Led filaments, why just go for straight lines when you can have shapes and that's what this company has done, and i've already seen these appearing inside lamps not only online, but also in a shop house in glasgow. John lewis had a lamp with a star in the middle and it was clearly this arrangement and what we actually have here is little thin circuit boards and they've got flip chips mounted on them, and then this pool of silicone with the phosphor in it and although They're only populated one side, they do light quite evenly on both sides. Now taiwan gon na zoom down this the flames, incidentally, are the main subject this video, because these are something very, very special. Let me zoom down on this and then i shall turn off the light.

You can see they're quite smart. They are very neat, i'm just gon na flip them over and just see slight dimmer, the other side, not sure. Actually, it doesn't look too bad, but that's just the construction uh, it's very, very simple, very clever watch your eyes. The light is coming back.

Okay: let's take a look at the flame version, because the flame version is notable for having a little microcontroller stuff in the bottom of it and if you've seen the name flicka flame lamps, which it's basically two metal plates inside a glass-filled globe. A glass filled group. A glass globe with neon gas in it and it causes instability of the discharge. This is the new version of that.

So i'm going to just power this up and show you, because it's actually pretty smart. Now i'm going to have to turn the voltage up a little bit because there is a slight drop over the microcontroller. I should just pin that down because they're very light, and they just want to go everywhere. So let me just turn this up to a sensible current i'll turn it up to what looks, visual and you'll see the sort of random element that it just licks up the up to the top of the flame right.

Tell you what i'm going to get you closer to this, so you can actually see it better. One moment please and that's pretty close, as you can see, there's a bit of variation effect. It does have repeating elements, but that's because there are six distinct groups of leds, but it doesn't just go like pulse pulse pulse all the time it does have some randomness to it. It's follows a fairly long sequence.

True randomization would be quite nice, but let's take a closer look at this. Let's actually analyze the circuit board watch your eyes. The light is about to come back. So, let's start by taking a look at the circuitry inside these, so the basic ones that don't animate are simply an array of leds in parallel.

So the parcel star and bell are just flip chips, basically tied across the two connection pins here. One of them is marked negative, something worth mentioning about the flame. There are no polarity markings, it's the one that really is the most crucial for polarity as well. That's quite annoying, but not to worry i'll.

Show you the correct connection of it and things that you can do to avoid blowing up if you connect the reverse polarity. So these things it says, they're rated three volts, but i would say that you want to put a resistor or something in series or a current limited supply. I wouldn't just bang them across three volts because they will draw as much current as they can well. 20.

Milliamps per flip chip led typically, which adds up to quite a lot. Maybe they are rated for that. Maybe they are designed to be run at high current, but i just thought i got very uncomfortable about the intensity they were going up to. So i recommend using a resistor in sears of them or another current limited supply.

The flame lamp has the supply grain and it goes straight to a microcontroller typical, eight pin chip same pin out as the pic 12, but also the same pin out as many many others. It's not marked, and the output then drives leds directly with the leds connected uh, as parallel arrays of between five and six leds, uh disconnected to the positive rail and then pulled to the negative rail in the microcontroller. So, let's take a look at the actual circuit board itself, because i shaved all the uh shmoo off the back of this one. So we could get a good close look at it.

So i'll put the notepad out the way and bring in the pictures. So the first picture shows the flame as it is right. I'm going to zoom down this just a little bit. There's the microcontroller! This is the positive pin.

This is the negative pin note that don't connect the wrong way around, because these do have protection diodes in them and it may actually fry it. I have probed onto this to see the leds in here. I basically went with my meter on its diode test. I went from positive and then probed other pins and i was able to get each set of leds to glow dimly, but i also trace them on the inside i'll.

Show you a sort of x-ray of this as taken from the back and then flipped around and then sort of enhanced, so uh, that's what it is. We have the i'll turn around this way, because it's kind of easier for this bit now the flame. Has these bits undulating at the bottom, they tend to waver backwards and forwards. Uh i'll turn it over.

The other way see, there's not really that much difference in brightness. Is there from one side to other that's surprising, because the leds are just on one side: it's relying purely on the light shining through the thin circuit board material. How thin is that where's, my calipers - these calipers are probably not high enough resolution for this, but i shall prep prohibit azure private 0.4, millimeters 3.5 0.5.4, something a bit small, but the light does shine through and then there's another layer of the phosphor gel in the Back i had that somewhere here, i've misplaced it not to worry, because i just peeled off the knife and then cleaned it thoroughly and then actually put some lacquer on it too. After sanding off the residue, i'm sure the manufacturer will not be delighted at me doing that.

But these are the arrays of leds with two distinct patches here and then that one at the top just to give that sort of licking up to the top of the flame effect. Now, let's take it, take a look at the x-ray of it if we x-ray it, let's try and brighten this image up a wee bit, that's better! If we create, we see that the chip, the pads oddly the negative, has a track. That goes all the way up here to the top and then just ends. It has no purpose unless they left their option open to solder a little capacitor across the end for in case of processor and stability.

But the main thing that we're looking for here is the positive pad here. It goes straight onto this pad micro, drawer negative goes on to that pad of micro drawer, but the positive then has a bus that runs up the outside here and then feeds these leds. Here, loops down and then uh gives the common positive to these leds too. So that covers three of the groups.

The other positive comes from the inside. It's because of the way they had to allow for these tracks from the other pins going out. It comes inside and just does one two three, these three sections at the bottom here and after that they're just tied into the uh, the microcontroller, and it's quite neat that the pin out is basically one two three i'll make sure come into scene here. It's staying short one, two, three, four, five, six they're in sequence, which is quite sort of nice that they've done it that way.

Um these are just groups of five uh. This one kind of starts spreading out. I'm not sure what the effect of that one is. Yeah and then there's the little patches here and then the six leds at the top, which will be slightly dimmer as a result of that, but then it is just a licking flame.

It's quite neat very neat, so i shall provide a link to these in the description. I could see these um finding their way into things like chandeliers, where you've just got like loads of the glass lamps of these little flames, flicking away and they're going to be well, i'm going to say they're going to be simpler than the old neon ones. They're going to be simpler to manufacture because it is just the circuit board and they don't have to worry about filling with the gas, but it does have a microcontroller which does make it more complicated. But then again the neon ones actually had a special coating on the electrodes.

They were quite complex and they usually usually had a smoking hot resistor in the base as well to limit the current they weren't super efficient. These ones should be. I mean this one is running at about three and a half volts at 30 milliamps. So it's really not that much current, not much power at all yeah neat, but there we go.

I shall provide the link in the description down below and it'll, be interesting to see how things like this evolve, because it's a very smart little led circuit board.