In poundland in the uk, if you go for a pack of the led lamps you can choose, i are the ultra bright, which are a bit cheaper than the kodak. These ones are rated six watt equal to 40 watt. These ones are 10 watt rated equivalent to 60 watt uh, and i decided, let's take a look at the kodak ones and we'll see what the quantity is like. We shall see if it's hackable so first of all, let's test one.

So i shall pop a lamp out uh. Incidentally, it says this is very optimistic, given this style of lamp uh 806 lumens warm white three-year guarantee, drink they're, going to honor that i think you might get your money back, but i'm not really sure. I think they rely on people just not getting their money back. Let's bring the hoppy up and we'll test it and see what the power that rating actually is.

So this is supposed to be 10 watts. I shall screw it in and we'll see what it actually is and then we'll see if we can hack it we'll see what the circuitry is like inside and hack it the bits and see. If we can reduce the power, it's it's lit, uh. It says 10.79 watts 0.6 power factor which is average yeah, that is about 10 watts, so just over 10, let's say the best part of 11 watts.

So if it's based on the usual thing that these are, it will probably self-regulate back a little bit if it gets too hot, by which time all the leds are emitting smoke right, it feels the same as the others. It's got that super lightweight filter. Let's spudger it so the spudger slips down the side and then by slicing it round it will theoretically cut to the silicon, possibly cut me as well. We'll see what happens i'll.

Try not to do that. Is it going to come off at that they're going to come off at that? No, i was over ambitious. Let's give it another go. Oh scratch is scratchy.

Hopefully, it is one of these ones that has the two resistors in the linear regulator, because that was would be a very easy hack. A lot of these lamps are just branded with prominent brands. Okay, so one two three four, five, six, seven, eight leds. Let's work out the dissipation of each led, so that was best part of 11 watts divided by eight equals they're dissipating about 1.4 watts, each, which is quite a lot for a little 2835 led.

These will be multi-chip leds. So where is my magnifying glass? Oh, there is the rectifier. There is the little linear regulator i'll take a picture of this, so we can take a closer look one moment please: okay, let's explore so. I've blown up the image of the lamp here and the mains comes on here.

It's got the little insert through this aluminium pcb, and that goes straight to the bridge rectifier. Here there will be a series resistor in that uh, typically around about 10 to 30 ohms. It goes through the bridge right targets converted into the dc, goes straight to this uh through circuit board, connector for a capacitor, so there'll be an electrolytic capacitor on the other side, and that has got a discharge resistor across that also poses a slight load 560k. It prevents the ghost the ghost glowing of the lamps when you've got a two-way, switching uh.

The positive goes through all the leds, and these are multi-chip leds, and then it comes back to this regulator, chip which is a jw1981 - and that then, is the tab connected to the negative, and it also has a 15 ohm sense resistor. Now it's got positions for two resistors, but in this instance it must have been a nice round value they've just used one normally they'd use two just to get a fine-tuned value, and that is a resistor we're going to have to change things worth noting. Each of these led positions is unpopulated. Uh is bridging out the two leds it's in between.

So supposing you wanted to just make this a four led lamp? You could remove all these leds and just put one two three four in either on the lower voltage lamp. Like 120 volt or you could use the larger arrays of leds, because these chips don't just can well, they contain one piece of the led substrate, but it's got multiple leds that snake batteries and forwards along it, and that just means that each led is light effectively Loads of leds in series and typically they'll, add up to the case the uk about 300 volts. So for that it would be eight leds, so about 300 volts, roughly uh, divided by eight leds, is about 37.5 divided by about three volts across them. Probably about 12 chips in each of these, so that will be a little four by three array: uh that just zigzags backwards and forwards.

It's a really common way of doing it these days, but it also means these chips get very, very hot, which means they don't. Last very long, which is why we're going to fix it? The other thing you could do suppose you wanted to make it a 7 led lamp instead of the 8. You could just put one of these leds here and just emit these two, and that would give you seven and likewise, if you wanted say six, you could keep the four leds at this side and then just populate those two positions, and it just means they've got Loads of combinations that they can do for skimping on leds or adjusting for different supply voltages. So here's what i'm going to do, i'm going to desolder this cinch resistor, which is 15 ohms.

Well, i'm just going to cut it off in fact, and then i'm going to solder another resistor across now. This lamp was rated about 10 or 11 watts i like to aim for three watts for these lamps, because it makes them run a lot cooler and they'll. Last a lot longer bring some mouth in the ratings, so i'm going to triple the value of that up to about. Well, that would be 45 ohms.

The closest value is 47 ohms. I'm going to put that in and i reckon that's going to be say about three and a half watts. We shall find out i'm about to do it right now and then we can test it. So here is the bit i'm going to be working on.

Let's zoom down in this and focus on it, which would be really good uh. Can i get close without it again getting too greeny it might get grainy. It tends to revert to digital zoom, i'm going to actually just cut that led off because it's easier than desoldering it, because, unfortunately, these aluminium substrate pcbs tend to be quite uh absorbent for heat. That's the point of them.

They will dissipate the heat so well that it makes it very very hard to solder on them. So let's bring that into shot, and i shall bring the soldier iron in look for the soda that i had earlier on. There's a bit there and i shall put it onto these pads and try to remove what was left of that before, hopefully, by soldering onto the the existing solder, it's going to make it easier to get a connection. That's not happening.

The sorting station says what the heck one moment please and resume back once again with the renegade master d4 destroyer power to the people. As the song goes, uh thermocouple, conked out in the soda in there it was showing weird temperatures different handle on now uh. This is a lot better. This is so much better.

Yes, it is right. Tell you what i'm not going to be too pretty about this, because it doesn't have to be too pretty. I shall shape this resistor like something along the lines of that right. Okay and i shall crop the lid down and then solder it onto that, using the existing soldering pads, because they've got soda on them.

It provides a slight buffer between the the sodium iron and the um aluminium substrate, which means it just makes it a little bit easier to solder. The one thing you don't want to do: these open circuit isn't so bad. It's not ideal short circuit is bad because a short circuit stops at sensing the current and it will. I think it will have a default uh emergency current threshold inside, but it's not ideal, don't do it other things happening tonight.

The windows has decided that it's just not going to recognize any networks, wi-fi networks, that's splendid. Let's say i shall try and resolve that afterwards i was trying to update a little router or router, as you might see, elsewhere. Uh right, let's see if i can get this soldered again, not gon na, be too pretty i'm not too bothered as long as it tacks on it's reasonably good. That should be it right, which i have done.

It is tacked on right. I shall zoom out again zoom, let's plug it in and see what the power is, this time or indeed, if it just goes bang so in goes the hobby where's my little pink lamp holder, i shall screw this into the lamp holder, complete with its floating 47 Ohm resistor and i shall plug it in, and the power has dropped to 4.5 watts, which is a bit higher than i was expecting, but it's still okay, it could go higher than that. Another thing i noticed about this is that it can it's a very standard housing. It will take my standard 3d printed crystals, which is quite nice.

It makes really nice lights, but really i'd be wanting to lower the power down a bit more. For that, should we try another resistor? Maybe we should try a hundred ohm. Tell you what i shall try a 100 ohm resistor in this one moment. Please: okay, resistor change, let's screw it in uh.

So what are your guesses? This time it went from 11 watts down to 4.5, when i change from 15 ohm to 47. This is gon na be about two or three watts: 2.3 watts, that's ideal, to be fair. With the 47 ohm resistor at half the power. This is still fairly bright.

It's competing with the sort of studio lighting here, uh good for these ornate caps, but this would definitely you know by adjusting the power, if you say you were to half the power, as i did before, with the 47 ohm resistor. That will considerably extend the life of like exponentially um and improve the efficiency of the lamp. When you go even lower like i've done here, it goes from being. The lamp goes from being a sort of like a a large area, illumination lamp to a sort of sort of cupboard, a sort of corridor type lamp, but the lifespan will be massive now because the lamp is running at a fraction of its original power.

I just want to see what that looks like with its cover back on noting that you should really sort of glue the cover back on. If you do, this stuff also shall write on it. The power that i have changed it to uh where's, the pen. It's now 2.3 watt, 2.3 watt.

It has been dubied, it has been hacked so um yeah, it's not as easy a hack as the lamps that have the two resistors in them. But you know it's still a a fairly straightforward hack. You just have to put that quarter, watt, resistor or other surface mount resistors in easy enough to open it's just basically, it's a standard lamp, the kodak brandy on, isn't it, but there we go that was worth exploring and worth hacking. That is the kodak 10 watt lamp from deals and poundland.