It's now about 6 years since I first featured this extremely dangerous product that is commonly available on eBay Sadly, it is still available on eBay. Let me demonstrate it first and then I'll show you why it's so dangerous. So it's basically it's a camping light that you can use this Spotlight in the end or if you slide the cover up, it lights this sort of area light inside and automatically shuts off when it was in and you can also charge USB devices. It's got a solar panel on top.

it turns the solar panel with just six cells. putting out about 3 volts is probably only just for that little red LED there that you can see glowing. Um, but you plug into the mains and you can charge it from the Main's Supply in this case 240 volts. But watch watch what happens if I plug something into the USB port and just leave this sticking out a bit so I can actually get a connection onto it.

shows about 4.08 Vols and we plug this into a outlet and this this generic Chinese tester and then rather than go from Earth to the output of this because that would trip the Rcd or GFCI I shall go turn this on and I shall put this into the neutral and I shall go onto the grounded output of this and the LED. Well, the Led the lamp. It's a Tungsten lamp. It lights up showing the output of that is live at Main's voltage.

That is a huge issue because it means that if you uh, were to have this plugged into the Main's charging or Worse still a small child was to have it into the Main's charging and you were to use your phone and it didn't have uh, one of the sort of generic covers over it. It was just a bare metal case because the case of phones tends to be a metal internal skeleton so to speak. Then when you plugged it in, the metal skeleton will become live at Main's voltage. And if you touched a grounded object or you were grounded, your hand would clamp onto your phone and you would not be able to let go.

Um, and it could result in electrocution. Let's take a look inside this. these have been available for so long I' would be interested to see if anything really radical has changed. so let's take a a look in the bottom.

First we have the typical Luxian star style. LED I Was going to say it' been okay for bits but even the reflectors really bad quality. It has a little tactile switch here. hold on, let's unscrew that.

Oh let's just unscrew the whole thing now. So take the little switch off first. it's got a little clicky tactile switch which uh is controlling the lights inside and that Uh is pressed by a ramp. When you slide this up, a little ramp down here presses that in um to get it further apart, you take this screw out at the back trying to remember how these things came apart and once you've taken this screw and it's pack out big long screw, then everything else should more or less come apart.

I think yep, revealing the charge Suer tree. Um, with its a capacitive dropper going straight, the circuitry is just going straight out to the USB under the solar panel. there will be uh, hold on, let's get that off the typical nickel metal hydride cells. I think the Nikto hydride.

Let's see if we can get this panel off. So there they are. Uh, righto tell you what it is. just three Nical Hydr type cells.

Tell you what. I'm going to take this out and reverse engineer it I'll be back in one moment one moment please. Reverse engineering is complete and as always with these products, it was full of exciting treats. If we take a look at the circuit board, there's not much on it.

If anything, there's this superflous diode which is not needed cuz they've not used it at all. That must have upset their accountant and the supply to this circuit board comes in here. One leg goes straight to the bridge Rec far. The other leg goes via a drop capacitor with a discharge resistor across it so you don't get little nasty tingles off the pins of the plug.

that then goes to the other end of the bridge re far and that goes straight out to the mystery cells that might be Nial Hydra but they might not be rechargeables, but it goes straight out there and the USB port and the LEDs. There's an LED here for showing the charging status of the 1K resistor in series and it will light when it's charging and also when the solar panel makes it light, but that's all the solar panel does. Let's take a look at the schematic. So here's the incoming Supply on this very very excruciatingly thin cable that is copper coated steel, so that's going to have a nice high resistance, especially given how thin it is that's going to burst into flames if things go wrong.

The solar panel is also notable for being plastic instead of a fiberglass one with six tiny little slivers. uh, putting out 3 volts at 20 milliamps which is all that's needed for this particular application. So the incoming Supply uh goes to the brid re far direct one leg. Uh, if this is live then that poses the highest risk of getting a bad electric shock.

If the live goes to this one, it's all. Basically it's Russian Roulette which way around this plug goes, it will be via this capacitor and you get a shock which will be significant but not uh, probably about 20ish milliamps which is not let go current but not also not trip the Rcd or GFCI current in some instances. So it's limited by this capacitor on each half cycle goes to the brid direct far, no capacitor, it goes straight to the mystery cells. I Did did put these in my Nicom Metal Hydride well, universal battery charger and it instantly well it.

It ran the test and it said 10 milliamps and I thought that's not right. So I thought I'll give them all a charge and it just instantly rejected all three of them. Uh, not sure what these are. The voltage seems quite High out the packet so to speak for Nic Metal Hydride I Have a horrible feeling that alkaline or Zinc chloride that have just been badged up to look like that.

There's the Uh stack of cells. Whatever they are, there's the USB port. there's the LEDs for the Uh Spotlight and the area light with their switches but no resistors cuz they're just relying on the impedance of the cells. here.

there's the charge indicator LED with its 1K resistor and when it's charging from the mains, this end LED is positive. but this end will be alternating positive and negative as the AC polarity changes and will make it light up when it's charging from that. But there's also the little tiny solar panel which is connected directly across the LED and resistor so that it makes the LED light without putting any current into these mystery cells at all. Maybe that's a good thing.

although it's already getting current put in by the charger, there's the diode that's not actually used. they connected that lead straight to the positive I'm guessing that originally a diode was considered needed to protect against damaging the solar panels with a high reverse voltage or something that. uh. But having said that, the voltage from this circuit will be capped theoretically by the cells that it's trying to charge.

so they've just basically omitted that diode. They've not connected it, and that means they can get away with one less sliver of silicon to actually make the LED light up. H It's very odd. very strange.

So there we have it. It's an interesting I Guess it's a ripoff of someone else's product and they've just made it super cheap. Uh, to the point of basically almost being hilariously cheap and nasty and dangerous. So I wonder if these have caused accidents? eBay If you go in, the listing says report this listing.

uh, and it gives you the option. It gives you four options: copyright and trademark listing practices, price gouging, and prohibited and restricted items. The only one of those that comes close is prohibited and restricted items. It's not.

It's a dangerous item when you go to that option, it's just things like bits that you've stol off people's graveyards and then sold gravestones and then sold on eBay and other and guns and things like that, but nothing really. Obviously for reporting a dangerous product. There's a possibility they may have considered that at some point, but didn't do it because of the number of people who just basically look for anything to report everything. But there we go.

Interesting and scary product. I'll do some more tests on the cells and we'll see what happens, but that is it. It's quite a spicy, dangerous thing. It's been on sale so far for six years, and there's probably no sign of it being taken down anytime in the near future.

So there we go. Interesting stuff.