A new and interesting product from poundland, which was kind of in between the halloween stuff, i've got a picture of pumpkin and the christmas stuff. I think it would do both initially when i saw floating candles. I just thought it was well. I start from the end on just this bit was visible on the shelf.

I just assumed it was going to be those candles that you light them and they float. These are not. These are very harry potter-esque. You hang them from the ceiling and they've got flickering leds, let's open them and take a look.

These were eight pounds, a set which is unusually expensive for a poundland, but they are fairly unique, inductions batteries and the candles with their little strings wrapped around them. This is intriguing they're, quite stylish. I also noticed that the there are only five batteries. I thought these.

If they were going to be led, candles might have two batteries per candle, but no, apparently not that means they've, possibly got a little boost circuit in there. Let me shove this up the end of one. Oh, it is there's a little circuit board up there with an inductor hold on. Let me show you this.

Let me show you: are you going to see that hold on? I shall zoom down. Can you see a little circuit board in there with inductor, okay, adam zoom back out again, we shall open this i'll. Take the circuit board out of this. So here is the battery the thread, the very thin thread, which i guess is reasonable enough.

They want to give the illusion of fluting candles is very tangly and in the way that may be why they're so expensive. It must be quite fumbly assembling that oh and it's warm white. Okay, that's not bad! It looks yellow in the in the video, but it is actually a golden worm. White.

Okay, all right, tell you what uh! I shall turn that off. I shall open one of these that i have not opened yet i shall pull the guts out and we'll take a look at the circuit board. Is this a good idea? What happens if i pull this off? Oh there's a little led there's a little strip. Can i grip that, how is it attached is it glued in somewhere? It feels like it's actually almost like melted into the plastic.

I think we may have to use unreasonable force to get this out. Let me zoom down just a little bit, so you can marvel at the unreasonable force horrible feeling i'm going to sacrifice this candle. Is there anything else i don't know. Is that a different bit of plastic? No, i don't think it is right there.

What i shall grip it with these pliers and pull that? That's a start. That's not really a start uh! Oh! Actually, it is a start because uh the led is just pushed in. That means. The circuit board is on its way out: tweezers tweezers.

Here's a circuit board right. I think we need to explore this more, that's a fairly complicated construction. The sense that's got the wire heading up to the end, and is that actually a? Is that actually a flickering led or is it done by the circuitry? The led has a chip inside it, so yeah it. Let's see if i can actually show you this um.

Am i gon na be able to show you this. It has a little chip in there. Yes, it has an anvil and a chip. Excellent right.

One moment. Please i'm just going to uh reverse engineer this you're a wizard harry. Yes, i'm aware of that! Thank you. I do have a magic wand, hagrid and resume the exploration.

So it's an interesting little thing. This little chip here is called a c33h. The 33 is a clue: it's a 3.3 volt regulator and when you apply above about 0.6 volts, you do get a fairly solid 3.3 volts across this capacitor. It's using a single inductor here, 47 micro henry, to boost that up and then charge that capacitor and then there's a resistor in here 47 ohms in series with a flickering led.

Let me show you the schematic. I looked for that chip. I did not find it. It's probably coded under under another name, but here we have the incoming supply and it goes through that inductor and initially it must go through that diode and i'm wrecking reckoning.

It will charge up that capacitor because i think the chip powers itself from the voltage across that capacitor and also uses it to measure the 3.3 volts when it reaches that. I should put 3.3 volts 3.3 volts here. So i'm guessing it's using a little mosfet inside the chip and a little oscillator to switch that inductor to the zero volt rail to put a magnetic field into it and then release it and as the field collapses. It then goes through this diode and charges up this capacitor, which brings up to 3.3 volts, where opponent will stop doing that.

It will stop pulsing inductor, then the 47 ohm resistor limits the current to the flickering led. That is fundamentally it so um something worth mentioning. If you get a set of these, it's a nice enough effect, but the way they hang these the construction is this the circuit board itself. Let me bring that in the circuit board itself has metallized ends.

Let me zoom down this just to show you this. The end is metalized there. That's the positive. It's also got a little standoff, so you've put the battery around the wrong way.

Do you have a battery here? Yes, if you put the battery around the wrong way, it won't be able to make connection with that. That's quite clever, but it can make connection if you put it in this way. It also has metallization along the sides of the circuit board, and when you push it in here that metal strip is actually the reason it was so hard to get out. Is it slid into a little challenge? It's quite complex molding, then the circuit board is slid in and when it slides in, it makes physical connection one side with that strip and it doesn't matter which way round.

It goes because it's metallized on both sides. So, theoretically, just push that in right now, when i push it in right now, i shall push it in right now. I've pushed it in the led is up at the end. Let's try this out now and see if it has made connection properly.

So, in goes that this uh has a very complex spring that then bridges onto that metal connection. Ah, there we go. It went together all right, okay, i can show you the next bit of it. Then, if you have these only take them out the packet one.

At a time because i found out the wrong way: oh darn, how much that wasn't a shot! You know what it's like. I sometimes go off shot. Take these out one at a time and unravel them carefully. Don't do what i did and uh take a big clump of them and go and hang them together, because they immediately twisted and twirled around each other in such a complex way to tie themselves in knots.

There is a way to get around this. If you pull the thread the end, the flame bit off the thread is actually passed down through a tiny hole in the end, a real, tiny pinhole quite hard to see, but when you pass it down through that the way it's actually attached is they simply fold It over the side of the flame and then they wedge it in, and that holds the thread, so the led goes in there. You just wedge it in and that supports the thread. If you do get them tangled or not, all you have to do is pull off the flames, pull these threads out and then you can just basically pull each thread out from the clump of threads on its own or put new threads in and then once you've Done that take them away individually thread it down through the middle fold it over it and then shove it back in and you will have untangled lights, it's quite an interesting effect.

It makes it look as it's waving up and down in there. It's not it's. Just the intensity is doing that, but it is a nice enough effect. There were two shades of white.

There was a pucy white, the gas light white, which is a common color for flickering leds, unfortunately from china, but other ones are more golden color. This is an intermediate, looks yellow purely because the lights are sort of daylight white and it's compensating for that. Making this one look somewhat yellower than it is uh, but they're, not bad yeah. They are quite impressive.

Where's, the box, i've put the box somewhere, i've lost the box yeah, i have lost the box, but nonetheless the poundland uh hanging uh floating candles that just suspend from threads. It's not bad effect and the battery power consumption is low enough. They should last a decent length of time. They're not really whacking the current to get the intensity of, although it's still quite bright, uh helped greatly by that voltage boost.

Also, the fact that the use of a voltage regulator means it's going to stay the same intensity right down to the point. It gets about 0.6 and then it will just gradually tail off in intensity until it cuts out. So i would say that that's actually a win, those little harry potter, uh, the grand ballroom, the sort of place they'll eat their meals and if they hang candles that sort of hovered up and down the ceilings, quite a complex effect to achieve they're, pretty good they're. Actually, worth buying.

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