While browsing around an AliExpress for signage components like things like electronic ballasts for fluorescent tubes and the end caps, I came across something that I really wasn't expecting. these series strings of Xh connectors and I recognize these. They were being sold in the same listing as uh, these LEDs let me just grab my LED tester. these LEDs light biodirectional style.

So if I plug it in like this, the LED lights red and if I turn it around, plug it another way. it lights blue and what these are is strings that used to be used in ornamental lights that have kind of. They're still available, but they've changed it for obvious reasons and they're still available. They're based on an aluminum frame that's wowed together and then it's wrapped with lots of aluminum wire wrapped around it and spiraled up.

and then it's got things like clusters of a LEDs inside, almost like a spiral like a spring of aluminum, but all wrapped around into a big bowl. and uh, I Remember seeing these the first time Now the reason it's red, blue, and purple is because that's because these dual color chips the control that comes with these can actually change the polarity and by veering the polarity, it's either going to be one polarity red, one polarity blue or one polarity. Add two polarity's alternating and it's going to be the purple. But the first time I saw one of those lights I was looking at it up close and I realized that the LEDs were in these little sockets and I thought oh, that's really quite clever because it means you can change the LEDs and then I was looking closer at it and there's count number of sockets to see what voltage it used and it was a lot.

They were basically running off the mains and if you consider that these LEDs are basically just pushed into these little connectors with single insulated wire, if I push one in like this I'll Zoom down this so they're pushed in and if you look at that if it's not pushed in completely, it exposes pins at the back of the LED. You can also keep in mind this was pushed in amongst coiled aluminum wire and I don't think the light fitting was Earth it was a two core cable going up to it so it wasn't Earth or grounded and there are so many places that the aluminum wire could have gone in and touched that I wonder how many people get electric shocks off those lights suddenly? Uh, they were selling the ones with uh strings of standard heat shrink sleeved low voltage lights. so I guess to get the feeling that might have happened. but it's really interesting to find these particularly odd that it was bundled with signage I wonder if it's used for uh, connecting to LEDs that are protruding through a panel for signage.

The power supplies for it are either this classic capacitive driver type or they are a version that does the largest swapping because it looks as though it happens, it means frequency I Don't know for sure, but I will find out because I've ordered one of the uh, variable color ones, but to actually change the pattern, you just turn it on and off at the wall and it's presumably using a capacitor to hold the memory inside and it sees that polarity has been changed. And let's open this one up. Where is my spudger? Where is my spudger? What have I done? There it is. I've looked at these before.

I've used these before. They're quite a nice little power supply, but they're not perfect. They sometimes have little issues that need to be resolved before using them. They're definitely not isolated from the main.

Supply they're pretty much referenced fully two. Mains which is why these pose a slight chakras. but they have their applications. so this is a capacitive dropper.

Okay, let's bring it up: Adam with that circuit, that circuit there that somehow has been flagged off as non-child safe on YouTube I'm not sure what I said in that video. I Don't think I said anything bad, but it has been flagged for some reason. I've done something terrible obviously in the in the eyes of the algorithm. Let's focus down here and we'll draw out the circuitry.

So we've got this red wire. Well, that's the AC connections going in, in and out It says the Asian is going to the capacitor and for the capacitor, it's going to redirect fire at the end. Okay, the other connection is going straight up to the direct file. Well, that's straightforward enough.

Bridge Rectifier: ACN AC In, plus out, minus out, and the other one is going straight into that. And there is a discharge resistor. orange, orange, yellow. That's 334, 330 K, three three, and four zeros.

Um, for the resistor, let's draw the resistor in, not the capacitor. What is the value of the capacitor 684 680 Nanofarad at 400 volt? That's actually quite high. But then you get these. They're designed for different lengths of strings and I think they just vary the capacitor value accordingly.

Interest goes up to I've never seen the bigger ones, but this is the 50 to 80 LED string. The output of the bridge rectifier is going to the capacitor with a discharge resistor and then an output limiting resistor. Okay, so this is going out. Where's the positive positive is going to the resistor and then to the black wire.

The black wire is a positive. I'll keep a note to that. So it's going to a resistor really badly drawn resistor. and then the output that resistor is.

It looks like gray. It almost looks like a red. but it's brown. Uh, blue, Gray brown.

And that will be six, eight, one. So 680 Ohms. Six eight and one zero. Um, there's the capacitor.

the electrolytic. faster. The other connection is going straight to the output, but you'd expect. and there's a discharge resistor presumably across the capacitor.

Yes, it is. and it also has a value of 330k. No, what's the value of the capacitor? The electrolytic. It's 6.8 microfarad, 6.8 microfarad, 250 volt, 250 volt isn't good because that means if the LEDs go over in circuit if you unplug an LED from this while it's on or one gets knocked, out, the voltage will exceed the rate in this capacitor.

I'm going to have to change that. That's what I mean by these things needing tweaked and adjusted, but then after that, you basically you can put as many LEDs as you like across this, noting that the more you put across it, the lower the current will get. It's kind of designed for the Uh 50 to 80, but I'm probably going to put the whole string across it and uh, pass Uh 100. Uh, so that's going to be 100.

roughly about 300 volts across that. So that string, um, it's notable that because this, uh, because they're all in series and there is a hundred in this string that will total up to about uh, that will be roughly between 2.7ish volts per LED. So it's going to be about 270 volts across this whole stream. That's quite spicy.

Rate Tablet: The next thing we're going to do I've already pre-cut some color changing LEDs and I'm basically going to start: I'm going to mark one of these leads positive I'm going to get a bit of I'm going to get a red Sharpie I'm going to mark it positive and after I've done that, I'm going to start putting these LEDs in noting that if you did this with gallium nitride, LEDs, the White and the blues and the greens, you have to be very careful about polarity because if you get polarity wrong, it will just blow the LEDs So this pushes in to the socket and you have to be careful to crop the lead short enough that it doesn't go all the way through to the back. I Have seen other ones where the LEDs are just poking right through the back. live bare metal, right? Tell you what this is going to take a long time, Is it not? Yes, it is. So I'm going to pause momentarily and I shall return in a moment.

but I'll also change the capacitor in that power supply to something more appropriate and less boomi one moment, please and we're back. So I've bundled these up to keep them a sort of relatively coherent pile. I've stuffed LEDs in and initially I've changed the capacitor in this to a 4.7 megafide, 400 volt capacitor. but I also the idea of stripping the ends of the leads that came from the last holders and actually just soldering them in.

it turns out, no, that wasn't going to happen because these are not soldiable wire I'm guessing they're aluminum is certainly under heat when you hold a naked flame under. they just go brittle and drop down. So I'm guessing, are you in them? I Wonder if they're coated with anything? It doesn't look like they're tinned or cover plated. They weren't taking the soda? Well, How well have they made with the crimps is the question.

The connectors are very similar to the GST Xh connector, but they're different. They're like a budget version with defects. and I put some crimps on the GST crimps. The Xh connector crimps for this better connector and they weren't a perfect fit in there.

It's not ideal, right? Tell you what. Let's put this back in its box and then stuff electricity into this and see what happens when I put this up this way. what is the buzzing area right up it up this way just so it does kind of fit with the label. not that it's going to be any doubt now.

I've changed the colors so we'll put this little cover on and I shall bring it in the happy and we'll see what happens. So I shall fill this wire back here I Bet this is copper coated aluminum. Let's twist it. Yeah, it's just bouncing.

Everything from China these days is coming across with copper coated aluminum. This is one of the worst things to happen in the electrical industry that basically is fires waiting to happen because the uh, risk of burning up connections on the copper coated eye Minimus height. Also, although it's theoretically got a lower resistance than copper, they're also using super thin stuff. Hmm, this is what happens when people invest in metals.

Now what's going to happen I Plug this in. Are the LEDs going to light at all? We shall soon find out because I'm about to plug it in. They have all lit that one under their lip blue. Oh, it's color changing now.

Why did it light blue initially? Oh, I've got a flickery one a dead LED That's all right. So these are color changing LEDs So I shall actually I'll spread them about a bit I'll turn the power off first I'll spread them over the bench and you can see and I'll leave them on for a while so just move entirely. pause so you can see the color shift but this is drawing 1.7 Watts the current. Uh, it says 17 milliamps and not sure what we're going through.

the LEDs it could be quite High I'm going to check that right now. Yeah, because the although it's a it's 200 LEDs Yeah, the two watches her and expect I thought it was going to be one more, but that's reasonable enough. It is quite a large value of capacitor. Um, I'm just going to check that I will pause and I'll do that one moment please.

and back again. So the power of two Watts equates to ignore the 60 milliamps here because it's been converted. There's certain conversion changes to it. When you actually convert from AC to DC it can.

It increases the voltage but effectively lowers the current. So the current flowing through these LEDs is about seven milliamps and the voltage across the whole string is about 290 volts which is quite spicy indeed. Uh, so these are color changing LEDs When they go through the all red bit initially, when they're in sync, you can see the power-up does kind of change it. uh, changes the current through it because the lower voltage I think it increases the red and lowers down for the blue which is the highest voltage.

But the bad connection is thing. if you you know a color changing LEDs tend to reset if there's a disturbance. if you're just bump them, they kind of just uh. they make bad connections in the reset so that's perhaps a look, even just disturbing them.

Yeah, it's not impressive, but that's okay. so watch your eyes. The light is coming back. The light is back so it's quite an interesting thing.

Anyway, these serious strings I Wonder if there are better quality ones? This is basically all I could find. Why Is it just selectively groups resetting and over here it resets a whole lot. When I disturb it, that's interesting and it's cutting out there. I wonder if we're which is the one that's creating a bad connection? but these LEDs are basically just pushed into existing sockets.

But I'm really thinking that that wire is not the Ideal wire for it. So if you wanted to make something like this, it may be better actually seeing if your gate wire with crimps P terminated onto and just make your own out of the better quality Xh type connectors. But um, it was certainly fun. It's I mean it's like fun enough to make this string.

It is not as safe as a sort of, uh, sort of properly insulated string because you know you can come in contact with, uh, with a mixture of luck and uh, laughing around you could come into contact with those connections and also the LEDs when you pull one out. If you were to grip this to pull an LED out, you'd As you grip it, you push your finger into the connection. so that's quite intriguing. That was even in our product in the first place, but that's it.

It's quite interesting, um, and certainly worth doing and quite fun to do. Just slightly dodgy.