With Halloween approaching, let's take a look at some spooky LED neon signs. Yes, I Know it's not real neon, but it's the same sort of visual effect and these are two completely different constructions. It's quite interesting. This one runs on either USB or three double A cells and it draws 200 milliamps which is pretty good.

This one draws a lot more. This one draws 700 milliamps and can run either on USB or it comes this very neat adapter that lets you just plug it straight into three Double A's as a separate entity so to speak. But the construction is completely different because if we start by taking a look at the spooky ghost one, it's the classic frame with the LED neon type materials stuck into it. You can see the the hot little LED Well, not hot, not physically hot, but um, the bright green led up the end there.

So let's uh, strip some of this back and we'll take a look at if they've got individual resistors. The other one is very different because if you look at the back of this one it is. It's illuminated, but it's not bright. The other side, this one is just as bright.

It's very much a double-sided thing and the reason for that is that it's using LED tape and it's using a two-part plastic housing. So this, well, both of these offer options for re-tubing with your choice of color and voltage of LED tape and also with this one. Yeah, you can do the same thing by actually putting well. Theoretically I mean we'll open it and find out LED tape.

inside Things worth mentioning. This one here has a bit of an oddity. It uses a 10 Ohm resistor, right? which is fine at 5 volts. there's three volts dropped across the LEDs.

That's two volts to drop across a 10 Ohm resistor. Therefore, we get the 200 milliamps. But it's worth mentioning that the USB connector is connected directly to the battery contacts effectively. Which means if you plug it into USB while there's batteries in it, it's going to try and reverse charge those batteries.

Well, it will try and charge them up if they were nickel metal hydrated and charge them up at very high current because the only thing that would limit the current would be the cable and the output of this. but if it was alkaline batteries you had in it, it could make them explode. Just worth mentioning that batteries are USB but hey, don't use batteries in that while you're powering it from USB This one gets around that problem by using its Nifty little adapter because you effectively can't Uh, if you get this plugged into USB then it's not connected to this radio. Let's take a look at this one.

actually. unplug it. It's quite nice. This one is also very light compared to that because this one's based in the heavy, rubbery new material and I'm hoping this one isn't glued together.

Where's my sputter? Let's get the spudger in. I Can see there are little pillars if it's not glued, it will actually start prizing apart, but this could take quite some to. Actually, it's not too bad is it? Oh, it's got a resistor per LED Okay, let's keep going. Actually, you know what this will take a while? This would be annoyingly long time.

So um, I shall pause momentarily one moment, please. The cover is off courtesy of the trusty spudger. Quite difficult because although these popped out, they weren't glued or they popped out easy enough. It was the getting the ones and the actual inner peace.

Uh, because the outer frame is in the way. but it still came off relatively easily. and I don't think I broke a single pin I Think they're all intact so it'll go back together easily. Inside is six millimeter LED tape the incoming Supply with The Blob of Hotmail good hold in place.

There is just tacked onto the pads and each of these is one a 180 Ohm resistor in. seriously LED Which means that the current power LED is about 6.5 milliamps, which is actually reasonable enough. That's fine, it doesn't have to be running them at the full whack. Um, and that lower current.

Although 700 milliamps might seem a lot for this thing, keep in mind that that 700 milliamps times the let's block out the power of the whole thing including resistors. So 5 volts times 0.7 means the whole thing is about 3.5 Watts So it's not really that bad. It's going to get warm Mish but it's not going to bake the LEDs The LED tape. These this type of LED tape is often done in 500 millimeter sections, so you can see a Bridge Point here where they've just coincidentally had one.

but also, they've cut it at the bridge point and then they've spliced it on just by soldering across onto the blue. so the pink splits down two ways. It goes down this way and ends at the bottom here, and then it goes down that way, splices onto the blue. The Blue Goes Around Here wraps around and comes back and then ends here.

It's very neat. It's very stylish. A nice, simple construction. It's relying the fact because it's emitting sideways.

the light bounces around inside the housing and then comes out. the well comes out the front. In this case, it's not coming at the front because the back's off and it needs, uh, the LEDs to shine against this surface here to bounce the light inside. Okay, that's good.

A nice construction, nicely made. hackable. The six millimeter-ish LED tape. You could theoretically line it with new tape of your own choice if you want to if you want to give it a color upgrade.

Uh, you could also switch it to 12 volts. possibly if you just managed to make it work in or lose a bit in there. So it's it's got, you know options. The Spooky Ghost.

The Spooky ghost. was quite impressive because uh, the LED tape in here has no resistors. it's just a parallel string of LEDs which is why they've got the the resistor in the battery pack. There is a little bus bar running through here uh inside this to help spread the current along to avoid excessive intense to drop along the tape.

but if we zoom in this a little bit you can see the LEDs are just in parallel and the end one there which is now off had been chopped in half. but it did just barely missed the chip so it was still lit. That's why it looked so bright from the end. They just basically cut it to length and because it is such a close array of LEDs Uh, even if the end on get cut off completely, it would still kind of glue and fill in that end of the sort of neanish type effect.

so it's quite nice. These uh are very affordable devices. These all came from Tamara's surprise surprise. um and they weren't that expensive.

I would provide a link, but uh, the temperature seems to they seem to stock stuff and then run out and then just put up new listings. But nice. These things all uh present a sort of like a hack ability, um for modifying and customizing or inspiring in the ways to actually use the material from either, just the actual sort of like the solid core. uh LED nearly type material or just using LED tape and these custom plastic housings.

Very smart, very neat.