that, as you saw at the beginning of the video, they do kind of look: okay, they're, not bad they're, a nice visual effect, um and very typical of the sort of lights That you get from china, you get these little strings of odd ones, with a small number of caps. Some of them do have a bit more circuitry in here.

They'll have a slightly bigger module with a passive dropper in it, but a lot of them just seem to work on a bridge rectifier and then just resistors in series with leds.