Let's start this video with a look at what we're about to explore: it's a fake fire effect and if you're getting deja vu. I have done one of these before a very similar one, but this is a larger scale, one this one's quite big, it's about 300 millimeters about a foot wide, it's pretty big and it's very convincing. It's a really nice effect. Let's take it to bits! So here's what it looks like with the lights on - and it's not really designed to compete against bright lighting like the bench lighting, but it still puts on a decent show and it's a nice effect projected onto the back of the screen.

It's got these three-dimensional logs at the bottom. It's got a plastic case with a carry handle on top, so you can take your fire with you wherever you go and it's designed to run in either three batteries seaside batteries. This is the batteries it came with, suggesting it had been used in the shop for a display model, but it can also run from a dc jack with 4.5 volts or in our case, we'd, probably use a usb power supply with a diode in series, and that's Going to save lots of problems, but at 4.5 volts this thing only draws 118 milliamps, that's the leds and for the motor. So i'm going to start by unclipping the contacts i had some crop clips onto the battery terminals here - and this is too big right.

Tell you what i'm going to pause momentarily while i take some screws out and i'll be back in a moment. The screws are out. The base comes off like this, and we've got one common guide for the log effect and the screen, and that just leaves an empty case with glass in the front. So i shall put that down and i shall check the illumination.

It's going to be quite glaring. Now isn't it? I shall tame things down a little bit like this, that's better, so this is not just cut out at the top. The reason it's got notches cut out the top or you can see the reflection of the lights as the flame effect uh. The reason could not just cut out is because they get these bits here, actually go into the same slot at the side.

It just means that it's a single channel slot gives both uh support to both these items. I'm going to turn this this on now, because i'm quite like the fact hold on, let me just plug the dragon and turn this on. Okay, i just like the fact that i can actually, if i put this over here under the bench lights, it actually gives the effect just purely from the bench lights. On of that, it's quite good, a very simple effect.

We have a circuit board here with three wormway leds on it. There is a chip. The chip is purely a timer there's a little crystal tucking tucked under here i'll. Take the circuit board out and uh i'll take a picture of it and we can reverse engineer, but the actual the flame bit is really neat.

The flame effect uses a geared motor, very common geared motor with a little plastic stem and there's a bit of plastic pipe and on that pipe they've taken a strip of punched, reflective, mylar and they've. Just basically, threaded on then used hot melt glue to hold it in place. That is fundamental. So when you see the flame effect you're, seeing these sharp points of light reflected off the mylar onto the screen, it's a nice effect to be honest.

It's worth buying just for this bit on its own, because it could be used as the basis of something else. Even with colored lights for a sort of like, i suppose, a plasma reactor effect right, tell you what um i'm going to take this circuit board out and we'll take a look at the circuitry on it and see what it's like one moment. Please reverse engineering done before we take a look at the circuit diagram. Let's take a look at this, so this is a fairly coarse, mirror, mylar type material and what they've done is they've taken a continuous strip of mahler and they've punched.

It with lines like this. So you've got the sort of this of tongy flamey look and then a sort of joining bit flame loop joining bit and in the middle of these it alternates a flame joint uh, either sides of alternating bouncing forwards like fish, laid together in a and tin. Are these holes punched in between the middle of each section? They cut it to length, they get this plastic tube and they thread it in and out these holes and then mush it up and twist in a spiral and then tack it with hot melt glue at each end, and that creates this. A fan of staggered of blades and there is a bit of artistic license.

You could possibly shuffle this about a bit if you didn't get the desired effect, but it's quite neat that if you're such a highly mirrored material, i suppose you could use sequins in a way. I'm not really sure if you wanted to do a custom effect. But that's how they do that now, let's get on to the circuit board. So here is the circuit board.

I shall put it around that way. I shall bring the schematic around and i shall focus down onto the table because that's where all the action is about to happen so i'll zoom in a bit for this, this chip is only used for the timing function. I mean, technically speaking, it is almost well also doing the power on power off, but in reality it's kind of redundant. It only is the timing and it's marked on six hl2 at 204.

I'm guessing 204 is the production date 2020 week 44., but on 6h. This is the six hours on 18 hours off timer, so the fireplace lights itself effectively at the same time, every night once you've turned it on. I get the feeling this is just a little microcontroller custom programmed with that cycle. The crystal, which is in the back of the circuit board, let me show you where that is there is the crystal - is behind these purple pads here, and they go straight to the microcontroller they're connected to pin one and two of the microcontroller positive is pin three And uh negative is pin five see if you can work out what microcontroller is is if it's not a dedicated chip, but it's most likely using a 32.768 kilohertz crystal, which is a very common timing crystal the reason they use.

That value is because, if you divide it down in binary, it comes out at one hertz and then you can use it as a base. Timing for say, divide by 60, and that gives you one minute timing divide by 60. Again that gives you an hour. So the positive comes on uh.

There is a decoupling capacitor here the negative goes to the switch. You know what i'll just point out the components then i'll go to the schematic. So here's the chip, here's the mosfet, that's switching everything with its pull-down resistor and its current limiting gate, resistor, there's the motor connections with capacitor across them and a 47 ohm resistor in series there's an led with a 47 ohm resistor in series. Another decoding capacitor for the supply and the switch pads.

I shall show you the circuit diagram now this will save a lot of time. Really it makes more sense. Doesn't it so here are the batteries. There is also the option of plugging in the jack when you plug in the jack.

It will uh. I believe it breaks the positives so that can't reverse charge into the batteries and that powers directly from the jack there's a little decoupling capacitor. I shall point that out: it is this one here across the supply rails and then to the maker, the little microcontroller or dedicated chip with its crystal and the little switch here when you switch it to either timed or continuous. This microcontroller.

As soon as you put the batteries in is powered all the time all it does is indicate which mode it's in. By pulling one of these lines down to the zero volt rail, when it does that it will either just drive the mosfet continually or it will do that six hour timing and then it will turn the mosfet off time. Another 18 hours. Now, i'm guessing the reason.

They've chosen six hours and six hours on 18 hours off is because it's kind of binary again, that's one in four is the six hours on, but we've got a 10k resistor pulling the gate of the p-channel mosfet to the positive rail that keeps it turned off And to turn it on this 1k resistor, it pulls it down to the zero volt rail. I'm not sure why they chose that specific polarity. The mosfet is marked 2 301. I found a similar one called si2301 and that equates to a1 shb, which is a standard p channel mosfet and the the complementary one to the n channel mosfet a2 shb, which these are just really common, cheap generic mosfets.

You find them in tons of chinese products and yet they're very, very impressive components. The mosfet switch is a little power rail, which has four 47-ohm resistors. One of them goes to the motor with its little decoupling capacitor in the vicinity. It's literally right across there that capacitor will basically absorb any sort of switching transients and also the actual the noise from the brushes in the motor to actually avoid it, causing problems with the mosfet or the microcontroller.

And then there are three other resistors in series with three leds: that's this led here with each resistor. This led here with its resistor, and this led here with its resistor in reality just to shuffle the uh track layout in the circuit board, some of the resistors on the other side of the led led it doesn't really matter as long as it's in sears with It so it's a very simple circuit. You could do away with most of this circuitry. You could actually just mount leds inside it'll be interesting to put high power ones in, but these the it's important that there are a sharp point source, because that then creates a fairly solid reflection from the actual mylar rotating mirrors.

It's very simple, very neat. I, like the fact it's just using a bit of plastic tube hot melt glued onto the shaft and with this just woven in and out and then just twisting that spiral like that and then rotating on the motor very slowly uh just in front of three leds. That is it that's what creates the effect very clever, it's quite convincing, as you saw from the beginning of the video, so there we go. I would say that the device, the whole device is actually worth buying just purely for this assembly in the base.

Even just the motor this section of mylar and the pipe and then uh the circuit board the leds. Although for more points, you could actually use a bit of 12 volt led tape or something like that and put a bigger resistor and sears the motor and run the whole lot off 12 volts, it's viable or perhaps replace them with one more leds to create a Much stronger sort of projection effect. It's not an efficient way of doing it because, ultimately, most of the light from these is just being wasted and the black interior, and it's only where it hits the reflectors that actually split splays out. So it's not an efficient way of creating the effect, but it does a good job of creating an effect and it's a subtle effect anyway.

Just that flame, uh sort of array going up the screen. It's quite neat. I like it, you.