This is a very popular, sort of, well, all year round lighting effect. and to see it in its True Glory I'm going to have to turn the light off, so I'm just going to set that up now and then you can Marvel at operating because it's a very unusual effect. I'll just do that right now. So as you can see, this unit has the illusion of lots of stars morphing and swirling inside this thing.

It's extremely quiet, it does involve moving parts, and it's extremely low power as well because it is just a smashing of LEDs and a low power motor. But look at the effect, it's really good and the effect does extend from the bottom right up to the top although it's more Vivid at the bottom because there's a larger amount of movement and for that reason, there are some effects that use just a larger box of this material and the seem sort of circuitry inside and they give a more pronounced effect. but this pyramid shaped one is actually quite nice. Okay, watch your eyes, the light is about to get bright and then we'll take it apart.

The light is back. Let's explore. So this thing has a power consumption of less than a watt and the operation is very, very simple. It uses a prismatic material with a soft side I've just made this wet uh and a sort of patterned side and if you hold a light source under it, it creates the star effect.

I'll brighten off a bit and you can see this star effect it's creating. And basically speaking, what this has is LEDs moving behind it and creating that morphing star effect. Very simple but very effective. Oh, also worth mentioning, this is it with the Rough Side out the way and this is it around the other way and it provides a different effect.

It's not as good, it actually works best the other way around with the pattern, textured, side, and outside. Okay, now I I've unpluged. It uses one of these little 3vt adapters. Uh, I can under do a couple of screws in here? Can't really show you the inside of this too easily because well, I can show you that it looks like this: There's a motor assembly a little circuit board in here, so I shall get a screwdriver and I shall undo some screws.

And there are nuts and bolts involved here. So I have a feeling that it's going to fall apart. once I've undone a couple of these screws. you're going to be impressed at just how simple this is.

It's breathtaking, this simple, but what really interests me is the oh, there's one of the nuts off. Uh, what really interests me in this is the slippering assembly because I bought another version with a plastic frame from eBay and it was rubbish. Uh, the lights flickered all the time as they went around because the slippering assembly wasn't very good. This one will hopefully be better.

I'm trying to work out where this liquid came from. I've somehow splashed liquid put in the bench. Oh, not to worry, it's probably beverage Here we go. You ready for the big reveal? Is it going to come out? H It's not going to come out easily because of this little connector.

Let's pull this connector off and now it can come out. And it's literally a geared motor. A shaft with a little sort of like, is that effectively a bearing at the end? It's just a sleeve. Oh, it's plastic sleeve.

Uh, and it's just basically got a string of ordinary lights tie wrapped onto it. Now let's take a look at this assembly. I Love the fact that the motor has its own connector here. Let's Zoom down this.

That's all there is in this, by the way. just the connector and then this plastic and a metal frame. It's quite neat. Oh, and something rattling.

it's it's it's. the nuts that are rattling inside, right? Let's Zoom down in this. this must have other uses. It just strikes me that a geared motor and a slippering assembly has got uses.

So I'm going to unplug this and I'm going to try. I'm going to undo this nut here. Screws dropping out everywhere. Take those screws out.

they look like M3 Uh, I'm going to undo that nut. Hold on. Where are my long nose plowers? There are my long nose plowers. This looks like it's being used as a sort of lock nut.

So I shall loosen that. And now this thing can rotate around and unscrew. theoretically. Now how is this going to come off? Oh, that is.

It's just come off and it is a set of double contacts, little spring contacts, and loads of grees so that it, uh, makes a decent connection. And they've gold flashed this circuit board as well for that. Um, that's fundamentally it. There's really not much to it, is there? I'm guessing that Well, now this has come off.

They've shaped the hole in the circuit board to match the shaft of a standard motor. The standard motor is just held on by a couple of self tappers, and uh, when this is placed on, it's clearly just got this little spacer just to push it down. Once the nuts tightened against the end of that shaft, it just pushes it down to the right height to actually make connection with those printed circuit board tracks. That's pretty neat, isn't it? And I have to say they are reliable because as a shop locally has had one the window for a very long time just running 24.

Well, not 247 running about 12 hours a day and uh, it just it's It looks like the same unit's been there for ages and it's just never ever started flickering. So it'd be interesting just leaving something like this running for a long time and just seeing how long it took for the for the contacts to wear through. Although they are cued little rounded ends in there so it shouldn't actually be much of an issue. especially that grease or grease on it, which is going to protect the against abrasion.

That's really neat, isn't it? Super minimalist. Just a metal stem threaded at the end with, uh, the plastic at the end as the bearing, the lights just literally cable tied onto it. Uh, and then the little slippering and a geared motor. How easy is that? That's about as simple as you could get.

Very interesting. Um, kind of tempted. Almost like to use this for another purpose. Maybe put another circuit board on it.

I Wonder what else you could use the contacts, but very neat. Nice to see how they couple the current on with. uh, no flickering or anything. It's a good, solid connection.

Very, very simple, which is, well, to be honest. Simplicity is reliability.