so what you;re saying is, is that i need to build a robot that can decide whether or not it is a healthy bug, and only trap the healthy bugs, while letting the unhealthy ones go. then strap that onto my 220v deathball for maximum results??
"It exposes a live circuit board at 240 v. Awesome! That gets the Clive seal of approval. Perfect for small children's bedrooms." That made me laugh for way too long.
"And it's just going to have to be the finger test. Eh, oh yeah, it's dead." You seriously have me rolling here. You remind me so much of my dad. He's an electrician.
1:02 "You get this sort of secondary basket for lifting the insects out." 1:28 "It's got this secondary tray. I don't know why they've got a secondary tray."
You could just take the entire bottom section to the trash or wherever as there are no wires on it. The removable tray is a pointless piece of plastic.
I think the reason you don't usually see paralleled LEDS is because they have a negative temperature coefficient. The hotter they get the more current they draw. So, when you have a bunch in parallel if there is any mismatch one will begin to get warmer, draw more current, get warmer, etc etc until it blows up. Then on to the next one until they're all dead and gone.
Clive, maybe one day you could investigate why Dyson vacuum batteries fail so often. Of the dozen or so I have dissected, none of the 18650 cells had failed. The problem has to be related to the current limiting circuitry. Most likely due to the "power boost" feature that Dyson recommends only using when needed. What I found in every case so far is the owner leaves it run in power boost all the time because it's the only way it really works well. Just a suggestion. Love your videos.
Oh you know China'll steal the design shortly and save that extra 10th of a cent on the passives you've removed. Pretty impressive modification though my good man! Never cease to be impressed with your videos.
+Kevin Zabbo That was their design rebuilt to actually function BETTER by Sir Clivington, but they won't give two shits about it working better, they'll just care that there's a tenth of a cent to be saved, and retool everything to match his re-working of it.
+Kevin Zabbo This is what you get for all the neo-liberal, trickledown economics that the rich shits manipulated the world into sucking up. A whole lot of shit made of plastic and the flow on consequences.
Neoliberals (a term invented by a disgruntled conservative) didn't start trickle-down economics, though rich shits did. They're actually called "conservative," because a liberal knows right well that money trickles uphill and the only people that make money in a trickle-down economy are the fat cats on top. Pay a man $15 an hour and you'll get it back within a week: liberal. Pay a man $10... steal his pension, and give it to the CEO as a bonus for being greedy: conservative.
you were correct both the flickering and the heat are designed to attract more mosquitoes. I looked into the basic principles of the leading traps and good ones use a photocatalyst material which generates co2 when exposed to uv. Best ones use timed co2 or propane co2 generator. Good work with all your videos, very informative. thanks.
Add some butyric acid in the mix. It was shown in Finland that a steel rod covered with butyric acid and warmed to 37 degrees centigrade was irresistable to female moscitos. Butyric acid is part of human sweat.
Robert Seviour if you run LED at higher current it is likely to fail earlier , leading to failure of other LEDs which will take more current and then fan will stop spinning since all LEDs would have failed!
+bigclivedotcom How precise is the meter actually with small loads? I've seen some weird measurements on 1 of mine. A clock radio pulled 8 Watts constantly. Using a 60 Watt bulb and then adding the clock radio revealed a 0.5 Watt usage which was more to what it should be. Surely the resistor design is crazy and the fact that you felt the warmth already is an indicator of power usage/waste.
+bigclivedotcom Thanks for the video(s) - It's great instead of doing just a "teardown" you have given us a different if not better way of implementing a circuit. I doff my hat to you.
+PIXscotland I'm thinking the same thing. I wonder if it also can be because these brushless fans are switching a set of coils with hall effect sensors. Not sure if there is always at least one coil pulling current..
+PIXscotland And the 10R was there to reduce noise caused by the fan switching. At low speeds, the sudden jerking occurring when the coil is energized is what produces most of the noise.
+PIXscotland I believe you are correct. The fan will also power off if held in a stopped position long enough. He stopped it a few times, but didn't hold it long enough to cause the fan to give up. I could see that being a problem for the cap!
Kenji Fox Nice in-depth thinking, but only good brand fans have that feature, mostly those from Intel. I can promise you that this generic Chinese fan won't stop the torque when held by hand.
The secondary tray is to allow airflow out of the device, to prevent a high pressure area inside the basket that would simply push insects out and make the fan useless.
I think I can explain what the 10 ohm blue resistor is about. I had to replace one of those that was in my Dreamcast. It's designed to act like a fuse and break, like when someone connected a shorted controller to my Dreamcast, had to replace the fuse to fix my controller ports.
Sometimes in countryside chinese factories, these sort of small appliances are designed by interns. Electronics is not a part of the standard education curriculum, so people's electrical engineering abilities are rather dubious.
I have an idea you could make a competition out of Clive: make a gadget that is purposely made to fail by smoke or other major failure, but not fail right away, something with overloading major components, and the competition is the nearest time guess to the failure explodey part. filmed using time lapse perhaps.
+Senapspiser I was thinking more like 10 ohms. It does not take much resistance to prevent wild thermal runaway. With 68 ohms, you end up dropping 1.36V at 20mA and will lose a fair amount of speed on a fan that is already running quite slow, which means you may need to bump the dropper capacitor to 2.7uF to get the fan speed back up.
zwz • zdenek If you are that worried about the LEDs dying, add a 1W 3.6V zener in parallel with the LEDs + resistors. Pick the resistors for 10-15mA per LED at 3.6V and let the zener deal with the remaining 40-70mA.
Teardown Dan That would be inefficient in more than one way, plus Zener diodes don't come in arbitrary values. The knee of the diode is quite wide and the face value will be different from one in your actual circuit. You must design the circuit for at least 10% tolerance for the Zener diode. But as I said, a Zener diode is not called for at all here.
zwz • zdenek Zener diodes exist in 3.6V and 5.1V values, which is exactly the range one might be looking for as a fail-over in case LEDs start blowing open. Precision is not important since you can pick the LEDs' current limiting resistors based on whatever zener voltage you get with your worst-case current where all LEDs failed open. When all LEDs are working, the zener gets significantly less current depending on how low the LEDs pull voltage across it. The point of this modification was to make Clive's modified circuit safer in case of LEDs failing open and improve the LEDs' life by limiting current without adding significant complexity that was not already in the original design or drastically decreasing efficiency: the current limiting resistors were in the OD and if you pick the right resistor values for the LED and zener used, the extra power dissipation should be under 200mW without much effort.
I liked the redesign. At first I thought it was a bit risky to connect the LEDs in parallel like that; if one of them goes bad, then the other five will have to sink more power, which means they'll probably go bad at the same time. On the other hand you saved a bunch of components and, in hindsight, you measured the supply current coming off the reservoir capacitor to be just about right for six LEDs (about 20mA each). I've only found your channel recently, but I'm liking it so far! Subbed for the circuit diagram and clever redesign.
Dad had a retail store since the 60's. One of the first Chinese home stereos we got in was subject to a recall. It turned out it got passed customs only because of the UL label on the cord. The guts of the stereo was poorly designed and several had caught fire in homes.
I think you are right about the heat attracting insects. Mosquito killers in the USA often have heaters or even use propane heaters to warm the units. In the case of the propane versions the CO2 produced also works as an attractant.
Just subscribed. I definitely subscribed because of the way you speak. Not the accent but the word choice You ask questions and point out odd things in such a way that we're walked into the information with a fluid line of thought. I really would love to know your process for these videos. Its very much so informative and is perfect for teaching/instructing. Its probably just a result of speaking out your own thought process after having a mastery of the information. probably something without a process behind it its so perfect.
+bigclivedotcom Got to wonder what the designers of this were thinking, not only does your design do the job better but surely it should be cheaper to manufacture all those excess components do have a cost.
the fan is probably a standard 12v computer fan, and with what he said of it only getting about 7v or 8v would explain why it ran slowly, but most people have 120 or 220v mains, so its more convenient to just make a PSU to drop it to the correct voltage, otherwise you would have an external transformer (wall wort) or run it on batteries which less people like. But Junk is Junk, we live in a consumer world were we by the most useless things
Oooops! 240V? 'Fraid not, Clive. From the Electricity Safety, Quality and Continuity Regulations 2002: "... the frequency declared pursuant to paragraph (1) shall be 50 hertz and the voltage declared in respect of a low voltage supply shall be 230 volts between the phase and neutral conductors at the supply terminals".
The reality is, the numbers were fudged such that 240V is still within tolerance of our new 230V supply, so most power system still put 240V to the home. But we ticked the box of moving to a standard 230V supply, so all's well.
This reminds me of those dodgy, mains charged insect whackers, that look like a shitty tennis raquet. First time I used one, a blowfly flew into it at full charge, (the fly and the whacker), basically nuked itself , making a noise not all together unlike a .303 rifle shot. I was actually terrified everytime someone picked it up because I was scared they would touch me with it. Another quality bit of plastic shit courtesy of, the People's Republic of China.
I love it when someone who puts close to raw socket power in his bath tub to heat the water says something is dangerous because the lid can be screwed off.
"...it exposes a live circuit board at 240v....AWESOME!! That gets the Clive seal of approval, perfect for small children's bedrooms..." Damn I needed that laugh. This channel is easily one of my favorite RUclips subscriptions
Clive, you didn't understand the concept. You just ruined the business of the distributor for 100k resistors - perhaps it was the brother of the guy who made this miracle of chinese technology :-) Absolutely love your work!
You'll have to run it overnight outside and see if it catches anything. I'd be very curious to see if it works better than the traditional electrified grid style (or if it even works at all).
I have discovered that a shot glass with a little apple cider vinegar and covered with tinfoil and a small hole works quite well. It doesn't use any toxic chemicals (well I guess the vinegar COULD be toxic if you drank several gallons) and it draws exactly zero watts. In fact you probably should not plug it in at all. Actually if it's possible to plug the shot glass in find some other shot glass that does not plug in.
+Babynaaz KHEDUN it kinda does, but what he did is actually far more economical (for production). while the flikering would attract a bit more insects, the savings of not adding all those "useless" componets for something that still kinda works (made in china standards) is better.
Clive, do the folks at Poundland, et al, roll their eyes when you walk in the door? Do they watch your videos and realize what kind of lovely pink products they are schlepping off on folks round your way??? Love the Clive seal of approval on this particular pink product....
Can these be destroyed by a single insect flying along the crack before hitting a specific exhaust opening in the right place? Cause I've seen that movie.
As a bachelor in linguistics I have now acquired some fresh knowledge - certain people can actually take apart electrical thingies they own, analyse the circuitry, *understand* how do its individual parts work together and improve it. Also, apparently, the thingies can come from their manufacturer with weird and irrational mistakes, just like my pupils' essays. Once again I look at this world a bit differently, thank you.
I think the resistor across the fan needs to be there because it s a discontinuous load. They usually have up to four switching transistors in them which fire in sequence pulsing the commutatorless motor around. The fan usually has a ring magnet motor with a couple of drive coils. During the off period, the voltage may rise too high causing voltage breakdown of parts in the fan. The resistor should stop it going into the hundreds of volts. Love the use of a fuse? If i were cynical, I'd say the drop resistor heat is there on purpose to also act as an attractant. The design would work better with insects if the capture was above, not below the entry inlet. Insects fly up to escape. Flys jump into the air and cannot fly backward (this is how you get them, always attack from the front). A simple design would be a bottle on top and a motor that vibrated the whole thing every 30 seconds (like a pager motor).
If you touched it with both hands in the right places or were holding something grounded in one hand and touched the PCb with the other hand it could deliver a fatal shock.
in response to the capictor bit : If the machine has no other on buttons (your switch was on) the capacitor(s) will discharge as quick as it can depending on where they are used in the circuit. For things like a monitor with an on switch you should press it to try to power the screen which will instantly discharge it, whereas the LED for showing the light on stays on for a minute if you dont press it ! That capacitor was quite large !!! it would have been quite a whack on video :P
the "secondary" bin/bowl aids in the dehydration/death of the insects. they have no source of liquid and they are being "air dried" just a little quicker.
I think it was supposed to flicker... I mean if you use a diode in an alternating current circuit, you get interrupted pulses from one direction with a frequency of 50/2 Hz
Lord Sandwich he didn't need to remove it, it came off when he tried to twist the top back onto the base as you would after emptying the insects out of it... I'd imagine, however, if you had one at home running in a room, pets and children could easily drop it and expose mains voltage, without use of a tool. that would make the product illegal here under the wiring regs.
Well moths and gnats seem to be more drawn toward blinking or flickering lights as opposed to 60hz or upward lights, though generally it's the brightness above that which they go for, so it'd only be useful in the dark. Certain insects will also go for heat, and the fan sucking it in could increase the attraction.
I believe the brown inner tray is meant to be a filter to prevent bugs from being drawn up into the fan and then spewed out into the world to continue to wreak havoc.
My guess is that the 10R resistor in series with the fan is to prevent inrush current, and the 3.9K resistor is probably to absorb some back-EMF and protect the electrolytic cap when you turn the unit off.
the only reason I can think of for the 3.9k and 10 ohm is for a voltage divider. but even then they should be round the other way to actually be of "use"
Wow very cool. This was a good example of the first year in electronics. You can clearly see a Wheatstone bridge and a tank circuit. Probably the only things I remember from school 20 years ago.
I think the flickering LEDs were intentional.. or at least I can see why it was included... I tried living in NZ years ago and had to build a pc to house the cpu, gpu and ram I had carried over in my backpack from scotland. I was getting parts shipped over from all across nz, but the selection was ridiculously low compared to the wonder that is uk inet shopping even back then, and in the end the ONLY 120mm fans I could lay my hands on in a reasonable time had blue LED strips wrapped around the inner tube (or outer ?, depends on which way ya look at it :) I figured sod it, can always cut them out for something else if I hate the look... That PC was an insect killing machine ! :D... kiwi land has way too many insects but heh, at least the room I worked in was slightly less insanely full of insects, would just have to hoover out the pc case a couple times a week :P I remember thinking at the time just one of those fans powered by usb aiming its air into a sieve would make a pretty bad ass bug killer.. then promptly forgot about it after I got back to a sane country where a killatron 9000 pc wasn't needed :(... at least not on the east coast hehe. But yeah, one of the side effects from where the led strip was placed was the fan blades would block them out individually as they passed over, creating a pulse to the light. I have no idea if that aided in the bug attraction, it was just when you mentioned the lights flickering it instantly reminded me of that, and then you pulled it apart to show a pc fan... :) I'm fairly sure any pc fan can be turned into a bug killer as long as there is enough clearance between the blade and the housing for the thinnest led strip ya can find... Being usb powered ya could lithium ion it for camping. Edit : though the light would probably get annoying and will only attract more bugs to your tent now that I think about it hehe.. not that sensibility comes into it when you have a product to sell...
I'm not saying I think this is actually a good / efficient bug killer in any way hehe, I think it was mainly moth type bugs good old killatron sucked up. But when you happen to be in a geographical region where your house is invaded by a thousand moth type things every night and have to hoover them up every morning... having a collection point for when the lights go out is kind of great, even if it is a pc full of gear worth carrying half way around the world :P It is like a mini version of switching all the lights off in house apart from one and leaving the doors open so you only have to hoover one room in the morning ;)
but what will happen if the motor fails or you stop it so the coil becomes saturated and unimpeded current flows through the LEDs? LEDs will fry, won't they?
+Rom Yaz The capacitor acts as a very current limited supply, so although the current will increase slightly if the fan is stalled it will not be significant.
Hi, I think heat attracts flies more than blue/UV light. But I have no idea about the flickering. And the color could be someone's intuition about flies psychology in preferring pink flesh!
To determinate if it an improvement or not: A: Which version catches most insects? Perhaps the flickering attracts more? B: Which light disturbs your sleep the most?
The LEDs blinked in the stock unit in order to trick bugs into thinking that something is moving, granted I doubt that this would work very well either way. I suspect mosquitos would fit right through the grid meant to catch them.
so how did this affect the full bridge rectum fryer and would the us of this in a child's bed room teach the fear of cheep electronic THING over insects.
+Bigclivedotcom SO I have the same 2 questions you have maybe if you have 2 of these you can put the hacked one and the unhacked one in a similar space and test them to see which one is more effective?
Hello, excellent video. I was wondering what your educational background entailed. I felt like I followed along pretty well but I would like to know where to expand my knowledge. Thanks for you time. Keep making awesome videos!
+Preston Burton These days the best place to expand your knowledge is right here on the Internet. I did a formal electrical apprenticeship here in the UK with some electronics thrown in, and then learned the rest myself over time.
I don't think that most insects would see that wavelength of light produced by the leds, or at least not be attracted to the led light. Probably used to resemble the color of a bug zapper vs have any functional use.
From the Predator how it works: " The mosquito trap mimics a human prey 24/7 by releasing a continuous stream of carbon dioxide (breath), heat (body heat), moist (breath) and scientifically proven Rapid Action attractants to draw mosquitoes to the trap.". And one of the companies selling this thing is also selling octanol. Also, add sugar to the water. They also mention UV-LEDs.
+bigclivedotcom The other thing I guess is that seeing as it's described as a death trap in the title, I'd bet the longevity of the device isn't a terribly high concern.
Hey, wasn't that second resistor in front of the fan a voltage multiplier. Of course the amp would've dropped dramatically. A hot pink death ball, lol, I like that. How about a discharge cap and a zapper grid just below the fan, for a "Tool Man Tim Taylor" approach (man-grunt "oh-oh", more power) Bzzt! Oh, and discharging a cap with your hand...yea. That reminds me of my experience with my first generator. Two AA batteries an e motor, and some round Neos on a bottle cap makes about 150v ac through a small aquarium air pump coil, and has a nasty bite. Nicknamed the gen "taser" after that. Love that taste.
And did the power consumption improve after the redesign? Given that those resistors aren't displacing the heat anymore but the leds are now brighter so I wonder. It was 3W before... and after?
![Blox Fruits Dragon Rework Update [Full Stream]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EqDAp8udhm0/mqdefault.jpg)
That fan is only going to suck in the weak, sick, and dying bugs. Improving the overall breed.
so what you;re saying is, is that i need to build a robot that can decide whether or not it is a healthy bug, and only trap the healthy bugs, while letting the unhealthy ones go. then strap that onto my 220v deathball for maximum results??
i think he was talking about the fan its not that powerful
Depp Yes I know.
ok i was just wondering and even then a robot fly killing death trap would be great
*****
that fan did not sound like it was spinning very fast to me.
"It exposes a live circuit board at 240 v. Awesome! That gets the Clive seal of approval. Perfect for small children's bedrooms."
That made me laugh for way too long.
"And it's just going to have to be the finger test. Eh, oh yeah, it's dead."
You seriously have me rolling here. You remind me so much of my dad. He's an electrician.
+kjpmi Considering Mr. Clive is an electrician as well...
Rax Ixor that was my point, yes...
The best line so far
ElectroBOOM Style
1:02 "You get this sort of secondary basket for lifting the insects out." 1:28 "It's got this secondary tray. I don't know why they've got a secondary tray."
I was thinking the same XD
came to post the same thing lol
This is one of the problems with playing with electrickery, it tends to fry the little grey cells.
Think he was referring to the fact that you can just dump the bowl. The tray is just redundant 👍
You could just take the entire bottom section to the trash or wherever as there are no wires on it. The removable tray is a pointless piece of plastic.
"Mains voltage, pink plastic, oriental device."
Ah yes, the good old MVPPOD returns.
Mandrake Fernflower PMD sounds more scientific pink mains device
+Eric Meeson That sounds more dubious than the reality is
+Eric Meeson they never did find the ones in Iraq, did they? ;)
What is MVPPOD?
Maybe this is the revenge of the bugs, who have historicaly been electrified by men and now want to kill some humans with electricity too.
+muh1h1 no need fot this big killer go my bug killer by me a cat
no idea what on about
+muh1h1 i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--mWfUK_m1--/dirjwlfjugw3bsidu4pl.jpg
I think the reason you don't usually see paralleled LEDS is because they have a negative temperature coefficient. The hotter they get the more current they draw. So, when you have a bunch in parallel if there is any mismatch one will begin to get warmer, draw more current, get warmer, etc etc until it blows up. Then on to the next one until they're all dead and gone.
Though that would be pretty entertaining.
I have some harbor freight flashlights that work like that...
Clive, maybe one day you could investigate why Dyson vacuum batteries fail so often. Of the dozen or so I have dissected, none of the 18650 cells had failed. The problem has to be related to the current limiting circuitry. Most likely due to the "power boost" feature that Dyson recommends only using when needed. What I found in every case so far is the owner leaves it run in power boost all the time because it's the only way it really works well. Just a suggestion. Love your videos.
Oh you know China'll steal the design shortly and save that extra 10th of a cent on the passives you've removed. Pretty impressive modification though my good man! Never cease to be impressed with your videos.
+Lord Skitch It's Chinese. Can't steal from themselves, can they? Unless it's Ikea. Then, the Chinese don't want anything to do with it.
+Kevin Zabbo That was their design rebuilt to actually function BETTER by Sir Clivington, but they won't give two shits about it working better, they'll just care that there's a tenth of a cent to be saved, and retool everything to match his re-working of it.
Yeah, that's Chinese stuff for ya.
+Kevin Zabbo
This is what you get for all the neo-liberal, trickledown economics that the rich shits manipulated the world into sucking up. A whole lot of shit made of plastic and the flow on consequences.
Neoliberals (a term invented by a disgruntled conservative) didn't start trickle-down economics, though rich shits did. They're actually called "conservative," because a liberal knows right well that money trickles uphill and the only people that make money in a trickle-down economy are the fat cats on top.
Pay a man $15 an hour and you'll get it back within a week: liberal. Pay a man $10... steal his pension, and give it to the CEO as a bonus for being greedy: conservative.
I only partially understand what's going on, but this is fascinating.
MoriyaMug I think that's about 60-70% of us here
Hello
Honestly that's me in every video of his
Very few people actually know much about high voltages,you just pray that it's gonna work like in the simulation lol
It's been five years since Clive got his motorscooter runnin', head on down the highway! Lookin' for adventure, and thirtypoop our cake.
We need more hacks like this. I like when you modify stuff after you have explained what was at fault.
yeh especially after removing half the components lmao
you were correct both the flickering and the heat are designed to attract more mosquitoes.
I looked into the basic principles of the leading traps and good ones use a photocatalyst material which generates co2 when exposed to uv. Best ones use timed co2 or propane co2 generator.
Good work with all your videos,
very informative. thanks.
Add some butyric acid in the mix. It was shown in Finland that a steel rod covered with butyric acid and warmed to 37 degrees centigrade was irresistable to female moscitos. Butyric acid is part of human sweat.
A masterful demonstration from a man who knows what he's doing. Superb.
and a chinese man that didnt
He should be an electrical engineer, designing electronics. He would be excellent.
Robert Seviour if you run LED at higher current it is likely to fail earlier , leading to failure of other LEDs which will take more current and then fan will stop spinning since all LEDs would have failed!
What was the new power draw? I'm curious to see how close it now comes to its 1.5W rating rather than the original 3W.
+Eric Meeson Ironically it's now bang-on 1.5W.
bigclivedotcom Sweet! Now it's closer to standards compliant. Well, other than the top off electrocutey bits.
+bigclivedotcom How precise is the meter actually with small loads? I've seen some weird measurements on 1 of mine. A clock radio pulled 8 Watts constantly. Using a 60 Watt bulb and then adding the clock radio revealed a 0.5 Watt usage which was more to what it should be. Surely the resistor design is crazy and the fact that you felt the warmth already is an indicator of power usage/waste.
+bigclivedotcom how much voltage is across the fan now?
+James Clark Just under 6V.
I love how you just jammed your hand on that loaded circuitboard to remove the screws without even seeing the caps lol
Guys, I found Scott Manley #2
+Karl XIV Johan Haha i was so totally thinking the exact same thing. Scott Manley's dad perhaps :P
Was just thinking that same thing. Just as entertaining too, and educational.
+Karl XIV Johan I knew i recognized the voice from somewhere!
+RMJ1984 his father passed recently :C
+Karl XIV Johan I was thinking a younger version of Sean Connery.
Damn, when you said you were hecking it, I was hoping you were going to add an electric grid to kill the insects
+arcadeuk Just pop the lid off and it'll do that anyway.
+bigclivedotcom Thanks for the video(s) - It's great instead of doing just a "teardown" you have given us a different if not better way of implementing a circuit. I doff my hat to you.
+arcadeuk me 2 :(
But it could be a "vegan" insect trap, where the beasties get sucked in and then released over next door's fence :-)
Maybe the 3K9 was added as a safety device just in case the fan was unplugged. That's a first for China.
+PIXscotland I'm thinking the same thing. I wonder if it also can be because these brushless fans are switching a set of coils with hall effect sensors. Not sure if there is always at least one coil pulling current..
+PIXscotland Yeah, that was my take on it too. Without the 3K9 the electrolytic should explode when the load of the fan motor goes any for any reason.
+PIXscotland And the 10R was there to reduce noise caused by the fan switching. At low speeds, the sudden jerking occurring when the coil is energized is what produces most of the noise.
+PIXscotland I believe you are correct. The fan will also power off if held in a stopped position long enough. He stopped it a few times, but didn't hold it long enough to cause the fan to give up. I could see that being a problem for the cap!
Kenji Fox
Nice in-depth thinking, but only good brand fans have that feature, mostly those from Intel. I can promise you that this generic Chinese fan won't stop the torque when held by hand.
The secondary tray is to allow airflow out of the device, to prevent a high pressure area inside the basket that would simply push insects out and make the fan useless.
Building a better death trap.
Running LED's in parallel so if one fails, the rest carry more current leading to earlier failure in the next, …
Exactly.
I think I can explain what the 10 ohm blue resistor is about. I had to replace one of those that was in my Dreamcast. It's designed to act like a fuse and break, like when someone connected a shorted controller to my Dreamcast, had to replace the fuse to fix my controller ports.
Sometimes in countryside chinese factories, these sort of small appliances are designed by interns.
Electronics is not a part of the standard education curriculum, so people's electrical engineering abilities are rather dubious.
cool, I was wondering how something could go to market that wastes so many resistors.
I have an idea you could make a competition out of Clive: make a gadget that is purposely made to fail by smoke or other major failure, but not fail right away, something with overloading major components, and the competition is the nearest time guess to the failure explodey part. filmed using time lapse perhaps.
+jusb1066 Something akin to his resistor roulette but longer term, I'm sure he could come up with something.
I'm always leary of putting unprotected leds in parallel like that; thermal runaway wants to ruin your day each time.
Otherwise, great circuit hack!
+Senapspiser I was thinking more like 10 ohms. It does not take much resistance to prevent wild thermal runaway. With 68 ohms, you end up dropping 1.36V at 20mA and will lose a fair amount of speed on a fan that is already running quite slow, which means you may need to bump the dropper capacitor to 2.7uF to get the fan speed back up.
+frollard Yes, that's a significant problem. I think the original design, no matter how inefficient, was still better working.
zwz • zdenek If you are that worried about the LEDs dying, add a 1W 3.6V zener in parallel with the LEDs + resistors. Pick the resistors for 10-15mA per LED at 3.6V and let the zener deal with the remaining 40-70mA.
Teardown Dan
That would be inefficient in more than one way, plus Zener diodes don't come in arbitrary values. The knee of the diode is quite wide and the face value will be different from one in your actual circuit. You must design the circuit for at least 10% tolerance for the Zener diode. But as I said, a Zener diode is not called for at all here.
zwz • zdenek
Zener diodes exist in 3.6V and 5.1V values, which is exactly the range one might be looking for as a fail-over in case LEDs start blowing open. Precision is not important since you can pick the LEDs' current limiting resistors based on whatever zener voltage you get with your worst-case current where all LEDs failed open. When all LEDs are working, the zener gets significantly less current depending on how low the LEDs pull voltage across it.
The point of this modification was to make Clive's modified circuit safer in case of LEDs failing open and improve the LEDs' life by limiting current without adding significant complexity that was not already in the original design or drastically decreasing efficiency: the current limiting resistors were in the OD and if you pick the right resistor values for the LED and zener used, the extra power dissipation should be under 200mW without much effort.
Top marks for the death trap design.
Great hack.
As soon as he opened the top, I was like, "I can totally improve that circuit!" Then he did exactly what I had in mind. Good on yah, mate.
Perfect for small children's bedrooms... sarcasm at its finest ;)
Sarcasm? Nah... it helps find darwin award candidates.
As Clive says: "It's an electrical death trap 'cause the top just comes off"
I liked the redesign. At first I thought it was a bit risky to connect the LEDs in parallel like that; if one of them goes bad, then the other five will have to sink more power, which means they'll probably go bad at the same time. On the other hand you saved a bunch of components and, in hindsight, you measured the supply current coming off the reservoir capacitor to be just about right for six LEDs (about 20mA each).
I've only found your channel recently, but I'm liking it so far! Subbed for the circuit diagram and clever redesign.
Fun stuff as always sir! The tray is I believe a carcass removal device.
Dad had a retail store since the 60's. One of the first Chinese home stereos we got in was subject to a recall. It turned out it got passed customs only because of the UL label on the cord. The guts of the stereo was poorly designed and several had caught fire in homes.
Nice video, i liked where you redid the circuit although I was a bit disappoint that nothing exploded forcefully.
Aww hell, I wanted to see the current draw after your modification. :(
1.5W
You need heat to attract mosquitos.
That's right. Mosquitos are attracted to heat and CO2. Then again, the device might just suck them out of the air.
I'm not sure but you know how he said the board got hot that could be to attract the skeeters
@@noelsnyder9272 clever!
Oh boy oh boy, off-the-shelf electronics, simple sircuitry, 100% plastic parts, you can totally 3d-print something like this.
I think you are right about the heat attracting insects. Mosquito killers in the USA often have heaters or even use propane heaters to warm the units. In the case of the propane versions the CO2 produced also works as an attractant.
Just subscribed. I definitely subscribed because of the way you speak. Not the accent but the word choice You ask questions and point out odd things in such a way that we're walked into the information with a fluid line of thought. I really would love to know your process for these videos. Its very much so informative and is perfect for teaching/instructing. Its probably just a result of speaking out your own thought process after having a mastery of the information. probably something without a process behind it its so perfect.
HOW MANY WATTS??? after the hack?
+Mikkel Bundgaard 1.5W
+bigclivedotcom Got to wonder what the designers of this were thinking, not only does your design do the job better but surely it should be cheaper to manufacture all those excess components do have a cost.
***** Perhaps xD
Isnt 220v a bit much for a fan and a few LEDs? Or is that just the normal mains voltage in that county?
Our standard supply is 240V here in the UK. China uses 220V.
the fan is probably a standard 12v computer fan, and with what he said of it only getting about 7v or 8v would explain why it ran slowly, but most people have 120 or 220v mains, so its more convenient to just make a PSU to drop it to the correct voltage, otherwise you would have an external transformer (wall wort) or run it on batteries which less people like. But Junk is Junk, we live in a consumer world were we by the most useless things
+bigclivedotcom 240v power supply standard? lucky! its more dangerous for me to get shocked, where I live, but less painful.. XD
Oooops! 240V? 'Fraid not, Clive. From the Electricity Safety, Quality and Continuity Regulations 2002:
"... the frequency declared pursuant to paragraph (1) shall be 50 hertz and the voltage declared in respect of a low voltage supply shall be 230 volts between the phase and neutral conductors at the supply terminals".
The reality is, the numbers were fudged such that 240V is still within tolerance of our new 230V supply, so most power system still put 240V to the home. But we ticked the box of moving to a standard 230V supply, so all's well.
This reminds me of those dodgy, mains charged insect whackers, that look like a shitty tennis raquet. First time I used one, a blowfly flew into it at full charge, (the fly and the whacker), basically nuked itself , making a noise not all together unlike a .303 rifle shot. I was actually terrified everytime someone picked it up because I was scared they would touch me with it. Another quality bit of plastic shit courtesy of, the People's Republic of China.
tbh i used one like that for years and it never let me down. ah how i love the smell of fried mosquito in the morning...
boertje1998
It never let me down, either. It just scared the fuck out of me.
+Sue Mead Wow, really? Man, that would be a cool thing to have.
+boertje1998 I usually stick with toast.
+David Tao (twilysparklez) Americans would love it.
does it actually work though, as in, can it actually catch insects?
Dec furry
Auburn thank you for your insightful comment
I have a similar one and it doesn't catch anything even in a room full of flies. Good old flypaper works better.
Auburn furry
The only thing more satisfying than doing a good mod is having it be practical and usable.
They don't always go together but when they do it's magic.
I love it when someone who puts close to raw socket power in his bath tub to heat the water says something is dangerous because the lid can be screwed off.
"...it exposes a live circuit board at 240v....AWESOME!! That gets the Clive seal of approval, perfect for small children's bedrooms..." Damn I needed that laugh. This channel is easily one of my favorite RUclips subscriptions
Clive, you didn't understand the concept. You just ruined the business of the distributor for 100k resistors - perhaps it was the brother of the guy who made this miracle of chinese technology :-)
Absolutely love your work!
You'll have to run it overnight outside and see if it catches anything. I'd be very curious to see if it works better than the traditional electrified grid style (or if it even works at all).
2:04 "perfect for small childrens bedrooms" and im dead XD
I have discovered that a shot glass with a little apple cider vinegar and covered with tinfoil and a small hole works quite well. It doesn't use any toxic chemicals (well I guess the vinegar COULD be toxic if you drank several gallons) and it draws exactly zero watts. In fact you probably should not plug it in at all. Actually if it's possible to plug the shot glass in find some other shot glass that does not plug in.
Eric Taylor Yeah but i dont want my shit to smell like vinegar so ill pass on that 👌
I wonder if the brightness and the pattern of the lights was deliberate. Might have been essential in attracting a certain kind of insect.
I just bought two, one for each of my young daughters! Heck it has Clive's seal of approval, and they are pink!! ;)
Wow, that would definitely NOT get CSA approval! lol Love your videos - as usual, keep up the great work!
I was interested in seeing if the wattage consumed changed after removing all the heat producing resistors.
"Awesome! that gives the clvies seal of approval" LOL
Don't you think that the flickering of the leds have something to do in the attracting of the insects ?
+Babynaaz KHEDUN it kinda does, but what he did is actually far more economical (for production). while the flikering would attract a bit more insects, the savings of not adding all those "useless" componets for something that still kinda works (made in china standards) is better.
The heat from the resistors also help attract certain insects, I would imagine.
Clive, do the folks at Poundland, et al, roll their eyes when you walk in the door? Do they watch your videos and realize what kind of lovely pink products they are schlepping off on folks round your way??? Love the Clive seal of approval on this particular pink product....
Can these be destroyed by a single insect flying along the crack before hitting a specific exhaust opening in the right place? Cause I've seen that movie.
As a bachelor in linguistics I have now acquired some fresh knowledge - certain people can actually take apart electrical thingies they own, analyse the circuitry, *understand* how do its individual parts work together and improve it. Also, apparently, the thingies can come from their manufacturer with weird and irrational mistakes, just like my pupils' essays. Once again I look at this world a bit differently, thank you.
I think the resistor across the fan needs to be there because it s a discontinuous load. They usually have up to four switching transistors in them which fire in sequence pulsing the commutatorless motor around. The fan usually has a ring magnet motor with a couple of drive coils. During the off period, the voltage may rise too high causing voltage breakdown of parts in the fan. The resistor should stop it going into the hundreds of volts.
Love the use of a fuse? If i were cynical, I'd say the drop resistor heat is there on purpose to also act as an attractant.
The design would work better with insects if the capture was above, not below the entry inlet. Insects fly up to escape. Flys jump into the air and cannot fly backward (this is how you get them, always attack from the front). A simple design would be a bottle on top and a motor that vibrated the whole thing every 30 seconds (like a pager motor).
So what happens if it is turned on and you put your fingers/hang on the circuitboard? I expect a shock but is it deadly/very harmful?
If you touched it with both hands in the right places or were holding something grounded in one hand and touched the PCb with the other hand it could deliver a fatal shock.
Oh damn, wow! Thanks for the response :D
in response to the capictor bit : If the machine has no other on buttons (your switch was on) the capacitor(s) will discharge as quick as it can depending on where they are used in the circuit. For things like a monitor with an on switch you should press it to try to power the screen which will instantly discharge it, whereas the LED for showing the light on stays on for a minute if you dont press it ! That capacitor was quite large !!! it would have been quite a whack on video :P
That was worded so bad ...
I'm really curious for whats the new power consumption. Its disapating less heat but more light and a faster spinning fan. . .
the "secondary" bin/bowl aids in the dehydration/death of the insects. they have no source of liquid and they are being "air dried" just a little quicker.
I think it was supposed to flicker...
I mean if you use a diode in an alternating current circuit, you get interrupted pulses from one direction with a frequency of 50/2 Hz
There's something delightfully comical about a device that kills bugs by whacking them with spinning fan blades.
1:55 but why would you need to remove the circuit board cover in the first place?
I'd like to see if it actually works!
Lord Sandwich he didn't need to remove it, it came off when he tried to twist the top back onto the base as you would after emptying the insects out of it... I'd imagine, however, if you had one at home running in a room, pets and children could easily drop it and expose mains voltage, without use of a tool. that would make the product illegal here under the wiring regs.
Well moths and gnats seem to be more drawn toward blinking or flickering lights as opposed to 60hz or upward lights, though generally it's the brightness above that which they go for, so it'd only be useful in the dark.
Certain insects will also go for heat, and the fan sucking it in could increase the attraction.
I believe the brown inner tray is meant to be a filter to prevent bugs from being drawn up into the fan and then spewed out into the world to continue to wreak havoc.
So now it's running better, and it would be cheaper to make without all those resistors. What were they thinking?
My guess is that the 10R resistor in series with the fan is to prevent inrush current, and the 3.9K resistor is probably to absorb some back-EMF and protect the electrolytic cap when you turn the unit off.
I'm a bit late, but hey-ho. Did it use less power? All those resistors must have been wasting a lot.
Asking the real questions. Why didn't he measure the power draw afterwards dammit?
We can definitely assume it did. But yeah, getting a number would have been a nice finish.
1.5 watts
It's bee a couple of years, wonder if the 'improved' version 2 ever got released.
What will happen if two or more leds broke down or even with the fan out of commission?
the only reason I can think of for the 3.9k and 10 ohm is for a voltage divider. but even then they should be round the other way to actually be of "use"
I'm late, but at 9:00 I would put the LEDs in series, with a shunt resistor to reduce LED current. Then they are sure to get equal current.
Wow very cool. This was a good example of the first year in electronics. You can clearly see a Wheatstone bridge and a tank circuit. Probably the only things I remember from school 20 years ago.
+Eric Arson haha you must be joking. Wheathstone bridge...
no, that is the most basic curcuit to change AC voltage into DC voltage for the LED and that DC fan.
just look it up but spell it wheatstone bridge
+Eric Arson I think you mean Graëtz bridge (Wheatstone bridge is the one with 4 resistors)
I think the flickering LEDs were intentional.. or at least I can see why it was included...
I tried living in NZ years ago and had to build a pc to house the cpu, gpu and ram I had carried over in my backpack from scotland. I was getting parts shipped over from all across nz, but the selection was ridiculously low compared to the wonder that is uk inet shopping even back then, and in the end the ONLY 120mm fans I could lay my hands on in a reasonable time had blue LED strips wrapped around the inner tube (or outer ?, depends on which way ya look at it :)
I figured sod it, can always cut them out for something else if I hate the look...
That PC was an insect killing machine ! :D... kiwi land has way too many insects but heh, at least the room I worked in was slightly less insanely full of insects, would just have to hoover out the pc case a couple times a week :P
I remember thinking at the time just one of those fans powered by usb aiming its air into a sieve would make a pretty bad ass bug killer.. then promptly forgot about it after I got back to a sane country where a killatron 9000 pc wasn't needed :(... at least not on the east coast hehe.
But yeah, one of the side effects from where the led strip was placed was the fan blades would block them out individually as they passed over, creating a pulse to the light. I have no idea if that aided in the bug attraction, it was just when you mentioned the lights flickering it instantly reminded me of that, and then you pulled it apart to show a pc fan... :)
I'm fairly sure any pc fan can be turned into a bug killer as long as there is enough clearance between the blade and the housing for the thinnest led strip ya can find... Being usb powered ya could lithium ion it for camping.
Edit : though the light would probably get annoying and will only attract more bugs to your tent now that I think about it hehe.. not that sensibility comes into it when you have a product to sell...
I'm not saying I think this is actually a good / efficient bug killer in any way hehe, I think it was mainly moth type bugs good old killatron sucked up.
But when you happen to be in a geographical region where your house is invaded by a thousand moth type things every night and have to hoover them up every morning... having a collection point for when the lights go out is kind of great, even if it is a pc full of gear worth carrying half way around the world :P
It is like a mini version of switching all the lights off in house apart from one and leaving the doors open so you only have to hoover one room in the morning ;)
What was the current draw after your modification? I'm curious to see. obviously from the mod it'll be lower, but how much?
How much current does it draw not? After the modifications it should have gone down quite a bit.
If nothing else, these videos are teaching me that electrical imports from some countries is a real Wild West show.
It's very random. Often dangerously so.
any updates -a few weeks on? are the LEDs still good to go?
Why didn't you place the LED's (+resistor) parallel to the fan?
but what will happen if the motor fails or you stop it so the coil becomes saturated and unimpeded current flows through the LEDs?
LEDs will fry, won't they?
+Rom Yaz The capacitor acts as a very current limited supply, so although the current will increase slightly if the fan is stalled it will not be significant.
bigclivedotcom yes, i didn't notice the cap. strange circuit indeed.
Hi, I think heat attracts flies more than blue/UV light. But I have no idea about the flickering. And the color could be someone's intuition about flies psychology in preferring pink flesh!
can you teach me what you know ? how do I learn all this ? a nudge in the right direction please...
To determinate if it an improvement or not:
A: Which version catches most insects? Perhaps the flickering attracts more?
B: Which light disturbs your sleep the most?
The LEDs blinked in the stock unit in order to trick bugs into thinking that something is moving, granted I doubt that this would work very well either way. I suspect mosquitos would fit right through the grid meant to catch them.
so how did this affect the full bridge rectum fryer and would the us of this in a child's bed room teach the fear of cheep electronic THING over insects.
This is one of my favorite videos of all time.
+Bigclivedotcom SO I have the same 2 questions you have maybe if you have 2 of these you can put the hacked one and the unhacked one in a similar space and test them to see which one is more effective?
Hello, excellent video. I was wondering what your educational background entailed. I felt like I followed along pretty well but I would like to know where to expand my knowledge. Thanks for you time. Keep making awesome videos!
+Preston Burton These days the best place to expand your knowledge is right here on the Internet. I did a formal electrical apprenticeship here in the UK with some electronics thrown in, and then learned the rest myself over time.
+bigclivedotcom Great! Then I am right on track. The internet is where it is at if you want to learn. I really appreciate your response!
One of the most pleasant nice on ears "awesome" I had heard in a long time.
Why was the fan still getting a low current? I doubt that can suck in anything but dust.
I don't think that most insects would see that wavelength of light produced by the leds, or at least not be attracted to the led light. Probably used to resemble the color of a bug zapper vs have any functional use.
hahaha, you take something apart, and tell tell how they've done it wrong. Keep breaking stuff apart, Clive! I'll come watch
The 3.9 and 10 are probably in place to step down the fan speed. Can you please mention what the fan is rated at?
From the Predator how it works: " The mosquito trap mimics a human prey 24/7 by releasing a continuous stream of carbon dioxide (breath), heat (body heat), moist (breath) and scientifically proven Rapid Action attractants to draw mosquitoes to the trap.". And one of the companies selling this thing is also selling octanol. Also, add sugar to the water. They also mention UV-LEDs.
Blue strobes, plastic basket, and 80mm computer case fan.
Neat
Good job! Now you have a more functional bug trap and some free power resistors!
what about issues with dissimilar current draw in the cheap leds causing some to burn out faster than others?
+Andy Plater That is a possibility, although it's interesting to note that when disconnected they all fade down equally.
+bigclivedotcom The other thing I guess is that seeing as it's described as a death trap in the title, I'd bet the longevity of the device isn't a terribly high concern.
+Andy Plater The longevity of its owner is probably lower than the longevity of the LEDs.
+bigclivedotcom Great answer 😊
+Andy Plater considering how much the fan draws, I doubt the fans draws more than 20 to 25 mA, LEDs are good for that no prob.
Insects navigate towards infrared sources, so it wouldn't surprise me if the extra stuff is there to generate heat?
Super efficient means loss of capitol.....not today .....😮😮😮
Hey, wasn't that second resistor in front of the fan a voltage multiplier. Of course the amp would've dropped dramatically. A hot pink death ball, lol, I like that. How about a discharge cap and a zapper grid just below the fan, for a "Tool Man Tim Taylor" approach (man-grunt "oh-oh", more power) Bzzt!
Oh, and discharging a cap with your hand...yea. That reminds me of my experience with my first generator. Two AA batteries an e motor, and some round Neos on a bottle cap makes about 150v ac through a small aquarium air pump coil, and has a nasty bite. Nicknamed the gen "taser" after that. Love that taste.
And did the power consumption improve after the redesign? Given that those resistors aren't displacing the heat anymore but the leds are now brighter so I wonder. It was 3W before... and after?
Now 1.5W.