Let's take a look at some push through 12 Volt LED same pixels I've featured the five volt ones of these before and I thought I'd get the 12 volt ones because I wondered have they just basically taken an ordinary LED and used a higher value resistor and it's just wasting the extra energy as heat. It turns out the answer is no and that also explains why all these LEDs are based on phosphor coated chips except the blue, which is the native color of the chip they've used which is a triple chip LED on one piece of air the LED material. So the idea is that you drill holes in your signage and this is where you want a basic rule of pixels. You could outline lettering, you could have a border and you do get these.

The Christmas lighting industry loves the color changing ones, but these are nice simple single color ones. Quite cheap and just but. There's no fancy control system, but the idea is to you drill holes new material typically about eight millimeters diameter, but that will vary depending the material and then you physically just push them through the aggrommet and they click into place and it gives you a sharp point of light in front of the sign. Um, The other advantage of this is that if you've got the Led, the 12 volt neon type material, the fact these are 12 volt means that that's compatible with that.

You can basically just intermix off a single power supply in different sections of the same. another. Advantage is the reduced current versus the 5 volt stuff. This runs at roughly about half the current, which means that technically speaking, you can run longer strings off it uh, without worrying about the voltage drop along that.

So now we've seen them lit. I'll show you before I Go too far. The fact it's three chips per LED also has a slight disadvantage. Watch this: If I turn the voltage down, you'll see that all LEDs have gone out except for this one and the reason for that is that that's a triple chip LED with one filled chip in it.

these came from EB by the way. I feel should mention that it's probably a dumpster LED section. but I have done the computations based on one chip being shorted out and it's actually not too bad. Even at 12 volt, the current through this isn't too bad.

So let me, uh, show you a picture of the inside of the one of these modules because I took one to bits I should say the green. Incidentally, it's quite a ferocious cold green. It's not a soft apple green, but the orange. The yellow, the yellowy orange, and the red are both very, very warm.

Other colors are good, not so clean. the green, but that's just you know my preference. Perhaps I should turn these off and I should stick them out the way because I have opened one of them and it's notable. the LED inside, uh, in the red ones, it's a five millimeter neutrality, but in the other colors, it's actually a little four millimeter LED.

Let me show you what's inside: I shall Zoom down in this: I shall Focus down on that as well and we'll get an in and close. So what we have in here? The classic thing? It's the tiny little circuit board. There's a three six one, so that's three six and one zero. 360 Ohm Resistor in series with the LED and you get the loop out contact.

So the two power cables come into it and then the two go out and the basically the positives just come the other side and the negatives common on this side. The little plus symbol is for the LED and there is the housing with its backstop and then the front flaps that fold down when you push it through the hole and then kind of ping back up again to lock it in place. or maybe actually just stay down. Not sure the best way.

I Guess it could be using thin Metals but it could also be used just wedged in with these acting as a little sort of Ratchet and these acting as a stop for thicker Plastics and stuff like that or thicker metals if we take a look at the inside of the LED because I looked at one through a microscope to see what was inside. I looked one of the blue ones because it doesn't have any phosphor inside. Each of the LEDs is this chip. It's not very big if if that's the LED cup, uh, the chips about that size inside it and it's divided into three sections.

The negative comes on here to one corner and then it lights this LED and then it's the positive of that one, glutes to the negative of the next one and then the positive that looks the negative the next one. and finally get the positive connection on here. And that means that it's just one little rectangular chip, but it's got three LEDs in series. That also explains why it is the phosphor because uh, that means that by using a base of blue, they can just a blue light.

or they can add red phosphor, yellow, green, and they can add purple, pink, cold white. Warm White It's just the same chip used every time. The current at 12 volts each, LED draws 90 milliamps which is about 0.1 watt. At 11 volts, it drops to 6.7 milliamps.

At 10 volts, it drops to about half the original current at 4.6 milliamps and at 9 volts, 2.5 milliamps and 8 volts 0.6 milliamps. And it's worth mentioning that even at low current, these are quite bright. if you were using these indoors, I'd actually recommend using them closer to the nine volt threshold, so this is where it's quite useful to have a variable voltage power supply so you can just nudge things a little bit. Or for short sections, you could just basically have a weak Cascade of diodes in series just to nudge the voltage down.

That will also result in much longer LED life because if you run them, run LEDs harder. they uh, the phosphor degrades and the chips degrade faster. If you underrun them, they just last a lot longer. so there are lots of advantages to that, but that is it.

They're quite nice. It's good that they've used triple chips instead of their basically just using a single LED and a higher value resistor. Let's turn these back on again. they're quite nice, and it just allows you to make that simple signage or a feature or a decoration.

or even just use them as strings of lights on their own because they are inherently pretty waterproof. I Say pretty waterproof because um, I've used these outdoors in the past, and because there is a certain thermal expansion contraction of different materials, it does result in separation away from the LEDs and moisture can creep in, but it's not usually too bad. They usually last a good length of time and I've got some outdoors that have lasted many, many years. It's been pretty good.

It's also worth mentioning the way these are constructed. the LED and circuit board is put into a mold and then it literally injects and molds the plastic around these. That's why they can pot it in so tightly. They're very good.

They're not that expensive. they seem to be fairly common in Chinese signage, so um, I'd say these are quite fun to play with. They're definitely worth getting someone experimenting with. I'll provide a link to the seller I Got these from the UK, but you know it's one of these things.

You can get them anywhere. They're really come really popular in China so you'll find them on eBay and AliExpress and they're just quite fun to play around with. Quite nice little lights.