clearly a cheap rip off version.... the Real version has a bit more quality. and while the cord is still short it is a fairly heavy plug. I'd be interested in seeing him do a breakdown of the original and compare the two.
a lot of houses here in new york had these, i was wondering what they were, thanks! they were the same exact thing thats in the video red and green stripes, i guess since they sold those in stores here - they had to be approved by the safety ppl
I remember having such a 20 dollar laser disco thing, it was super crappy. The cooling fan didnt really serve a purpose since there was no fins and a mostly blocked air path, and the lasers were in plastic clamps. the crappy 5v supply melted after a few hours.
I dunno, it kind of depends what the pick and place uses as origin. I guess you feed it the Gerbers, so it has to use the actual pads and silk (to determine the pin 1 position) as reference, in which case it's not outside the realm for this to happen automatically. Putting so8 on so14 pads is actually relatively common. Reverse as well sometimes. Usually when one brand of x wants a slightly different/cheaper microcontroller than the circuit was designed for. I've seen that on RF-X10 relay modules - quite clearly the same OEM, and it came with three different micros for the three different brands and incompatible radio encodings. Some had the so8 micros, some the so14. I don't remember what the actual foot print was off hand though.
eeprom looks to be pinned to the pads for a 6/5 pin micro my guess is the other version has a pic10 or other small micro and the eeprom is to store patterns or some such and it came out cheaper to use that than a better micro the reason it's there is most likely an error in programming the pick and place
I think the wire is actually copper coated some kind of iron alloy, I tested with magnet some of these crap cables from china and the wires are attracted by the magnet.
I got one of these that had the light sensor and a button to control the motor, which was much slower than yours. turns out it's a stepper motor being run by that board. the "program" options were just on and off, but presumably since the control was just a momentary pushbutton, with more programming it could cycle through different speeds or back-and-forth motion or whatnot.
The EEPROM was probably intended for sound for other product based on the same board? Sometimes it is cheaper not to have separate factor tooling for various products. This could also just be leafagacy from a similar product in their line that had sound.
user255 indeed, it's well engineered. People want that price, it's basically safe, gets the job done. You don't expect it to last decades when you paid so little.
The capacitors by Hyncdz are by far the best thing in this teardown. Maybe we'll see Jhynczf and Oackjf capacitors really soon, brought to you by Face Button Mashing Foundation. The PCB looks like a very hastily chopped up part of a larger device, hence the rearranged(and excess) components mixed in with missing copper for vias and vias that go nowhere. The only way to one-up your argon laser monstrosity is to use a copper vapor laser :)
If you are here because your laser projector has stopped working or has faded down to a next to nothing with just the red showing, its the crappy 5v power supply! I just fixed a old nokia 5v power supply to mine! good as new!
These are sold in W H Smith for nearly £30, but you can buy the indoor models on eBay for less than a tenner. I bought a few of them. In fact you saw them in-use at EMF Camp at the Portcullis / Cisco tent, although I was very drunk when you came by.
from the little experience I've had with these cheap party/decoration green laser sparkle things, the lasera seem to fade out and die pretty quicky even considering the cheapness in general
Doc Daneeka Quite so. My wife ordered a pair of these from QVC, we've have them up for two weeks, the red laser has crapped out of one of them, and the motor locked up in the other. These are rubbish! And they are going back for a refund.
Always a good idea to measure the output power. Some of those can be very overpowered and dangerous to eyes. I think leaking high IR power can be dangerous too.
These things are all over here in America this year. The two biggest national hardware stores are blowing them out at $39USD. You see them in every neighborhood, and they're so tacky looking.
The cheaper the better. People steal dollar tree solar lights. My Super great ones from ikea walked off faster then I could put them out. So I just got the cheap stuff so if they nick it, i don't have to worry about it. What I would love to know is where to get the replacement lasers for these.
Peter Brockie yeah these things were picked up by infomercial guys. I'm guessing where most of them come from. You see a lot of ebay tat marked up on these infomercial these days.
I'm sure even with the unsafe indoor wiring used outside on wet lawns it's still safer on average than people going on up on ladders to hang lights. :P
They're pretty inexpensive here in the US. I have one aimed up at a big tree. Makes some pretty cool patterns in the branches. Not the same brand, though. The ones sold here have a switch on top to change from static to moving pattern, etc. and cost around $30.
Pete Brown , mine was $39 also with the switches. I tried pointing at a tree too, that was pretty good. Then I put the unit in the tree pointing down at a hill side (my front yard is a steep slope). that was also cool as there are lots of wild grasses on it.
man, I remember about 7 or 8 years ago working at a music/dj store, we sold some Chauvet or similar brand laser projectors like that. They were a super popular item but they cost upwards of $100 each, and even at base cost they were damn expensive. It's funny seeing how they're basically cheap commodity items now.
I have the Star Shower version of this, of which this rips off. I modded mine to run on USB power since the AC adapter puts out 5V at 2 amps. I'm going to pull the green laser from one of these and make a laser pointer once I find out what voltage the lasers run on. I'm thinking 3 to 4.5 volts since the pen lasers have two AAs or Three button cells.
It's kind of a bit disappointing when a review/teardown of a cheap piece of sh*tty junk from Ebay turns out to be relatively safe, better quality and design than expected :-)
The psu *almost* looks like a decent PCB layout, except they forgot to cut the slot and modified it to use the cheap not safest rated cap by putting the track closer. And used the cheapest nastiest components to execute of course.
If they weren't such cheap skates they would have used one of the same supplies made by Changzhou Jutai that you get with the better quality lights (all the branded lights I've seen use them and bigclive seems to rate them) that are inline, waterproof and so actually fit in a normal outdoor socket and can be left outside.
I am the Stars Shover Robot I am here to protect you These were in the impulse bin at my local grocery store for a whole month. Given that I live in an urban area with nothing but apartments and condos I'd have been surprised if anyone DID buy one.
Never seen one until this year, and there's at least one on every block. I heard they're getting banned though since you can't really point lasers into the sky when you have planes flying around
My parents thought ours broke, they threw it in the trash , but being the kind of person I am I tested it once more and it worked, they still don't know so I just got a burning laser for free. PS the power gets split over the dots so I edited it a bit.
I knew those things were garbage. Cool application for the filter though. I'm assuming you passed it through a prism first. That's why I like excited gas lasers so much. They aren't as locked to one frequency of the spectrum as diode lasers are. Personally I love 445nm the best although 405nm is pretty too.
The thing about the labels--I don't know about the UK, but in the US labeling is a BIG part of compliance for laser products, and failing to correctly indicate the hazard classification and not having a laser aperture warning sticker are both big no-nos. Using a buck regulator to directly drive a laser diode is definitely not a good idea, laser diodes are FAR more sensitive to transient events than LEDs, and a linear driver, at least for the final regulation stage, is mandatory to get reliable performance from a laser diode, especially if you want to run them anywhere near their rated maximum power. A switching pre-regulators is of course a good idea where you're concerned about efficiency. Not surprised you killed the red by hotplugging it, if the driver is dumb it will have gone to maximum duty cycle to try to get the output current through the non-existent diode to come up, so the diode would have gotten a decent wallop from the wide-open driver when you plugged it in. Although laser diodes are also extremely ESD sensitive, so it's entirely possible that that's what did it in while it was unplugged. Nice going on the argon!
There's nothing like a 7 line argon. I'm guessing that Mike's is running at roughly 125mW for the 532 nm line. You can find them surplus but they're still bloody expensive. Last one I bought was around 2000 GBP, but that was way back in 1995. Search for "Omnichrome 532" or "American Laser ALC-60X" (essentially the same laser & plug compatible) and beware that you need a power supply and the laser head. Also beware that they come with single-line and multi-line mirrors.... you want multi-line. The single line units were popular for CD mastering.
***** You're welcome. :-) Lasers are great fun to play with but gas lasers are at least 100x as fun as solid state for me. If you add a powerful HeNe to get a 'red' beam and you use the same beam splitter/combiner arrangement that Mike shows above, you can filter the argon and the resulting beam can be almost any perceived RGB color you want including yellow and a sort of "white". I just looked at the cost of similar used ion lasers and they're priced much more accessibly now. PS: Invest in a set of goggles for each type of laser you play around with. That 125mw argon is considerably brighter than the sun.
Haha I bought the deluxe model in an anodized case with sound sensitivity. It has the same dogshit power supply but at least it has a cooling fan and a remote. The board inside mine is completely different with it designed in a different shape to mount to the fan/end of the case instead of on the diode assembly. I'd be a bit worried about the heat those two diodes running in a sealed plastic housing would make. At least the diodes in mine are cooled by a fan and the aluminium case.
maybe someone copy/pasted and forgot to remove some stuff and just didn't say anything when they went to production (imagine the office meeting where you have to explain that a bunch of money is being wasted and there has to be a redesign, say just after production has started)
These things are all over shopping television channels (like ideal world) with equally outrageous claims as. Plus 60 quid a pop that's a huge mark up for what is essentially tat. Merry tatmas everybody
Yup, the german QVC channel always tryes to sell these things. How is that even profitable? If you really want one you would just go to ebay and buy one cheap instead of ordering one over the telephone for three time more money!!
love it Mike. but that eeprom is very odd. not an insignificant cost either. if they got rid of that they may have been able to afford a proper pwm controller ic in that nasty looking PSU.
I have this exact laser light but NON-Motion. The green light however is very faint and blurry, any idea why and how can I repair? Appreciate any help......
Jeez, what shoddy building. I've got one with a similar housing but is completely different. I have a screw in connector on the back for the power cord, hot hot glue melted in! I suppose the Chinese didn't realize we have a "w" in our language so they just went ahead and used two V's next to each other, hey, we got a W now!
Is that a Morris Minor in the driveway? Love cars like that. Austin A30s a particular favourite. (Bet you never thought you'd hear that from a 24 year old from Australia.)
I have similar projector like this and the diode in green laser is gone. Can you advise what type could it be ??? if I could use some cheap alternative from ebay or ali. I know it is not worth repairing but I am wondering if you can repair that laser.
Its hilarious that the reason I was watching this video is because the red laser went out on mine.. and in the middle of this video... the red laser went out.... LOL
eprom ??? Thats what I thought. But what the heck is it doing there ??? no controller ???, is the eprom even powered ??? Is there pads for some sort of PIC ??? Nicely torn down though. thanks
How do you convert (or invert) DC to AC? I want to power a 12VAC microwave type stepper motor from the car battery, but don't know how. Also, is a choke necessary in this situation to limit the current?
I got one & i dont have the charger ,,,Some idea what can I do with one of this ,,I mean do some alteration to this thing ,some kind of other use ,other than the one that its for??
I actually have the same laser (in a different package), and it has a mic so the laser pulses to the music. I got it for a one event for my daughter. Worked great for those 7 euro it cost me :)
This is a poor attempt at a "Star Shower" knock-off, which is an As Seen On TV product here in the US. And also sold in Home Depot stores here as well.
Mine doesn't look that cheap, but I probably paid more than you did. Mine is properly sealed, no color tape around the outside, and they didn't use silicon caulk for the seal. I guess you get what you pay for.
That is definitely a cheap knockoff of what I believe are the real ones that I have. I have not taken mine apart, but some immidiate differences I noted were: 1. Mine has dual laser out holes on the front, one for red and one for blue. 2. The lack of 2 switches on the top, one to turn the motor off and the other to select red and green or just green laser. 3. Detachable power cord, done via a plug that screws one and has a gasket in it, not a blob of hot glue. 4. The plastic looks much higher quality than this one. 5. Mine has all the various stickers the box refers too and the color strips at the front are actually applied correctly. Plus mine are actually water resistant, they spent the entire day in the rain and continue to work, Though one thing they do have in common is that ridiculously short freaking cable, about 1 foot. I had to seal up the end of the extension cord; with the two of them plugged into it; in a tupperware container and use silicone caulking to keep out the water. Not a great long term solution, but fine for the 3 weeks it'll be out front. We also have them pointed at some bare trees out front, looks pretty nice, almost like we've hung flickering lights in the trees.
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Free EEPROM! How kind. They should put that on the box
The tape holding the static diffraction grate really adds a nice touch to the cheapness and shittyness...
Wow that argon laser makes it beautiful! It is a very nice effect I think!
If i were the designer of that device, i would have written "Merry Christmas" in the EPROM! I can only imagine Mike's reaction!
"Star Shower" is a protected name, thats why they had to call the ripoff Stars Shovver
Funnily enough, I just saw a Star Shower advert on telly.
clearly a cheap rip off version.... the Real version has a bit more quality. and while the cord is still short it is a fairly heavy plug. I'd be interested in seeing him do a breakdown of the original and compare the two.
a lot of houses here in new york had these, i was wondering what they were, thanks! they were the same exact thing thats in the video red and green stripes, i guess since they sold those in stores here - they had to be approved by the safety ppl
I remember having such a 20 dollar laser disco thing, it was super crappy. The cooling fan didnt really serve a purpose since there was no fins and a mostly blocked air path, and the lasers were in plastic clamps. the crappy 5v supply melted after a few hours.
Love the look of the Ar laser at the end.
Maybe there was a roll of 24c02 accidentally loaded in the pick and place machine?
But what about the the placing offset compared to the 14-pin device footprint? That would have to have been dealt with by someone presumably.
I dunno, it kind of depends what the pick and place uses as origin. I guess you feed it the Gerbers, so it has to use the actual pads and silk (to determine the pin 1 position) as reference, in which case it's not outside the realm for this to happen automatically.
Putting so8 on so14 pads is actually relatively common. Reverse as well sometimes. Usually when one brand of x wants a slightly different/cheaper microcontroller than the circuit was designed for. I've seen that on RF-X10 relay modules - quite clearly the same OEM, and it came with three different micros for the three different brands and incompatible radio encodings. Some had the so8 micros, some the so14. I don't remember what the actual foot print was off hand though.
Jasper Janssen Thankfully they didn't load roll of some expensive FPGAs ;)
eeprom looks to be pinned to the pads for a 6/5 pin micro
my guess is the other version has a pic10 or other small micro and the eeprom is to store patterns or some such and it came out cheaper to use that than a better micro
the reason it's there is most likely an error in programming the pick and place
I think the wire is actually copper coated some kind of iron alloy, I tested with magnet some of these crap cables from china and the wires are attracted by the magnet.
I got one of these that had the light sensor and a button to control the motor, which was much slower than yours. turns out it's a stepper motor being run by that board. the "program" options were just on and off, but presumably since the control was just a momentary pushbutton, with more programming it could cycle through different speeds or back-and-forth motion or whatnot.
The EEPROM was probably intended for sound for other product based on the same board? Sometimes it is cheaper not to have separate factor tooling for various products. This could also just be leafagacy from a similar product in their line that had sound.
Honestly that seems good enough for the job.
user255 indeed, it's well engineered. People want that price, it's basically safe, gets the job done. You don't expect it to last decades when you paid so little.
+kuro True enough, but I'd like mine to last at LEAST a season! So far, not.
It's still crap and useless christmas decoration
E2PROM might be remnant from a more feature rich model, used to store the selected mode so it can resume in the same mode after a power off/out?
Michael Tempsch
might be, because recently bigclive did a teardown with upgrade....
oh wow that custom job at the end was briliant
Did you notice there was significantly more red laser visible when you had it running with the guts outside the case? Wonder why?
The capacitors by Hyncdz are by far the best thing in this teardown.
Maybe we'll see Jhynczf and Oackjf capacitors really soon, brought to you by Face Button Mashing Foundation.
The PCB looks like a very hastily chopped up part of a larger device, hence the rearranged(and excess) components mixed in with missing copper for vias and vias that go nowhere.
The only way to one-up your argon laser monstrosity is to use a copper vapor laser :)
Spirit LOL
Never not use Jjidogja brand resistors!
I used to use mostly Jhynczf capacitors (especially for filtering) but have recently started using Nuafjwx caps where lower ESR is advantageous.
Peter S you obviously have no idea what you are doing! Everyone in the industry knows that Shehțhsy are THE caps of choice!
i only use KJHDG-32 Caps because the are never let escape the magic smoke.
i bought an aluminium unit last year, it was sold as disco light with sound activation. didn't think to use one for xmas displays, now every one is.
The " Mike's screw-driver handle trick" works wonder.
I think they soldered eeprom and added some vias to make it look more serious or advanced so they could charge a little bit more
If you are here because your laser projector has stopped working or has faded down to a next to nothing with just the red showing, its the crappy 5v power supply! I just fixed a old nokia 5v power supply to mine! good as new!
These are sold in W H Smith for nearly £30, but you can buy the indoor models on eBay for less than a tenner. I bought a few of them. In fact you saw them in-use at EMF Camp at the Portcullis / Cisco tent, although I was very drunk when you came by.
from the little experience I've had with these cheap party/decoration green laser sparkle things, the lasera seem to fade out and die pretty quicky even considering the cheapness in general
They are probably overdriving the laser to get it a little bit brighter.
Doc Daneeka Quite so. My wife ordered a pair of these from QVC, we've have them up for two weeks, the red laser has crapped out of one of them, and the motor locked up in the other. These are rubbish! And they are going back for a refund.
They overdrive the diodes...
Again, nicely done. That was what I was going to suggest, prism and look at the spectral lines. Beautifully jdoine.
Always a good idea to measure the output power. Some of those can be very overpowered and dangerous to eyes. I think leaking high IR power can be dangerous too.
Some of those 'unconnected' vias may be connected to a third conductor layer embedded in the board.
These things are all over here in America this year. The two biggest national hardware stores are blowing them out at $39USD. You see them in every neighborhood, and they're so tacky looking.
thechosendude I know they are awful and this past Christmas I started seeing those stupid Santa scene protectors with audio catching on. Uhhggg!
The cheaper the better. People steal dollar tree solar lights. My Super great ones from ikea walked off faster then I could put them out. So I just got the cheap stuff so if they nick it, i don't have to worry about it.
What I would love to know is where to get the replacement lasers for these.
There has to be a dozen of these things on my block alone. They're everywhere this year - at least in NYC.
Peter Brockie yeah these things were picked up by infomercial guys. I'm guessing where most of them come from. You see a lot of ebay tat marked up on these infomercial these days.
I'm sure even with the unsafe indoor wiring used outside on wet lawns it's still safer on average than people going on up on ladders to hang lights. :P
The prism demo was awesome
I was very disappointed that we didn't see the argon laser version projected onto a house.
They're pretty inexpensive here in the US. I have one aimed up at a big tree. Makes some pretty cool patterns in the branches. Not the same brand, though. The ones sold here have a switch on top to change from static to moving pattern, etc. and cost around $30.
Pete Brown , mine was $39 also with the switches. I tried pointing at a tree too, that was pretty good. Then I put the unit in the tree pointing down at a hill side (my front yard is a steep slope). that was also cool as there are lots of wild grasses on it.
Enjoying the plethora of videos recently. I still regret having to sell my small multi-line argon head, such nice colors and beam quality.
man, I remember about 7 or 8 years ago working at a music/dj store, we sold some Chauvet or similar brand laser projectors like that. They were a super popular item but they cost upwards of $100 each, and even at base cost they were damn expensive. It's funny seeing how they're basically cheap commodity items now.
I have the Star Shower version of this, of which this rips off. I modded mine to run on USB power since the AC adapter puts out 5V at 2 amps.
I'm going to pull the green laser from one of these and make a laser pointer once I find out what voltage the lasers run on. I'm thinking 3 to 4.5 volts since the pen lasers have two AAs or Three button cells.
It's kind of a bit disappointing when a review/teardown of a cheap piece of sh*tty junk from Ebay turns out to be relatively safe, better quality and design than expected :-)
Another Won Hung Lo classic teardown, thanks for sharing Mike
really love the odd parts of jobs hanging around.would be nice to see a tour of you shop Mike
The psu *almost* looks like a decent PCB layout, except they forgot to cut the slot and modified it to use the cheap not safest rated cap by putting the track closer. And used the cheapest nastiest components to execute of course.
If they weren't such cheap skates they would have used one of the same supplies made by Changzhou Jutai that you get with the better quality lights (all the branded lights I've seen use them and bigclive seems to rate them) that are inline, waterproof and so actually fit in a normal outdoor socket and can be left outside.
Another Mike vid, must be Christmas now!
been used in discos for a few years now. Last saw them being flogged on QVC
I am the Stars Shover Robot
I am here to protect you
These were in the impulse bin at my local grocery store for a whole month. Given that I live in an urban area with nothing but apartments and condos I'd have been surprised if anyone DID buy one.
Thanks Mike for this video. Very funny the "right storage place" and much more interesting the empty eeprom!
Never seen one until this year, and there's at least one on every block. I heard they're getting banned though since you can't really point lasers into the sky when you have planes flying around
I see a few MLCCs the metal in them might be worth more than any other part of that thing.
Stepping on Big Clive's toes now, eh?
Half way through shooting I saw a "bigclivedotcom has uploaded a video" email & was worried he'd beat me to it!
Big Clive does not have BIG ARGON LASER :)
Yeah if you ignore the different voice its pretty much a big clive video.
Not that i mind, this teardown was pretty amusing.
Bet he has access to bigger ones at work
tigra frog But he has gay Dalek! Beat that with BIG ARGON LASE... never mind. 😑
Fantastic multiline at the end! Loved the vid, Mike. Just happened across your channel a couple days ago, great stuff all around.
Looks like they may have tried to convert a different product into that.
It looks like they didn't even bother fully depanelizing the PCB
A fried calls these things measles machines. they seem to be very popular this year.
My parents thought ours broke, they threw it in the trash , but being the kind of person I am I tested it once more and it worked, they still don't know so I just got a burning laser for free. PS the power gets split over the dots so I edited it a bit.
I love the variety of this channel, From a $500,000 DNA machine... to this 🙃
Whoa. I get no splitter and the red is combined under the green in a unified aluminum heat sink
Love the rubbish bin event. Great video.
databits reviewed a light like this and it appeared to've been built a lot better.
That PSU must have pulse quaking in there boots ! more than one active component what are they thinking !
I wonder if superfluous eeproms in devices are used to smuggle information and the recipient wiped it before you got it
I knew those things were garbage. Cool application for the filter though. I'm assuming you passed it through a prism first. That's why I like excited gas lasers so much. They aren't as locked to one frequency of the spectrum as diode lasers are. Personally I love 445nm the best although 405nm is pretty too.
I have always wondering what's inside. Thanks.
33 US on Amazon, what can you expect? I guess it all depends on when you buy it...
This is actually a knock off of the real ones (if "star shovver" wasnt a hint enough). Would be neat if you can get one of those to compare it with.
Maybe the pick and place machine needed to see a chip so they just threw a tube in to keep it happy.
Mike James Ha! It's a wonder they didn't use a tube of floor-sweepings 555's. Oh, wait, they sold 'em all to the "
Free Energy" nuts already!
The thing about the labels--I don't know about the UK, but in the US labeling is a BIG part of compliance for laser products, and failing to correctly indicate the hazard classification and not having a laser aperture warning sticker are both big no-nos.
Using a buck regulator to directly drive a laser diode is definitely not a good idea, laser diodes are FAR more sensitive to transient events than LEDs, and a linear driver, at least for the final regulation stage, is mandatory to get reliable performance from a laser diode, especially if you want to run them anywhere near their rated maximum power. A switching pre-regulators is of course a good idea where you're concerned about efficiency.
Not surprised you killed the red by hotplugging it, if the driver is dumb it will have gone to maximum duty cycle to try to get the output current through the non-existent diode to come up, so the diode would have gotten a decent wallop from the wide-open driver when you plugged it in. Although laser diodes are also extremely ESD sensitive, so it's entirely possible that that's what did it in while it was unplugged.
Nice going on the argon!
Wow, that argon laser is great!
There's nothing like a 7 line argon. I'm guessing that Mike's is running at roughly 125mW for the 532 nm line.
You can find them surplus but they're still bloody expensive. Last one I bought was around 2000 GBP, but that was way back in 1995.
Search for "Omnichrome 532" or "American Laser ALC-60X" (essentially the same laser & plug compatible) and beware that you need a power supply and the laser head. Also beware that they come with single-line and multi-line mirrors.... you want multi-line. The single line units were popular for CD mastering.
Peter S Thanks very much for the elaborative answer! Lasers are fascinating tech, I'm looking forward to messing with them
***** You're welcome. :-) Lasers are great fun to play with but gas lasers are at least 100x as fun as solid state for me. If you add a powerful HeNe to get a 'red' beam and you use the same beam splitter/combiner arrangement that Mike shows above, you can filter the argon and the resulting beam can be almost any perceived RGB color you want including yellow and a sort of "white". I just looked at the cost of similar used ion lasers and they're priced much more accessibly now. PS: Invest in a set of goggles for each type of laser you play around with. That 125mw argon is considerably brighter than the sun.
Haha I bought the deluxe model in an anodized case with sound sensitivity. It has the same dogshit power supply but at least it has a cooling fan and a remote. The board inside mine is completely different with it designed in a different shape to mount to the fan/end of the case instead of on the diode assembly. I'd be a bit worried about the heat those two diodes running in a sealed plastic housing would make. At least the diodes in mine are cooled by a fan and the aluminium case.
Fantastic video. The name of those capacitors was hilarious!
Anyone watching this please be careful with the lasers, even a momentary glance across one's retina could do permanent damage!
where i live they also use color disco and dj lights
maybe someone copy/pasted and forgot to remove some stuff and just didn't say anything when they went to production (imagine the office meeting where you have to explain that a bunch of money is being wasted and there has to be a redesign, say just after production has started)
Great Video & Very Cool Teardown. Keep up the great work. Nick.
These things are all over shopping television channels (like ideal world) with equally outrageous claims as. Plus 60 quid a pop that's a huge mark up for what is essentially tat.
Merry tatmas everybody
this one was £21 on ebay
You can get a smartphone for £21!
Those are $19.95 plus shipping in the USA. The one's I've seen are just as crappy too...
Sionyn Jones they're making a killing selling this trash
Yup, the german QVC channel always tryes to sell these things. How is that even profitable? If you really want one you would just go to ebay and buy one cheap instead of ordering one over the telephone for three time more money!!
love it Mike. but that eeprom is very odd. not an insignificant cost either. if they got rid of that they may have been able to afford a proper pwm controller ic in that nasty looking PSU.
I have this exact laser light but NON-Motion. The green light however is very faint and blurry, any idea why and how can I repair? Appreciate any help......
You are plenty crazy! Loved the final bit a lot. Let the neighbors source that bit of kit.
The KLUDGE-666 caps are best for insuring early failure!
any worse than someone putting a massively bright rgb string across the frontside of the house as a straight line, changing color every 2 sec?
Jeez, what shoddy building. I've got one with a similar housing but is completely different. I have a screw in connector on the back for the power cord, hot hot glue melted in! I suppose the Chinese didn't realize we have a "w" in our language so they just went ahead and used two V's next to each other, hey, we got a W now!
Maybe a pick and place configuration screwup and they just thought eh, they'll do.
"Shovver" - the typo that implies sooooo many things...
Guaranteed China Export for ya :P
Seems like every house in our neighborhood has one of these this year...
Is that a Morris Minor in the driveway? Love cars like that. Austin A30s a particular favourite. (Bet you never thought you'd hear that from a 24 year old from Australia.)
The EEPROM was maybe to let the PnP machine run? - just shove in some random reel of chips rather than adjust the PnP machine program.
I have similar projector like this and the diode in green laser is gone. Can you advise what type could it be ??? if I could use some cheap alternative from ebay or ali. I know it is not worth repairing but I am wondering if you can repair that laser.
haha that house with the dots... looks like a particularly ill giant sneezed on it.
"Is it Shovvered? Is it Shovvered? Look at me house. Is it Shovvered? Arks me if it's Shovvered. Look, house, Shovvered. It ain't Shovvered!"
I wonder if it's cheaper to include leftover ICs from previous products than to pay for their disposal. I have no idea how things are in China.
lured with the promise of crappiness, but it ain't that bad
Its hilarious that the reason I was watching this video is because the red laser went out on mine.. and in the middle of this video... the red laser went out.... LOL
Nice video!! Do you know where can i find these small plastic sheets that make these dots effects? Or some information to search it?
eprom ??? Thats what I thought. But what the heck is it doing there ??? no controller ???, is the eprom even powered ??? Is there pads for some sort of PIC ???
Nicely torn down though.
thanks
Mike does bigclive
How do you convert (or invert) DC to AC? I want to power a 12VAC microwave type stepper motor from the car battery, but don't know how. Also, is a choke necessary in this situation to limit the current?
I got one & i dont have the charger ,,,Some idea what can I do with one of this ,,I mean do some alteration to this thing ,some kind of other use ,other than the one that its for??
Where does this noisy sparkle effect come from when you see laser light?
I actually have the same laser (in a different package), and it has a mic so the laser pulses to the music. I got it for a one event for my daughter. Worked great for those 7 euro it cost me :)
This is a poor attempt at a "Star Shower" knock-off, which is an As Seen On TV product here in the US. And also sold in Home Depot stores here as well.
The real deal is more vivid, sharp and vibrant and has better spread and coverage.
Could it be a knock-off, knock-off?
Mine doesn't look that cheap, but I probably paid more than you did. Mine is properly sealed, no color tape around the outside, and they didn't use silicon caulk for the seal. I guess you get what you pay for.
That is definitely a cheap knockoff of what I believe are the real ones that I have. I have not taken mine apart, but some immidiate differences I noted were:
1. Mine has dual laser out holes on the front, one for red and one for blue.
2. The lack of 2 switches on the top, one to turn the motor off and the other to select red and green or just green laser.
3. Detachable power cord, done via a plug that screws one and has a gasket in it, not a blob of hot glue.
4. The plastic looks much higher quality than this one.
5. Mine has all the various stickers the box refers too and the color strips at the front are actually applied correctly.
Plus mine are actually water resistant, they spent the entire day in the rain and continue to work, Though one thing they do have in common is that ridiculously short freaking cable, about 1 foot. I had to seal up the end of the extension cord; with the two of them plugged into it; in a tupperware container and use silicone caulking to keep out the water. Not a great long term solution, but fine for the 3 weeks it'll be out front. We also have them pointed at some bare trees out front, looks pretty nice, almost like we've hung flickering lights in the trees.