HA HA I could just imagine how Bob Ross would sound if he were Doing electronics. [ whispering ] " And over here, lives a happy little transistor" "and we just dab on a little solder, right here, like this.. Dap dap dap dap" "there we go.." and maybe next to it lives a big, tall Capacitor"
Last year I did some of these for the historic railway station I volunteer at. However, I had a surplus USB charger type supply with a hardwired lead to a micro USB. Instead of removing the box, I just cut off the micro USB plug, let the cable in through a hole and soldered it to the main battery terminals. That way I didn't need to muck around with resistors and still had the flash effect available. In fact I combined two similar sets together, each with their own box, glued back-to-back and connected to the same PSU. That way the flashes of each set don't remain in sync and an interesting bonus effect is created. This year, I found there were two more sets that needed to be modded. I should say now that these sets have the same kind of 3AA battery supply, driving a chain of 50 LEDs. This time I took a set and installed one of those LED driver SMPS units, exactly the same one that you used on your LED strip flouro light replacement. Although I had recovered mine from a failed LED bulb (one LED burned out). The original batteries supplied 150mA to the 50 LEDs, but with the driver I was getting 300mA. That's still only 6mA per LED, but they sure are bright! This arrangement worked fine on the bench with the resistance of an ammeter & clip leads in the circuit but when I installed it in the battery box with nice short leads, it still worked fine on the flash mode, but the solid on mode was now causing the PSU to cycle super fast. I guess it considers the voltage drop of effectively a single LED too low & an overload condition. However, I didn't see this as a drawback as now we simply have two modes, normal flash & super-fast flash. It'll be used in the normal flash mode down at the station anyway. So job done after fitting a really long light duty mains lead, that way an extension cord is not needed to put the set where it wants to be. Finally, I should point out that the sets I have been working with do not have the timer function built into the controller.
Good video as usual, but I was expecting that you'd power the control board with usb and not the lights directly so that you would still have the functionality that the board offers.
@@woofer2121 not sure if the battery contacts will take the solder though.. perhaps it'd be better to take out the circuit board, remove the battery contacts and solder the USB wires directly into there?
Oh, Clive, the PICs I've worked with often have compensation registers for the internal oscillator. You can hook the A/D to the battery (using something like a 1.5V reference generator) and as the voltage goes down relative to the 1.5V reference, you can increase the oscillator trim. I know this exists on the PIC32MX because I've used it quite a bit. And the lowest-end PIC32MX110F016B is under $3 in single quantity. I pretty rarely use the lower-end PICs anymore because the 32MX line has so many awesome features and great peripherals, and it comes in a huge range of sizes and speeds. Anyway, back to watching the video :D
Or, of course, you could just add a 32.768kHz crystal and be done with it, which is probably what I would do in the same situation again. But it was fun to learn about the compensation registers.
It's quite obvious where the track goes without probing: The negative power pad (where the U1 label is) goes under the chip to C1 (decoupling cap); therefore the other track must go to the pin in the corner as discovered with probing. But I think BC probed it to show how to find such things for those of us who need to know! I wish BC had been my tutor when i did my Electronics HNC all those years ago! :-) Thanks Clive, keep them coming!
10:19 good advice when repairing strings of lights with the CR2032. The other mod for USB ( plus the resistors of course) or batteries would workout the case , a USB female conector and add another switch . That way the would preserve the functionallity of power saving and add two power options... with the work of ripping the case :P
most microcontrollers have "fuse" settings that select internal oscillator vs external crystal which the programmer must set. (They are called "fuse" because ages ago they were a one-time "blow the fuse" setting, but modern parts typically use EEPROM or flash memory.)
Sylvan Butler Agreed, either a hardware fuse would need to be set or, alternatively, the appropriate register would need to be toggled to switch the local oscillator source on the fly. Given that most of these very cheap microcontrollers are OTP (one time programmable) you are very limited in terms of after the fact alterations. Sometimes it can be done to an OTP micro if the new fuse settings just happen to align with the old as the default state for uninitiated bits/fuses in E/EPROM is typically logical “1”, so if the change *only* happened to require reprogramming an existing fuse that is logical 1 to 0 and no bits/fuses already at logical 0 required flipping back to logical 1 then you may be able to make that change after the fact provided they forgot to set the security bits to prevent reading the existing program state - but odds are you would also have needed to reset hardware dividers and such as many internal oscillators run at 4MHz and you would be installing a 0.032768MHz oscillator in its place, so the timings are going to change enormously (122 times slower!). Otherwise, adding an external oscillator would almost certainly be akin to just soldering random disconnected parts on a PCB that effectively go nowhere and have no power - they would just be decoration rather than active components.
@@blitzwing1 Anything that happens to it is easy to fix and get parts for. I also thickened some of the traces with solder. I only wish they would use an iron with a little more mass. Have you tried the tweezer soldering iron accessory?
YIHUA 8786D, I'm only writing this here because I had to re-watch the part where bigclive mentioned the name three times before I managed to fully grasp the name. Probably my non native-speaker shining through again.
Just saw in my local Pound Stretcher that they have very similar LED light strings, in boxes with the 24-hour timer cycle advertised on the front. They're £5.99 though (it's not a single-price Pound Shop).
Interesting that the LEDs were previously drawing 50mA. Isn't that about as much as you'd typically want to draw from an MCU's gpio pin? I guess they saved the few pennies of a transistor to make the LEDs brighter.
13:43 did you mean to say "spread the heat dissipation"? Because you'd have to put resistors in parallel to share the load between them, not in series.
It works both ways. By using two quarter watt resistors with half the desired resistance value you get the full value but spread across two quarter watt resistors giving a half watt rating.
Why not put USB sticking out of the battery box then you use USB power but still have the control of the circuit board of the original with the timer and switch control?
that certainly would work, if you do this mod you can do this. you can also use the box to provide a little string relief for your usb power cord and your resistors would not require heat shrink tubeing. I suspect Big Clive just didn't want the extra bulk, it is a bit of a cleaner looking without it.
Now that's a quality modification. Makes it easy to make your garden look nice with fairy lights and a cheap and rechargeable power source. Just put the power bank in a sandwich bag.
I have a control box for a string of led lights that is similar. I modified it to plug into the wall via usb charger. Since 3 batteries add up to 4.5vdc, I added a small resistor and it works great and it works with the original controller board which has several modes. I no longer have to worry about batteries.
I like the timer and some of the other functions supplied on some of these strings. And I want them to run from Thanksgiving to New Years or 12th night (Jan. 6th). I tend to simply add a standard diode between the USB supply and the circuit. 5.1v less 0.6v is perfect. The good news is - since the voltage stays constant, the timer drift is reduced and the LEDs stay bright. The bad news is - some power banks shut off if you don't draw enough current. My latest single cell banks shut off at around 30ma. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!! May Each day be worse than the Next. (It's a good thing.)
We have incorporated the self-timed mode (we call it SIFI - Set-It-Forget-It) for years in filipino parols, but we implemented 7 hours on - 17 hours off. We use a MicroChip PIC16F628A, which has horrible drift using the internal oscillator - so we added a 4Mhz crystal and 2 20pf caps. There's still drift, but it's seconds per month, not minutes.
Until recently the strings of multi-coloured LEDs you can buy (from China) with SMD LEDs soldered straight to copper wire, were really rich and warm in colour. Sadly all of the sellers I've seen now have a very cool colour version instead. It also has silver coloured wire, rather than the visibly copper from before. Hopefully they'll change back at some point...
@@bigclivedotcom I used the wire splice with crimp with the heatshrink casing and the "glue" / "sealant" to make them moisture resistant and oil resistant, on a f wire harness on a 99 7.3 l diesel injector wiring harness. That's a pretty tedious but very important part of that feul system / engine. So it was important to you use something reliable and it worked fantastic. I have not tried the connectors with solder tho.
I used a few on some LED shop lights in the basement - mostly just to try them because I was so curious. They were very easy to use and have held up so far (about 2 years), but they are indoor so I never expect trouble - even if I just twisted the wires together and taped them :)
@@raymondmucklow3793 these crimps come with a low temp solder lump already on them but the problem is that the connection could become very weak if a short circuit appears. These connections are usually only good for low to medium amperage or to simply make a good watertight connection. Everything has it's ups and down's. Hope this helps.
They work alright, although if you heat them too fast or too much they tend to burst since the ends tend to crimp shut before the solder melts. I've had best luck with a regular lighter on those. They do work quite well and seem pretty water ingress proof. I typically use the crimp connections with a built in heat shrink and hot melt glue, I get through a bunch since I deal with a lot of trailers and trucks running in brine half the year.
interesting... wondering if they do this with mains lights, that will be way more precise (not "clock" precise anyways), they already have the clock for the advancing effects and dimmings with AC
@@bigclivedotcom yeah i know, honestly there've been a bit of attention in italy lately about the actual precision, a pair of (minor, actually) articles about wrong clocks on microwave ovens and such :D i've "measured" it with an RCT circuit and it was going back and forth on the scope, also the scope has the (useful i say) AC sync trigger and quartz 1kHz test out, i think the generators may be mechanically adjusted continuosly.. not sure about long term consistency and my sine wave on mains sucks!! it looks like a triangular wave with really clipped pikes
@@bigclivedotcom i've checked it with a transformer secondary limited by a 10k resistor, a shmitt trigger gate and an arduino with a bit of code, it seems precise, it hitted the split of a second in one hour, at least precise for non important stuff but.... noooooouuuuu i don't second taking into acount that.... i mean, electric companies are not asked for precise frequency, mains sync is more or less a cheap compromise
@@redoverdrivetheunstoppable4637 The national grid in the UK has a master clock and one running on the mains frequency. At times of high load the frequency drops slightly, but they compensate by increasing the frequency at times of low load.
There is no way to make a simple system that auto-corrects drift by having two elements that drift in opposite directions, or maybe just by different amounts, and then applying a correction based on the measured difference?
Huh I’ve got the exact same power bank but it always heats up on the usb plug-in and started burning the table under it . Still in a drawer somewhere battery flat
Nice video very informative. I have a question though, I have a few of these lighted Christmas pieces that I have gotten from different stores Amazon ,Wal-mart where they have lights built in that flash all the time, have you ever made a video on how to fix these, or in my case, stop the lights from flashing to where they are steady on?
Hi Clive, do you know about 'tuning fork' based clocks and watches? These were used pre-quartz crystals, they don't use any IC or microcontroller either, the frequency is maintained electronically and converted to the movement of the wheels mechanically. They were used in the early apollo missions too, because they thought it'd be more reliable in zero gravity. (pre-quartz ofcourse) If you're interested in this, google 'Bulova 214' which is the first movement that utilised this principle.
I have a question about a pool table light. It has 5 glass bulbs with leds in them the leds are burnt. I can get them out of the bulbs. I would like to change them to RGB lighting and I was wondering if your mini rgb kit would do for that project. I can send you pictures of the light if it helps.
Surely it wouldn’t it be better to have slipped covering over both ends of the dropping resistors ? It seems from the video that the upper “snubs” are left exposed and could short out.
bigclivedotcom I’m sorry, I did check the video three times before leaving the comment. I’ll do so again and apologize if I missed your action. Thanks for the reply.
"...always a storm outside on the Isle of Man a this time of year, it's just the very nature of living on an island" It is indeed, and those of use who are fortunate enough to live on islands wouldn't have it any other way. Greetings from Vancouver Island, way out west here...
They do have some level of short circuit detection, but some of the older ones still have a current path through the inductor that will still pass a lot of current even if the chip cuts out.
The 1£ power banks just burn out the inductor if the USB out is shorted. It'll supply about 6 Amp for a few seconds, before the inductor lets out the magic smoke.
also could you also wire the usb lead directly into the battery box and let the controller still run as normal... You just change the pwoer from battery to usb. Retains the timer functions and flash functions as well.
Glad i saw your video the other day - i went hunting in poundland and found the clear warm white sets - they look amazing and the secret timer is good - ideal if you fall asleep or got to bed and forget to switch them off
I did this but by stringing three of the 50 multicolour sets together, and keeping the microcontroller. Unfortunately, whilst the greens and blues were bright, the reds and yellows/oranges were dim. Removing the resistors didn't help. On the plus side, the flash functionality still works wonderfully, and it's still somewhat beautiful, especially as I took the to ensure that the order of the colours was maintained. For anyone trying this, use three sets of warm white (It'd work better). Remove the end lead and first LED to form a string of soldered and shrink-wrapped LEDs, with a single battery box at the end. Remove the metal terminals from the box, and drill a hole at the bottom (or melt your way through with a nail heated on top of the stove). Remove the battery separators either with a Dremel, or by cutting them out with snips and cleaning them up with a chisel. Feed through a stripped USB cable and solder it to the microcontroller (black to where the metal negative was, red to where the positive wire was. Add strain relief with hot glue, and screw the box back together. Voila!
So glad I watched this video! I have been wanting to add some LEDs to a clock above my PC and wanted to run them from the USB on my PC, but could not for the life of me remember what the resistor value was. Thanks! :)
The timer you mentioned drifting by 8 minutes, perhaps it's temperature sensitive and caused by the room temperature not being what the designers expected, you often mention that you like a colder enviroment than most people prefer?
The timer drift is most likely down to the lower voltage of the rechargeable batteries. I expect it would run faster if Alkaline batteries had been use instead.
2K7 could be PWM drive ratio for current limiting. different R values for different number or LEDs. what is the continuity voltage of the fluke 23 ? my fluke is 7.0 volts !!!
I would probably make a hole in that battery case and put a micro-B female connector and a small piece of PCB and power the existing circuit with two diodes in series(should drop small amount of voltage as the current might not be that high).
Righto, just used this as reference for how to turn an LED I had lying around into a USB plug that, er, is a small lamp. Get some use out of the power bank. Worked a right treat.
Real cute! The part number was sanded off. Perhaps it can be see under UV light? Either that, or it is proprietary, and was never imprinted. This is probably done to discourage reverse engineering...
Although it has been used informally for a number of years I believe the blob (and hence the good blob and little blob respectively) was finally recognised as an SI unit at the the 26th General Conference on Weights and Measures, yesterday in Versaille. Unfortunately it seems the announcement was overshadowed by the new definition of the kilo, mole, ampere, and kelvin. :P
Just wondering, why you did not include the circuitry from the battery holder into your USB conversion. You could have gotten USB compatibility while still keeping all the features.
A few questions if don't mind. Can you point me towards where to get the soldiering kit, heat gun and who does usb Christmas decs. Is it just pound land? Thank you
It feels like you could at least program the microcontroller to compensate for the drift as the voltage drops. Surely there's at least a loose correlation to the oscillator slowing down and the voltage drop. Temperature is a bit more complex of course.
I can't wait for a Dutch store called 'Action' to come over to the islands. They're pretty similar to poundland/shop in concept, but they seem to have much higher quality stuff. It'd be very interesting to see your thoughts on their stuff.
yeah Action (coming from the Deen family in Hoorn) already has branches in other countries but I fear Brexit will not make it work for them to go to the UK
Hi Clive is it possible you can do a video about different voltages on old vintage fairy lamps? I have a huge selection of old vintage fairy spare bulbs and they are not all mark with their voltages on then, I'm like to know if the is a way I can find out the voltages of my spare bulbs? Sorry if this comment is in the wrong area I couldn't find a way to contact you other Wise.
Picked up a similar thing from Lidl today. £2 and only 20 lights so not as competitive as £land. In addition the picture on the box (a glass containing a string of SMD knot kights) bore no resemblabce to the contents which was regular 5mm LED and no glass :o. On the plus side it did come with 3 Panasonic AAs, worth at least 30p. The circuit does have a crystal but it is unmarked. The 8 pin chip is scrutably marked T6-24 and the output is witched through a 2TY transistor through a 15 Ohm resistor to the lights. I will check out the voltages and timekeeping later on, prior to converting to USB (with circuitry). I'm guessing it is not the same chip as in the poundland version and hope it doesn't drift so much thus making the extra outlay worthwhile.
Clive, would you know how to disable the timer function? I have a set of lights which run from 3 AA batteries, only my set is multi-coloured 120 led set, only the two wires going out to the leds, so i am guessing they are simply reversing the polarity in order to switch the colours. I am running it from an old 4.5v charger i had laying around, but the auto-switch off is annoying me, 6 hours is too short a time for me, so would like to have them on constantly. Obviously i can't do what you have done and simply remove the control box because of the multi-colours being controlled by just two wires. Is it possible to disable the timer do you know? Thanks.
I had the same issue recently. I used a time switch to turn the lights off after 6 hours and on again 1 minute later. The timing function was integrated into the control chip.
@@bigclivedotcom Sadly the sneaky Chinese have thought of that work around with my set - after disconnecting and reconnecting the power i have to push the select button to turn the leds back on manually. So no quick timer switch option for me. But thanks for the suggestion, i shall remember that idea for other sets i may get in the future seeing that i have a couple of timers kicking about.
The thing to realize is, if they turn on at the wrong time the airplane isn't going to crash. Big deal the decorative lights are 8 minutes late. I have a similar set of lights and the batteries are dead after 1 week. So long term drift is not a problem because it gets reset after a week anyway to change batteries.
I bet they now want you to show them how to run it off a USB power supply with the circuit board so they can change it from flashing to on all the time and to turn off in daylight/timed. Just thinking out loud!
Hi Clive, Thanks for producing these fun videos. An ESP 8266 or NodeMCU ESP8266 could receive clock syncs and toggle commands from a LAMP stack using GET/WGET? for remotish (wifi-range) operations.Alternately, Would adding a transistor and pullup resistor enable these to be toggled on and off via batch file on a pc (ie disable/enable usb device)?
"For those wondering about the silent heat gun, it is brand X model Z. I suggest it, but check before using. Most are great, but some are actually just hand grenades."
@@bigclivedotcom , yea, pretty much the same thing but with clips included. Still, bet quite a few of us would like to see you wear one (me included)hehehe.
Do they not sell the 20 lamp tungsten mains powered strings anymore? I need a load of those this year and it would be a shame if they have stopped doing them!
Actually someone just told me the Range is selling tungsten sets of 100 for £5.99 , clear white and colour sets , i dont know if you live near The Range but they do mail order www.therange.co.uk/christmas/christmas-trees/tree-decorations/fairy-lights/traditional-fairy-lights/#438072
Mike Whitson 4 days ago Good video as usual, but I was expecting that you'd power the control board with usb and not the lights directly so that you would still have the functionality that the board offers. I didn't read the comments before I posted, I should have lol.
It is possible, that they have enabled internal pullups on pin 6 and you would then have a crude divider with R1, with the ability to check battery voltage, either using comparator or a/d. I suspect in this case comparator.
I was given a holiday centerpiece that has that exact configuration, 6 hours on and 18 off, running 6 or 8 soft white LEDs. Only problem is that it EATS batteries like crazy. I don't know what's doing it, the lights should only be drawing a minimum of current, but I'm lucky if I get 2 weeks out of 3 AA cells.
Paul Drake Try doing the math... AA cells are normally around 500 to 700mAh... 3 of them amounts to 4.5vDC but still at 500 to 700mAh... How long should you be able to draw 50mA on those batteries ? ;-) (Around an hour a day for two weeks) - Now - it's been known that on low current draw, you can prolong the battery life, but you'll maximum get up to 2000mAh with as low as 50mAh draw... still amounts to max 4 hours a day for two weeks.
@@Okurka. Duracell AA Alkaline cells are around 500mAh at 1.0A load.. Granted, you get up to 2400mAh at 0.1A load, not 2000 as i said in my previous message... it still doesn't allow a configuration like the above to last longer than max 2 weeks.
If YOU add the crystal, there would, most likely, be no change. The controller would need to be programed to use the crystal instead of the internal oscillator. And the crystal would require more power than the internal.
Richard Hogg yes, but usually the microcontroller is programmed in the factory to use either the crystal, or the (less accurate) internal oscillator. So it's probably not possible to retrofit one without putting a new micro controller on too, because chances are, you can't reprogram those microcontrollers...
@@bigclivedotcom hmm that's a shame, all the flash modes still work and it uses a h bridge with one half of the leds connected in one polarity and the other half in the other. It just wants to keep the party going now.
You're like the Bob Ross of electronics, Big Clive. So relaxing to watch you explain a project. Keep up the awesome work!
HA HA I could just imagine how Bob Ross would sound if he were Doing electronics.
[ whispering ] " And over here, lives a happy little transistor"
"and we just dab on a little solder, right here, like this.. Dap dap dap dap"
"there we go.."
and maybe next to it lives a big, tall Capacitor"
Last year I did some of these for the historic railway station I volunteer at. However, I had a surplus USB charger type supply with a hardwired lead to a micro USB. Instead of removing the box, I just cut off the micro USB plug, let the cable in through a hole and soldered it to the main battery terminals. That way I didn't need to muck around with resistors and still had the flash effect available. In fact I combined two similar sets together, each with their own box, glued back-to-back and connected to the same PSU. That way the flashes of each set don't remain in sync and an interesting bonus effect is created.
This year, I found there were two more sets that needed to be modded. I should say now that these sets have the same kind of 3AA battery supply, driving a chain of 50 LEDs. This time I took a set and installed one of those LED driver SMPS units, exactly the same one that you used on your LED strip flouro light replacement. Although I had recovered mine from a failed LED bulb (one LED burned out). The original batteries supplied 150mA to the 50 LEDs, but with the driver I was getting 300mA. That's still only 6mA per LED, but they sure are bright!
This arrangement worked fine on the bench with the resistance of an ammeter & clip leads in the circuit but when I installed it in the battery box with nice short leads, it still worked fine on the flash mode, but the solid on mode was now causing the PSU to cycle super fast. I guess it considers the voltage drop of effectively a single LED too low & an overload condition.
However, I didn't see this as a drawback as now we simply have two modes, normal flash & super-fast flash. It'll be used in the normal flash mode down at the station anyway. So job done after fitting a really long light duty mains lead, that way an extension cord is not needed to put the set where it wants to be.
Finally, I should point out that the sets I have been working with do not have the timer function built into the controller.
wise decision to chop the USB lead in the middle instead of right at the plug. That way you can use the micro usb side for other projects.
Maico 👏 👏
Good video as usual, but I was expecting that you'd power the control board with usb and not the lights directly so that you would still have the functionality that the board offers.
Just solder a USB lead on to the battery contacts. The extra half a volt shouldn't bother it.
@@woofer2121 not sure if the battery contacts will take the solder though.. perhaps it'd be better to take out the circuit board, remove the battery contacts and solder the USB wires directly into there?
@@vimicito yeah some of the crappy "chrome" contacts won't take solder
@@woofer2121 lightly sand them, should be good to go
@@vimicito could always just solder it where the battery connections connect to the circuit board.
Only people who have worked on electronics know the rage induced by realizing you forgot to stage the heat shrink before you soldered.
Oh, Clive, the PICs I've worked with often have compensation registers for the internal oscillator. You can hook the A/D to the battery (using something like a 1.5V reference generator) and as the voltage goes down relative to the 1.5V reference, you can increase the oscillator trim. I know this exists on the PIC32MX because I've used it quite a bit. And the lowest-end PIC32MX110F016B is under $3 in single quantity. I pretty rarely use the lower-end PICs anymore because the 32MX line has so many awesome features and great peripherals, and it comes in a huge range of sizes and speeds. Anyway, back to watching the video :D
Or, of course, you could just add a 32.768kHz crystal and be done with it, which is probably what I would do in the same situation again. But it was fun to learn about the compensation registers.
Many of these timerds do use the crystal. Even with the calibration enabled I found the PIC microcontrollers drifted too much with time.
@@bigclivedotcom Fair enough, it's a pretty crap RC oscillator :)
I was waiting for the photo getting probed with the fluke :D
I'm waiting for that on every video. One of the many 'living in hopes' I have about Clive's offerings.
I feel like i would do that way to often
That’s funny cause I was so hoping he would. Even if it was to just show where he probed at.
he said he has done that once already
It's quite obvious where the track goes without probing: The negative power pad (where the U1 label is) goes under the chip to C1 (decoupling cap); therefore the other track must go to the pin in the corner as discovered with probing. But I think BC probed it to show how to find such things for those of us who need to know!
I wish BC had been my tutor when i did my Electronics HNC all those years ago! :-)
Thanks Clive, keep them coming!
All of your videos are so informative and entertaining. You're a rock star.
This little tutorial on how to convert christmas lights into usb powered christmas lights is genuinely fantastic.
Note that it only works with the parallel strings. But you can run several from one powerbank or plug-in USB supply.
10:19 good advice when repairing strings of lights with the CR2032. The other mod for USB ( plus the resistors of course) or batteries would workout the case , a USB female conector and add another switch . That way the would preserve the functionallity of power saving and add two power options... with the work of ripping the case :P
Brilliant yet again! I'm a coatings chemist by trade but I am really learning electrioncs thanks to you. Please keep the videos coming and thank you!
Can you add a quartz and the resisters to make it operate or would programming be needed? Just curious if that would work
Mark Eckelkamp would be an interesting experiment!
most microcontrollers have "fuse" settings that select internal oscillator vs external crystal which the programmer must set. (They are called "fuse" because ages ago they were a one-time "blow the fuse" setting, but modern parts typically use EEPROM or flash memory.)
I would need to be reprogrammed.
Sylvan Butler Agreed, either a hardware fuse would need to be set or, alternatively, the appropriate register would need to be toggled to switch the local oscillator source on the fly. Given that most of these very cheap microcontrollers are OTP (one time programmable) you are very limited in terms of after the fact alterations. Sometimes it can be done to an OTP micro if the new fuse settings just happen to align with the old as the default state for uninitiated bits/fuses in E/EPROM is typically logical “1”, so if the change *only* happened to require reprogramming an existing fuse that is logical 1 to 0 and no bits/fuses already at logical 0 required flipping back to logical 1 then you may be able to make that change after the fact provided they forgot to set the security bits to prevent reading the existing program state - but odds are you would also have needed to reset hardware dividers and such as many internal oscillators run at 4MHz and you would be installing a 0.032768MHz oscillator in its place, so the timings are going to change enormously (122 times slower!). Otherwise, adding an external oscillator would almost certainly be akin to just soldering random disconnected parts on a PCB that effectively go nowhere and have no power - they would just be decoration rather than active components.
@@Sylvan_dB The dirt cheap micro mentioned is (at least listed as) one time programmable. Might of course be available in EE versions as well.
3:57 Looks like you were trying to avoid the huge screw hole for a second. :D
I kept seeing them as actual holes in his bench! It was messing with my head, especially when he would move it. :)
HA! ..he has stereo vision there
You should always avoid huge screw holes.
They result in very unsatisfying sex. 😀
@@BedsitBob Tossing a hotdog down a hallway is definitely less satisfying.
I have the same solder station. The workmanship inside was awful but after reflowing cleaning and tightening the screws it's worked great for 5 years.
@@blitzwing1 Anything that happens to it is easy to fix and get parts for. I also thickened some of the traces with solder. I only wish they would use an iron with a little more mass. Have you tried the tweezer soldering iron accessory?
YIHUA 8786D, I'm only writing this here because I had to re-watch the part where bigclive mentioned the name three times before I managed to fully grasp the name. Probably my non native-speaker shining through again.
Just saw in my local Pound Stretcher that they have very similar LED light strings, in boxes with the 24-hour timer cycle advertised on the front. They're £5.99 though (it's not a single-price Pound Shop).
Interesting that the LEDs were previously drawing 50mA. Isn't that about as much as you'd typically want to draw from an MCU's gpio pin? I guess they saved the few pennies of a transistor to make the LEDs brighter.
13:43 did you mean to say "spread the heat dissipation"? Because you'd have to put resistors in parallel to share the load between them, not in series.
It works both ways. By using two quarter watt resistors with half the desired resistance value you get the full value but spread across two quarter watt resistors giving a half watt rating.
The shiny paper looks amazing!
The way you are holding the wires with 2 fingers and the solder with the other tow its a very nice trick.. I laughed when I discovered it first :D
The resistor is probably series with led- and 2 top left-most pins are probably shorted
Why not put USB sticking out of the battery box then you use USB power but still have the control of the circuit board of the original with the timer and switch control?
that certainly would work, if you do this mod you can do this. you can also use the box to provide a little string relief for your usb power cord and your resistors would not require heat shrink tubeing.
I suspect Big Clive just didn't want the extra bulk, it is a bit of a cleaner looking without it.
Now that's a quality modification. Makes it easy to make your garden look nice with fairy lights and a cheap and rechargeable power source. Just put the power bank in a sandwich bag.
I simply tacked the usb cables onto the + and - battery tabs. it works now off usb or normal cells, and still has the timer feature!
I have a control box for a string of led lights that is similar. I modified it to plug into the wall via usb charger. Since 3 batteries add up to 4.5vdc, I added a small resistor and it works great and it works with the original controller board which has several modes. I no longer have to worry about batteries.
I like the timer and some of the other functions supplied on some of these strings. And I want them to run from Thanksgiving to New Years or 12th night (Jan. 6th). I tend to simply add a standard diode between the USB supply and the circuit. 5.1v less 0.6v is perfect. The good news is - since the voltage stays constant, the timer drift is reduced and the LEDs stay bright. The bad news is - some power banks shut off if you don't draw enough current. My latest single cell banks shut off at around 30ma.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!! May Each day be worse than the Next. (It's a good thing.)
We have incorporated the self-timed mode (we call it SIFI - Set-It-Forget-It) for years in filipino parols, but we implemented 7 hours on - 17 hours off. We use a MicroChip PIC16F628A, which has horrible drift using the internal oscillator - so we added a 4Mhz crystal and 2 20pf caps. There's still drift, but it's seconds per month, not minutes.
We make our own sequencer PCB for our parols - we are all +12VDC inside, using an AC-to-12V adaptor. No mains voltages into the body of the parol.
@bigclivedotcom I would have liked to see you power the circuit board so that we could maintain the blinking and such functions.
Until recently the strings of multi-coloured LEDs you can buy (from China) with SMD LEDs soldered straight to copper wire, were really rich and warm in colour.
Sadly all of the sellers I've seen now have a very cool colour version instead. It also has silver coloured wire, rather than the visibly copper from before.
Hopefully they'll change back at some point...
product review, tear down, reverse engineering, and mod it to your heart's content! Wow........ That's like going 4 level up!
Thanks for the video.
BC - whatever happened to the other larger-display Amecal multimeter you used to use? I rather miss the giant display!
Phil S The big display Amical died some time ago.
@@johnfrancisdoe1563 if I remember correctly the rotating switch just feel apart
I've got a replacement mechanism for it. It'll be back soon.
@@bigclivedotcom an escuse to make a video about a multimeter teardown?
@@alfoncejean8826 BOLTR?
What are your thoughts on those heat shrink lengths with the ring of solder in them?
I've not tried them yet.
@@bigclivedotcom I used the wire splice with crimp with the heatshrink casing and the "glue" / "sealant" to make them moisture resistant and oil resistant, on a f wire harness on a 99 7.3 l diesel injector wiring harness. That's a pretty tedious but very important part of that feul system / engine. So it was important to you use something reliable and it worked fantastic. I have not tried the connectors with solder tho.
I used a few on some LED shop lights in the basement - mostly just to try them because I was so curious. They were very easy to use and have held up so far (about 2 years), but they are indoor so I never expect trouble - even if I just twisted the wires together and taped them :)
@@raymondmucklow3793 these crimps come with a low temp solder lump already on them but the problem is that the connection could become very weak if a short circuit appears. These connections are usually only good for low to medium amperage or to simply make a good watertight connection. Everything has it's ups and down's. Hope this helps.
They work alright, although if you heat them too fast or too much they tend to burst since the ends tend to crimp shut before the solder melts. I've had best luck with a regular lighter on those. They do work quite well and seem pretty water ingress proof.
I typically use the crimp connections with a built in heat shrink and hot melt glue, I get through a bunch since I deal with a lot of trailers and trucks running in brine half the year.
interesting... wondering if they do this with mains lights, that will be way more precise (not "clock" precise anyways), they already have the clock for the advancing effects and dimmings with AC
There have been products that have programmable timing based on the mains frequency. It's very precise for timing.
@@bigclivedotcom
yeah i know, honestly there've been a bit of attention in italy lately about the actual precision, a pair of (minor, actually) articles about wrong clocks on microwave ovens and such :D i've "measured" it with an RCT circuit and it was going back and forth on the scope, also the scope has the (useful i say) AC sync trigger and quartz 1kHz test out, i think the generators may be mechanically adjusted continuosly.. not sure about long term consistency
and my sine wave on mains sucks!! it looks like a triangular wave with really clipped pikes
@@bigclivedotcom
i've checked it with a transformer secondary limited by a 10k resistor, a shmitt trigger gate and an arduino with a bit of code, it seems precise, it hitted the split of a second in one hour, at least precise for non important stuff but.... noooooouuuuu i don't second taking into acount that.... i mean, electric companies are not asked for precise frequency, mains sync is more or less a cheap compromise
@@redoverdrivetheunstoppable4637 The national grid in the UK has a master clock and one running on the mains frequency. At times of high load the frequency drops slightly, but they compensate by increasing the frequency at times of low load.
There is no way to make a simple system that auto-corrects drift by having two elements that drift in opposite directions, or maybe just by different amounts, and then applying a correction based on the measured difference?
Amazing how many products for sale in the U.S. have Black as Positive and White as Negative. Makes one wonder.
We like the storm noises in the background.
So they're sinking the LED current with the microcontroller but haven't even decoupled its power pins. I'm surprised it even works.
It is being rather harsh on the microcontroller.
P.s. I really like the trick you showed us using the shaft of the soldering iron to do heat shrink.
Gadgetboy - that’s a very old trick!
Are battery powered fairy lights the norm in the UK? In the US Christmas lights plug in.
Huh I’ve got the exact same power bank but it always heats up on the usb plug-in and started burning the table under it . Still in a drawer somewhere battery flat
Could you please desolder the microcontroller to see what the markings below it are?
Saw in Poundland today strings of 100 of those chip on wire LEDS that flashed to music beats.
Also they are now doing 4,000mAh battery banks for £5
I've made a video about the 4000mAh charger (actually 3000mAh). Not come across the sound activated lights yet.
Oh yes, forgot about the charger vid, could have sworn it was a smaller one. They also do a QI charger in the same range.
yes helping hands are very handy I have extra croc clips on mine and a small solder reel holder and I have one of those too !
Aww, I wanted to see you try a crystal in that pack and see whether it'd work and improve the timing
me too 👍
Nice video very informative. I have a question though, I have a few of these lighted Christmas pieces that I have gotten from different stores Amazon ,Wal-mart where they have lights built in that flash all the time, have you ever made a video on how to fix these, or in my case, stop the lights from flashing to where they are steady on?
Hi Clive, do you know about 'tuning fork' based clocks and watches? These were used pre-quartz crystals, they don't use any IC or microcontroller either, the frequency is maintained electronically and converted to the movement of the wheels mechanically. They were used in the early apollo missions too, because they thought it'd be more reliable in zero gravity. (pre-quartz ofcourse)
If you're interested in this, google 'Bulova 214' which is the first movement that utilised this principle.
I do remember those.
I have a question about a pool table light. It has 5 glass bulbs with leds in them the leds are burnt. I can get them out of the bulbs. I would like to change them to RGB lighting and I was wondering if your mini rgb kit would do for that project. I can send you pictures of the light if it helps.
Surely it wouldn’t it be better to have slipped covering over both ends of the dropping resistors ? It seems from the video that the upper “snubs” are left exposed and could short out.
I did sleeve the full resistors and ends.
bigclivedotcom I’m sorry, I did check the video three times before leaving the comment. I’ll do so again and apologize if I missed your action. Thanks for the reply.
bigclivedotcom my apologies, at 17:00 you slip the sleeving over the whole resistor. My apologies. (Your probably a bit bored by me by now).
8:03 - was that a spark as you cut the power leads?
It would be interesting to install a 32KHz crystall, and see if the micro see's it and if it then improves the timing acuracy.
"...always a storm outside on the Isle of Man a this time of year, it's just the very nature of living on an island"
It is indeed, and those of use who are fortunate enough to live on islands wouldn't have it any other way. Greetings from Vancouver Island, way out west here...
I should also add, I love your wire strippers. Who makes them?
Most of those simple powerbanks do have short circuit protection nowadays .. doesn’t yours ?
They do have some level of short circuit detection, but some of the older ones still have a current path through the inductor that will still pass a lot of current even if the chip cuts out.
The 1£ power banks just burn out the inductor if the USB out is shorted. It'll supply about 6 Amp for a few seconds, before the inductor lets out the magic smoke.
Some have chips which will actually cut the output and pulse it until the short clears
also could you also wire the usb lead directly into the battery box and let the controller still run as normal... You just change the pwoer from battery to usb. Retains the timer functions and flash functions as well.
Glad i saw your video the other day - i went hunting in poundland and found the clear warm white sets - they look amazing and the secret timer is good - ideal if you fall asleep or got to bed and forget to switch them off
I did this but by stringing three of the 50 multicolour sets together, and keeping the microcontroller. Unfortunately, whilst the greens and blues were bright, the reds and yellows/oranges were dim. Removing the resistors didn't help. On the plus side, the flash functionality still works wonderfully, and it's still somewhat beautiful, especially as I took the to ensure that the order of the colours was maintained.
For anyone trying this, use three sets of warm white (It'd work better). Remove the end lead and first LED to form a string of soldered and shrink-wrapped LEDs, with a single battery box at the end. Remove the metal terminals from the box, and drill a hole at the bottom (or melt your way through with a nail heated on top of the stove). Remove the battery separators either with a Dremel, or by cutting them out with snips and cleaning them up with a chisel. Feed through a stripped USB cable and solder it to the microcontroller (black to where the metal negative was, red to where the positive wire was. Add strain relief with hot glue, and screw the box back together.
Voila!
Could you connect the usb wires directly to the battery box so you can still have flashing / on and the timer function?
Yes you could.
the only problem with glossy paper is that unless the light is exactly precisely exactly precisely correct, you can't see anything, so there's that.
So originally there was the 2.7k resistor in series with leds? It seems too much to me.
No. I'm not sure what that resistor was for.
So glad I watched this video! I have been wanting to add some LEDs to a clock above my PC and wanted to run them from the USB on my PC, but could not for the life of me remember what the resistor value was. Thanks! :)
It depends on the number of LEDs you use. 100 ohms would give 20mA, 47 ohms would give about 40 and 20 ohms as used here gives about 100mA.
Big Clive doing what he does best at this time of year. I always enjoy your videos. A BIG 👍 from me!
The timer you mentioned drifting by 8 minutes, perhaps it's temperature sensitive and caused by the room temperature not being what the designers expected, you often mention that you like a colder enviroment than most people prefer?
The timer drift is most likely down to the lower voltage of the rechargeable batteries.
I expect it would run faster if Alkaline batteries had been use instead.
2K7 could be PWM drive ratio for current limiting. different R values for different number or LEDs. what is the continuity voltage of the fluke 23 ? my fluke is 7.0 volts !!!
It's a disappointing 2.6V which is just enough to make LEDs glow.
I would probably make a hole in that battery case and put a micro-B female connector and a small piece of PCB and power the existing circuit with two diodes in series(should drop small amount of voltage as the current might not be that high).
That would work too.
Righto, just used this as reference for how to turn an LED I had lying around into a USB plug that, er, is a small lamp. Get some use out of the power bank.
Worked a right treat.
Real cute! The part number was sanded off. Perhaps it can be see under UV light? Either that, or it is proprietary, and was never imprinted. This is probably done to discourage reverse engineering...
In case anyone was wondering, "A good blob of solder" is actually a scientific unit of measure. All the cool kids use it
Although it has been used informally for a number of years I believe the blob (and hence the good blob and little blob respectively) was finally recognised as an SI unit at the the 26th General Conference on Weights and Measures, yesterday in Versaille. Unfortunately it seems the announcement was overshadowed by the new definition of the kilo, mole, ampere, and kelvin. :P
The correct terms, in ascending order are: Touch, Dab, Blob, Gob, Lump, and Turd.
"Look at that huge turd of solder on that joint!"
A good blob is a little more than a smidgen, but less than a touch.
It's the Plebian System of weights and measures. Also includes one glug of wine, one shake of salt and a gnat's nadger of chili.
Just wondering, why you did not include the circuitry from the battery holder into your USB conversion.
You could have gotten USB compatibility while still keeping all the features.
Great Video Clive thank you.
A few questions if don't mind. Can you point me towards where to get the soldiering kit, heat gun and who does usb Christmas decs. Is it just pound land? Thank you
It feels like you could at least program the microcontroller to compensate for the drift as the voltage drops. Surely there's at least a loose correlation to the oscillator slowing down and the voltage drop. Temperature is a bit more complex of course.
I can't wait for a Dutch store called 'Action' to come over to the islands. They're pretty similar to poundland/shop in concept, but they seem to have much higher quality stuff. It'd be very interesting to see your thoughts on their stuff.
yeah Action (coming from the Deen family in Hoorn) already has branches in other countries but I fear Brexit will not make it work for them to go to the UK
For some things, yes, but a vast majority is less than a pound.
Hi Clive is it possible you can do a video about different voltages on old vintage fairy lamps?
I have a huge selection of old vintage fairy spare bulbs and they are not all mark with their voltages on then, I'm like to know if the is a way I can find out the voltages of my spare bulbs?
Sorry if this comment is in the wrong area I couldn't find a way to contact you other Wise.
I know of 1.8V, 2.5V, 3V, 3.3V, 6V, 12V types...
Is it usual for cheap USB cables not to have the data connections wired?
Picked up a similar thing from Lidl today. £2 and only 20 lights so not as competitive as £land. In addition the picture on the box (a glass containing a string of SMD knot kights) bore no resemblabce to the contents which was regular 5mm LED and no glass :o.
On the plus side it did come with 3 Panasonic AAs, worth at least 30p.
The circuit does have a crystal but it is unmarked. The 8 pin chip is scrutably marked T6-24 and the output is witched through a 2TY transistor through a 15 Ohm resistor to the lights.
I will check out the voltages and timekeeping later on, prior to converting to USB (with circuitry). I'm guessing it is not the same chip as in the poundland version and hope it doesn't drift so much thus making the extra outlay worthwhile.
R will be current setting?
i can't find where to buy in the U.S.? can you provide a link please?
Clive, would you know how to disable the timer function? I have a set of lights which run from 3 AA batteries, only my set is multi-coloured 120 led set, only the two wires going out to the leds, so i am guessing they are simply reversing the polarity in order to switch the colours. I am running it from an old 4.5v charger i had laying around, but the auto-switch off is annoying me, 6 hours is too short a time for me, so would like to have them on constantly. Obviously i can't do what you have done and simply remove the control box because of the multi-colours being controlled by just two wires. Is it possible to disable the timer do you know? Thanks.
I had the same issue recently. I used a time switch to turn the lights off after 6 hours and on again 1 minute later. The timing function was integrated into the control chip.
@@bigclivedotcom Sadly the sneaky Chinese have thought of that work around with my set - after disconnecting and reconnecting the power i have to push the select button to turn the leds back on manually. So no quick timer switch option for me. But thanks for the suggestion, i shall remember that idea for other sets i may get in the future seeing that i have a couple of timers kicking about.
The thing to realize is, if they turn on at the wrong time the airplane isn't going to crash. Big deal the decorative lights are 8 minutes late. I have a similar set of lights and the batteries are dead after 1 week. So long term drift is not a problem because it gets reset after a week anyway to change batteries.
I bet they now want you to show them how to run it off a USB power supply with the circuit board so they can change it from flashing to on all the time and to turn off in daylight/timed. Just thinking out loud!
Hi Clive, Thanks for producing these fun videos. An ESP 8266 or NodeMCU ESP8266 could receive clock syncs and toggle commands from a LAMP stack using GET/WGET? for remotish (wifi-range) operations.Alternately, Would adding a transistor and pullup resistor enable these to be toggled on and off via batch file on a pc (ie disable/enable usb device)?
Love it! Quick question. What if your USB lead has 4 cables coming out if it?
"For those wondering about the silent heat gun, it is brand X model Z. I suggest it, but check before using. Most are great, but some are actually just hand grenades."
What if you rigged it to run the pack off of an outlet would you still get drift?
More efficient to use a voltage regulator vs resistor?
Hi Clive!!!! Love the channel! What temp do you typically run your soldering iron at? Thank you...
Around 350C, but go by soldering feel and not a displayed temperature.
Ye should really try getting one of those beard fairy lights
The ones that look suspiciously like the 20 LED copper wire LED strings on eBay.
@@bigclivedotcom , yea, pretty much the same thing but with clips included. Still, bet quite a few of us would like to see you wear one (me included)hehehe.
Just saw an article that says that someone is selling Fairy Lights for Beards. Perhaps you should look into that... :)
The URL was UNILAD.CO.UK
Do they not sell the 20 lamp tungsten mains powered strings anymore? I need a load of those this year and it would be a shame if they have stopped doing them!
mark layton They may have fallen to the general ban of most tungsten bulbs.
Sadly I haven't seen the tungsten ones this year.
@@bigclivedotcom damnit, I thought it was just my local store making room for the new clothes range, obviously not, that's a shame!
Actually someone just told me the Range is selling tungsten sets of 100 for £5.99 , clear white and colour sets , i dont know if you live near The Range but they do mail order www.therange.co.uk/christmas/christmas-trees/tree-decorations/fairy-lights/traditional-fairy-lights/#438072
Fortunately I picked up a couple of spare sets last year
Do the Padauk microcontrollers have built-in programming pins? Could you hook up a diagnostics tool and read off the program?
I'm not sure if the chips have a security bit that prevents reading out data from the program memory.
your new finger nail looks good. cheers.
HI Clive, Quick question in a previous video you told use which wire you buy from rapid but what solder do you use.
Standard 60/40 tin/lead also from Rapid. (RVFM)
Cheers Clive Do you happen to know the order code
Can you tweak the frequency the crystal generates. I made one of those clocks like you made a while back and the drift is quite bad.
You could try swapping the crystal for a more accurate one.
@@bigclivedotcom I honestly didn't realize they varied. I'll have to try that.
Mike Whitson
4 days ago
Good video as usual, but I was expecting that you'd power the control board with usb and not the lights directly so that you would still have the functionality that the board offers. I didn't read the comments before I posted, I should have lol.
Does anyone know if and where these might be purchased in the US?
It is possible, that they have enabled internal pullups on pin 6 and you would then have a crude divider with R1, with the ability to check battery voltage, either using comparator or a/d. I suspect in this case comparator.
Or it may be an input pin with pullup, and tied to ground to tell the firmware NOT to use the crystal?
@@the0844 You know what, I like that!
I was given a holiday centerpiece that has that exact configuration, 6 hours on and 18 off, running 6 or 8 soft white LEDs. Only problem is that it EATS batteries like crazy. I don't know what's doing it, the lights should only be drawing a minimum of current, but I'm lucky if I get 2 weeks out of 3 AA cells.
Paul Drake Try doing the math... AA cells are normally around 500 to 700mAh... 3 of them amounts to 4.5vDC but still at 500 to 700mAh... How long should you be able to draw 50mA on those batteries ? ;-) (Around an hour a day for two weeks) - Now - it's been known that on low current draw, you can prolong the battery life, but you'll maximum get up to 2000mAh with as low as 50mAh draw... still amounts to max 4 hours a day for two weeks.
@@Okurka. Duracell AA Alkaline cells are around 500mAh at 1.0A load.. Granted, you get up to 2400mAh at 0.1A load, not 2000 as i said in my previous message... it still doesn't allow a configuration like the above to last longer than max 2 weeks.
So what, if anything, would adding the crystal into the circuit do? Make it more accurate?
If YOU add the crystal, there would, most likely, be no change. The controller would need to be programed to use the crystal instead of the internal oscillator. And the crystal would require more power than the internal.
Richard Hogg yes, but usually the microcontroller is programmed in the factory to use either the crystal, or the (less accurate) internal oscillator. So it's probably not possible to retrofit one without putting a new micro controller on too, because chances are, you can't reprogram those microcontrollers...
Cheers. Concisely answered!
Anyone ID'd the IC in one of these? Mines stopped turning off but everything tests good.
It's probably a Padauk microcontroller with custom software. Check the output transistor hasn't shorted.
@@bigclivedotcom hmm that's a shame, all the flash modes still work and it uses a h bridge with one half of the leds connected in one polarity and the other half in the other. It just wants to keep the party going now.
@@uK8cvPAq Could be the switch has failed.
@@bigclivedotcom I replaced the crystal and touch wood its been working since.
What exactly is the purpose of the resistors here? Thanks!
They limit the current through the LEDs. Without them the LED string would try to draw a lot of current and it could damage the LEDs.
A new video, just in time for tea. Excellent timing indeed!