Inside eBay's cheapest LED "street light" - with schematic
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- Опубликовано: 15 окт 2024
- This little LED street light is so cute that I had to buy one. It does make me wonder if they actually use things like this in China, as street lights in rural areas, or just as yard lights.
It's probably the most basic thing you could mount onto a pole outside and call a street light. But I'm not convinced that it's truly water resilient, and the complete lack of an earth/ground connection is unfortunately standard for this style of light.
There's a commonly spouted piece of misinformation that "electricity takes the path of least resistance", and that is WRONG! Electricity takes ALL paths of resistance, and while the most current will flow in the path of least resistance, enough can flow through other resistance paths to kill you.
Simply assuming a metal pole stuck in the ground is an acceptable "grounding" is not correct. In the event of a fault, the pole can become live, and while some current will flow to ground it may not be enough to trip a breaker. That would mean the pole was still live and touching it could result in you becoming another current path with fatal results.
A rather horrible example of that in the UK is a council worker who was fatally electrocuted while working on a street light where he or someone else had used ground as the neutral due to the proper neutral connection being damaged underground. That is VERY taboo, as a broken ground connection then makes all the associated metalwork on that section live with respect to ambient ground.
This is where I'll have my obligatory rant about the one day G39 slideshow that is often used in the UK to facilitate the use of lower wage labour to do work in one of the most dangerous electrical working environments possible. (lots of exposed metalwork and wet ground). It's a very unpleasant example of the Dunning Kruger effect, where an individual will be over confident in doing electrical work because they have been given an "electrical qualification".
I'd rather all workers in that industry got a deeper education so they understood the hazards of what they were working with. Especially when things are not "normal".
If you choose to use one of these lights, be aware that it DOES need an earth/ground connection added to avoid associated metalwork becoming live in the event of leakage to ground.
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:- www.bigclive.c...
This also keeps the channel independent of RUclips's algorithm quirks, allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty.
#ElectronicsCreators
We need a Big Clive bingo card, check off each discrepancy in products... no ground? Check. Danger of electrocution? Check. Overrated battery capacity? Check. Poor high voltage separation? Yup. Head-scratching Chinglish instructions? Sure. And so on.
That might be “______Difficult” ;)
@@scottzehrung4829 it will need to be an A0 sized sheet of paper, to have enough room.
I did suggest that, don't forget the spudger! Extra points with more rrrrrrr's
Perhaps contact Randall Munroe and ask what he'd want to draw one, or perhaps more in different sizes :)
Don't forget "One Moment Please" in the centre.
Based on 7-8 W, looks like they might be under driving the LEDs. Good if you want street lights to last several years without frequent repair/replace.
I find that type will fail without warning. The type that doesn't are the flip-chip type. But that was probably more work considering.
It's going to be corroded and water logged way before.
You know you've been watching Bigclive a long time when you can recognize all the various burn marks on the bench and remember what they were and when the occurred! Might be fun to do a board game when you match the burn to the episode.
Burns night 😂
Well they’re not lying when they say: the product must be grounded (because they didn’t do it).
That should last about a week before it fills with water.
If you are optimistic. Morning dew would fill it overnight.
Less if it rains...
I mean, they don’t call it a “flood” light for nothing 😂
Very common for no earth connections I’ve found, well the cost of a crimp connector, a post and a screw must be high!
Thanks Clive really enjoyed it
I’m loving these “street light” series of videos.
So many basic designs that are really quite good but also quite dangerous in equal measure.
I hope you don’t live next to an airport. Your garden must be drenched in LED lighting with the amount of things ebay and temu have available!
Sometimes I wonder if hobbyists are best off getting stuff that is easy to mass produce at a low price, then making modifications to it after it arrives to make it behave more like a high quality device that would have been more expensive.
One of the attractions of cheap unsafe ebay electrical devices. Plus, it's fun to see how dangerous they can make something.
Probably not because the parts are substandard not just the design. The chips are probably seconds that won't last near as long as you think.
4 in the morning/night upload, dope! Perfect to watch to go to bed
Haha here too...South East London LALALA
Yes would definitely use them indoors as workshop or area lighting, remove the mount, and place inside a round bulkhead fitting to do a retrofit. 7W will be more than enough light.
These would probably make good work lights for garages & shops...something inside and not exposes to weather.
How is RUclips telling me that your comment is from 2 weeks ago when the video was published 5 hours ago
@@Handyman1199 channels can upload videos before release and then use the scheduler to make them public later on. Those videos, while private, can still be accessed by a URL specific to the video.
This means channels can allow certain people "Early Access". This is often done so that people who pay to be a channel member on RUclips, or on platforms like Patreon can have early access to videos as a benefit for sending money to the channel owner(s).
Amazing! There is no way this is a municipal street light!! Or even an outdoor light.....
Me every time....
Clive: "let's check for earth continuity"
Me (saying outloud): "No chance"
That looks like a nice and warm place for nest building! :-)
I like that light I would like it for the back of my boat, so thank you Clive.
Actually good product for that price. Good value!
When I was a child, I help rewire a marionette theatre (we were switching from a very dodgy/exciting manual lighting system that involved two-pin plugs and massive rheostats that gave you a nasty zap if you touched anything other than the Bakelite handles to a programmable system). One of the main things I did for the switchover was to rewire everything for three-pin plugs and thoroughly test the grounding. We designed the switch panel in house, and I learnt about making sure to sand the contact points for the earth connections to ensure everything was properly grounded.
Those hand drawn PCB tracks are artistic.
great job explaining how it all is! how long did it take to stabilize the current draw? it was nice that it
was not overly hot! probably better inside use over in the weather! thank you for the education!
lol this reminds me of some really cheap led spotlights I ordered off Aliexpress some years back. I wasn't expecting much since they were about $3 each. However, to my surprise they were about 10 watts, good cases, and the grounds were actually connected. I put two of them outside to replace my porch light and some years later running 24/7 completely exposed to the weather, they still work just fine. I guess I lucked out.
Big Clive, would you happen to have a suggestions for making a water-resistant outdoor external IR illumination for CCTV? The offerings online seem overpriced and really disappointing. Gutting a standard outdoor LED lamp seems like a better option. 230V and 24V inputs are both close by, but it's for cameras, so any ripple is undesirable.
Clive: "No earth - this is not a surprise"
Also Clive: "Holding the ungrounded case."
Quite possibly the worst design for a weatherproof enclosure I've seen. Was there any mistake they didn't make?
I bought two for my kitchen to mount under a wall cupboard and illuminate the counter top, I will need to take it apart and do the necessaries but should do the job at a good price.
I was so hoping that the earth might have been connected!! Actually not that bad a little light, and something I could find a use for back home, ideally NOT exposed to the elements though. That would mount nicely on 40mm PVC piping (remembering to actually connect the earth to the lamp's metalwork!)
I think our home LED security light (since 2020) is 40 watts. It replaced the 175 watt mercury vapor light we had since 1987.
I still liked the old bulbs more. Even though they took more power. Interesting video!
They cut so many corners on that thing I'm surprised it wasn't a perfect circle.
If they made the entire housing in one piece of plastic, with a slot on the bottom side for the board to slot into, with a rubber or silicone strip to fill in / close it afterwards, it would probably be more waterproof. Especially if held upright. Of course, it wouldn't be very practical if you couldn't shine it downwards.
I wonder if two of the plastic covers could be joined together. At 4:05, it looks like the plastic cover has a gasket around its length. So joining two of them together might work - but there's nowhere to pass the cables through. And screwing them together would still result in issues with rust.
0:39 - someone already did similar to Lambeth council in sw London. The streetlights only light up the top of the poles and people's bedrooms and not the ground.
100 %
- "waterproof"
- "rustproof"
- "safely grounded"
🤭😂🤦♂️
UL listed-ish
Don't forget the CE mark. "Caveat Emptor" indeed.
The aluminum plate the board is stuck to confuses me. The corners were notched and the edges bent up with obvious mounting holes in them.
But what might be mounted to it? Is the plate a universal part also used with solar lamps?
Otherwise I agree that it’s a straightforward, if somewhat unsafe due to the cut grounding wire, area or small room lamp.
Oh, do the plate dimensions match up with British or European standard wall mount boxes? If so you’d have to screw it in from inside the wall or ceiling… never mind.
Or maybe it doubles as floodlight base?_
In all these designs it only takes a tad more effort to get it "perfect-ish" This has nothing to do with saving on R&D. It's like they deliberately keep copy/pasting the same silly faults.
The holes are where you would anchor the earth wire. 🤣
it looks like a build your own street light with Meccano set
Shocking, about the bad grounding. Cheers!
Aha, I see what you did.
I used two 150w high-pressure sodium outdoor lamps and then three 400w HPS lamps from Home Depot to grow plants in my walk-in closet when I was younger. That was a fun project. I later realized it was better to just grow my tomatoes and other stuff outdoors. Stay organic. Use that guano fertilizer.
I don't understand the need for the varister. Why not just use the appropriate valued resistor? It's not like customers are going to open the case to change the resistance. :)
The varistor is purely for overvoltage transient protection.
Hello Clive and the entire BCDC Family. Thanks for another interesting "take it to bits" video and the reverse engineered schematic.
One question, are there no more Big Clive streams? Perhaps the notification mechanism at RUclips is on da fritz?
I had to switch to Twitch due to RUclips politics. At the moment I can't do streams due to long hours on a fairly demanding job.
Booooooo to U-Tube politics.
Not familiar with that app. Could you send a link?
3:47 "I'm just grabbing a random screwdriver ... I will pause because there are quite a lot of screws; I will come back when I get to the last one"
3:59 "And here is the last screw"
(Me:
WAIT! WHAT?!? THAT'S NOT THE SAME SCREWDRIVER!!!! "
Would it take much to make those not flicker? I could use a few of this sort of thing if so. Maybe you could pick a good cheap one to show us how to manage that?
That would be a pretty nice light as long as you kept it inside and out of the weather, grounded it and put more heat sink on the back. Interesting that the plastic cover has a silicone seal but the other side is basically a lake.
Even though it doesn't have any smoothing, it will still have high power factor.
Considering the Chinese amp ratings on things like the SSRs I'd say the conversion factor of 25 W[chinese] to 7.6 W[SI] sounds about right.
I have had a CFL hanging outside for a decade, with only a plastic coke bottle protecting it. Still works great.
The ventilation has probably helped prolong it.
It's too bad. A bit more work and that looks like it would be a decent product. A ground, non-galvanic materials selection, and maybe a rubber grommet for the wires and you'd have something you'd be interested in deploying.
eBay should pull the listing for the lack of earth alone
eBay doesn't care. This is just one product of millions that violate electrical safety standards.
eBay won't do anything. Trading Standards might save someone's life by taking action against sellers like this.
ebay does not care about that. However, you’ll get hit with a VeRO listing removal the second you use the word “velcro” in your listing title.
No, it says that it must be earthed, so that's your responsibility!
An example of an unscrupulous seller buying “polished turds” on AliBaba, AliExpress and then re-selling them on eBay/TEMU
I'd want to put a nice big fat capacitor across the 1M resistor to smooth out the pulsing dc voltage and reduce the shimmer, especially if I was using this as a workbench light. But a decent one, rated for the right voltage would cost more than this entire unit, which is why it wasn't included. But Big Clive would rate it as Death Beam though.
If these were actually designed for outdoor use, these wouldn't be too bad for use outside, lighting up a garden, driveway, or similar. Not sure how these would be protected from water ingress, though...
is it that easy to scam local councils? Asking for a friend with a white speaker van.
If you hand over brown envelopes it is.
Sprinkle a bit of anthrax in the envelope for extra bonus points.
@@wimwiddershins allegedly, allegedly
Yes. As the buyer, rarely sees the product. They will be sent a ' perfect ' example. The actual items supplied are not so perfect. The buyers in councils are also limited by budget and tendering rules. The goods get delivered and they are then sent to be utilised as required.
I wonder if the earth wire is used for EMC - highly unlikely with cheap Chinese products but you never know!
Both aluminum and steel oxidise (rust). Syeel just oxidises an orange/red coloir, aluminum is pale white/grey.
To avoid this issue, mount thr device on a slight angle.
I'd avoid buying it in rhr first place, seems like it will have a short life.
It looks like they split the cost between the box and the product. 😂😂😂
I think the box cost the most. 👍🤣🤣
@@dcallan812 And the postage too.
Rather reminds me of the time of the small 10w COB-based floodlights (what were they, £3 a piece originally?), amazing they can make something so dirt cheap (even if they skimp on things to the point of being dangerous!), and can cost less than a branded toothbrush!!! :P
I just bought 20x 10W cob chips for less than a fiver delivered in a week from the depths of China. All working at around 8W. They need hefty heatsinks but that was the plan for the project - growlights for my polytunnel. Dirt, ie compost is much, much more expensive.
That panel is about the same size as the replacement dome light assembly I purchased.
“Must be grounded” (because we didn’t)
Yay anoither toy street light. You can just shove any ordinary LED bulb in any old street lamp and you get a similar result.
At that price it's most likely considered as a "disposable". Environment? What's that?
Good god that flex is thin. Can’t be more than 26 AWG. I’m watching on my iPad and I kept waiting for him to strip it back, only for him to probe up on thin air instead. On a plus note it will blow clear before you get electrocuted if you touch the enclosure. Safety!
Just went on E-Bay and for 40p more you can get the 50 LED 50w model..
I guess you could add a cap there too, to reduce the shimmering?
That introduces other complexities.
Not convinced on the sustainability of these LED fixtures. My local council changed to LED street lights en mass in 2017 and many are now failing. Normally they start flashing, so its likely to be a capacitor issue. I understand the lantern heads are sealed units so not serviceable in any way and they end up in the skip. Although more energy efficient than the old low pressure sodium lamps I would imagine the cost of replacements every 7 years will prove more expensive overall than the old lamp heads, the actual fixture of which served well over 30 years, obviously with tube, ballast and igniter replacements.
Why the value of 10uF for the capacitor? How is that value determined?
Just a typical value that would work.
What is that M-shaped curvy wire in Clive's benchtop? Something that passed too much current and embedded itself into the surface? I have been wondering about that for a long time now. 😀
Plastic welder video.
That light has too many components and is too safe to be sold in China - it's strictly for export... 😁
8w seems cool and all but nobody measured the flux of these leds. it could be using 80lm/w chips with cri 50.
It's funny how these things all have ground wires and just never attach them to something. Like i get that corner-cutting cheapness is the name of the game, but you'd think they'd either put in the token effort to wrap it around a screw or save the extra couple pennies and not have a ground wire
What would you do if you were a contractor and were asked to install a whole bunch of lights like this where the ground was cut off and it was using non-copper wiring? Would you just refuse to do the job once you saw the fixtures they had bought? What if you had already agreed to install them? Would you break the contract, or re-wire them, or something else?
I'd make the person supplying them aware of the issues and let them choose if they wanted to proceed and take full liability. I'd do it by email and save a copy.
And you can see it has “no” fitting for a photocell or radio/WI-FI switch, so the council can remotely dim/light it, if the council contractors were to see that “polished turd” they would reject it as; no earth/electrical ground, nowhere to fit a photocell/remote switch & the end of the column pole is left open
I’m always slightly curious as to if anyone would ever buy these and use them for a street light, or if they do just get used in sheds, garages and (until it rains) gardens.
Almost reminds me of the Meccano kits and their clones worldwide. I definitely wouldn't use it as a streetlight without adding some protection against rust and moisture ingress. The mains cable is super dodgy here, as is with most lighting fixtures made of pure grade Chinesium, and lack of the ground connection is a blatant code violation. Still, it can be modded into usability.
Its a basic as you could possibly get away with. 👍🤣
Is this the type of light Ramsey plans to buy to replace all their sodium lamps? I trust you saw that they have applied for permission to borrow money to replace over 500 lamps.
Unfortunately they have given the contract to someone I regard as a 1-day certified labourer.
With a bit of luck the simple circuit will not be too much of a source of EMI, maybe it could be an improvement for my workshop.
Would adding a smoothing cap on the DC output be worth the trouble? A decent diffuser may be handy to soften it a bit, perhaps?
I wondered the same. Question is if a cap would fit in there.
It will work, its already got the bleed-resistor also. A 10uf cap or smaller might fit under the lens.
The flickering is barely or not visible, except on camera, he forgot to say. For 8 Watt I think you need quite a large cap.
The capacitor would charge to the peak voltage. That would result in much higher power dissipation from the driver.
No earth required as this is clearly a double-insulated, class 2 appliance where no metal parts would be accessible during normal use (assuming the standard Mattel plastic pole was utilised).
Is there room behind the lens to put a death beam capacitor across the 1M resistor for smoothing?
No significant room, and that would also charge up to peak mains voltage and put a lot more stress on the linear regulator.
The fact that it was not earthed and was no where near 25W must give you a good chance of getting your money back.
I found similar listings on eBay US. Many of which show LM of 90,000,000 to 120,000,000!! Second only to the sun!!
Chinese grounding : cut the ground wire, and and let it fall to the factory ground. Perfect.
WOuld the shimmer not be really annoying in a workshop?
For detailed work I recommend flicker free lighting.
It's so cute, I want to use mine in the bedroom!
In reality, the lack of an earth on a street light isn't a big deal, since it's at the top of a pole where no one can reach. Earthing the pole is more important, but it's normally burred deep enough.
As there's no RCD protection used in street lighting, you can't rely on the pole itself as being earthed just by being in the ground. It's not uncommon to find live poles.
"25 Watt" means that the device will produce the same luminosity as a 25 Watt incandescent bulb.
As an efficient LED device one should expect it to draw about 7 to 10 Watts from the mains supply.
PS
Check out the World's Brightest Flashlight IMALENT MS32. Now 200K Lumens...
No, the listing says the power is 25W. It doesn't say light output equivalence, or any other such term, it says power.
It also says it has an IP65 rating 😂
The seller also claims all their products comply with all UK and EU laws and rules (Spoiler: They don't).
200.000 lumen: ruclips.net/video/yrefqqirklY/видео.html
what is the efficiency of this cheap simple led driver circuit? as compared to say a quality meanwell brand dc power supply
Except for the missig (electrolytic) smoothing capacitor it's the same circuit as a "standard" LED light-bulb. So the efficiency should be similar.
@@DrAHorn i don't know what you would consider a standard led light but there must be a reason people install £40 led drivers with tons of circuitry inside them
@@cho4d Light-BULB! Like "it screws in an E-27 socket". I don't know if that's the correct term, but I'm not a native speaker.
[Edit:] O.K. Wikipedia calls them: "A-series light bulb"
@@DrAHorn Light Bulb is good, across the UK at least. Most of the lamps (light bulbs) I pull apart have smoothing caps and discharge resistors but these flood light/street lamp types seem to be a large fusible resistor, rectifier and one or more driver chips with current limiting resistor. The chip spec sheets show capacitors but I think they leave them off for cheapness and space saving and don't care about flickering leds and overdriving. Or earthing and heat stress.
It's very cheap and simple, with surprisingly good efficiency. Some prominent street lights use a similar approach.
At first, I thought Clive took it apart before the video.
i just had a spontaneous fire from a simple e screwdriver sat in a drawer. i was sat nearby by luck, otherwise my house would be toast. No warning, smoke smell noise just a foot high flame. I had seconds to get it out my front door
It is earthed via capacitive coupling ......
Does it have an IP rating?
IP rating is prob IP00
I think it has an IF rating... Ingress Facilitation 🙂
IF69 : Dusty and rusty within a week.
@@Reprint001 😂😂😂
I treat Chinese measurements with tiny pinches of salt. Especially IP ratings. Chinese dust and water must be huge and have properties unknown to physics.
It has a wishful one based on luck.
@@BromideBride Don't use salt, it will rust even quicker 😅
I'm married to a Filipino from the Philippines and in Manila for house hold use they have 220 volt AC at two phase of about 110 volt on each wrier and there no earth so all the power socket are just two flat pins so just may be that LED street light is for!! The Philippines? where it's a cast of EARTH wrier NO we don't need that. Now some of the out of way streets have solar powered LED street lights but how good they are??
Maybe the „Product must be grounded“ means that you need to ground the case, not the wire. Chinese translations at its finest. Also too bad they didn’t add a smoothing capacitor, it would be too easy to solder it to the full bridge rectifier yourself tho
A night time satellite view of the UK will clearly show your location ( with all those cheap streetlights ? ) Ha - Ha .... An engineer once told me that various Asian countries have absolutely NO idea about UK / US grounding regulations ( their view is : why waste a valuable Copper wire that 99.999 % of the time does nothing ! ) ... ( ? ) ...... DAVE™🛑
i bought a solar street light the does not work ???
I live on an LED lit "cheap street!" ... For the misery it's brought me, I'd happily see it bulldozed off the face of the Earth! ... I'll be going upmarket, if I'm ever allowed to move into the house I inherited 2 years ago!
Awesome Video Big Clive🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂
0:30 - "Flog them to dumb Counsels."
That implies the existence of smart Counsels. Does anybody know where I could find such a mythical beast?
That must have a factory gate price of less that one pound.
Big Clive needs to cover his entire roof with these so it can be seen from space, kinda like Clark Griswold did with his Christmas lights.
Be careful not to repeat the vela incident with switch contact bounce when turning them on though. 🙂
I cant see any local government using them as street lights.
Failed the first test, off to a flying start 🤣
I see they working on the fewer the components the better system.
If you drilled a hole or two in the top of the pole clamp you could screw it to a ceiling / wall in a workshop or lounge. interesting bit of tat 2x👍
"holding the ungrounded case". LAD. YOU CHECK THE METER IS WORKING BUT DON'T CHECK FOR A SHORT :D
The light worked, so there was no short.
@@two_tier_gary_rumain Not a short as in a complete short, but an unintended connection to the casing. The casing could've been hot, worst case.
7:15 - I am not familiar with the EG1000 or MLS3535A. Can anyone share a manufacturer to couple with that? Or an Arrow/DigiKey/Mouser/Future/etc part number? :)
You're more likely to find them on AliExpress. It's a very specialist product.
If this ran on a lipo and had a solar panel option, I'd be all over it.
I would be concerned about stroboscopic effects in a workshop but a great light for lofts.
Can someone explain to me why the Earth cable is there but it is always not attached? It takes literally a second to put it somewhere useful 😢
putting it on properly takes time and resources. not much, but def. some. therefore costs money. also, not needed to make the lamp work. so they skip doing it.
@@HungarianPenguin ok but then why putting it on the instructions? I know it's a stupid question but you, and with you I mean them, could've avoided it and nobody would have pretended anything
As I said elsewhere I'm not sure it's time saving.
The boards and cases aren't designed from first principles to include an earth and they (we know who) have thousands (more likely millions) of these things already fabricated.
You can see that this isn't a product that was designed to be a street light from the start. It's a very cheap interior LED light bolted to a 40mm pipe clamp. Voila, street light!
The manual, probably for an actual street light, was written completely separately. They pulled up the PDF of the street lamp manual, printed it and put it in the box with their new super cheap 'street light'.
You can hang a torch off a tree and call it a street light, but that doesn't mean it was designed to be a street light. That's all they're doing.
Just received an eBay listed "Genuine Samsung USB-C charger" great replica but total fake. Would be a great video OEM vs Foe
Wow... around 33% of what they call it... still stupid way of calling it 24W. Based on what definition?