Modifying an old light with LED tape.

a spontaneous video this wasn't actually planned it's just what's going to happen this is the light fitting that was above my computer and the first and driven it started dipping and flickering and what's actually happened here is that the end of the fluorescent tube has filled it started sputtering and that let me turn this the correct way to get the tube out there that's the true barrel now you can see it's darkened and what's actually happened there is that inside desert heated cathode and it's got I've watched cold earth there are me on Nick emissive coating is that right thermionic emission is a massive coating on it let's just say an emissive coating and the idea is that when it's hot yeah it lowers the voltage drop across standard ribbon it means you can operate these have flute long fluorescent tubes on a fairly low voltage but in this case that end electrode has burned up a bit and the voltage has risen to the point it's actually melted the plastic a little bit here test get quite hot when that happens and the troopers started feeling it started dipping and flickering because the the voltage across it wasn't able to sustain normal operation Suffolk that at some point accidentally the reflector this isn't the original reflector er I've swapped reflectors because with another late because it was actually distorted with the heat as well in the same area and it is from the tube and I was thinking this Lake has a connector then I want to just keep the standard connector that's already up there could I put LED T flawless because it's actually too bright as it is at the moment and all I need is a low-level illumination to see the keyboard on the laptop so I was thinking of sticking in some LED tape but I'd need to provide a 240 volt - 12 volt tape power supply and one of the things that came to mind if it will fit in whatever go up here I've got oh there's one I've got these tiny little drivers that are actually current limited supplies but they're designed for three to 12 volts at 300 milliamps and yep so the this is a 2 to 12 volt 300 milliamps so a calamity to supply that also tends to cap the voltage and I was wondering would actually work with a piece of this LED tape and I've chosen the 50-50 tape because it draws us of higher current you may hear a slight humming in the background when I'm talking it's the air transformer in the soldering stations so the first thing I want to try and do that is see if this little power supply because the power supply itself is tiny and it should hopefully fit inside this late and these are the ones they often fit in the basis of gu10 table amps that you want do tending lamps so I reckon this should fit inside here it looks like it's going to fit inside there and if it does then I can rewire this fitting to actually drive the LED tip so first I'm going to do is are going to connect to this tape and see what's gonna happen so this is the watch privity that I'd rather it had hadn't been the waterproof tape because there in this application I prefer the more flexible nature of the non waterproof stuff because it tends to stick better but it also makes a lot easier to terminate onto but at the moment I've taken a knife and I very carefully slit up the end try and separate the waterproof coating from the circuit board material it's always quite hard stripping these things and now I'm going to tip your snips and cut that off I could assume dinner could've shown you more detail there I didn't most remiss of me let's say I move this egg away I noticed the air exposures just a bit ferocious no that's that's actually worse let's say nudge over to the exposure detection point oh it's not detecting it where am i exposing alone well I'll do em so let's prepare with me and I shall connect this little power supply on to this team just experimentally self 10 these wires and soldier on and then will power off and see what sort of air the voltage across their tip so I need solder I did have solder I've misplaced the soldier I do this quite a lot the the bench is very cluttered you'd be just mortified it's like any busy bench chair any if you look at the youtubers that are always really just building stuff their benches are always a real mess because it's just endless projects and stuff gets left on the bench so it's just at the end of cluttered it's normal so if your bench is cluttered that's fine it's just how it is it means you're being productive if it's immaculately clean then you've obviously not got much going on my apologies if I've just offended some by saying the benches to immaculately clean then again there are those of you who work at the kitchen table which is the classic place to work because it's a nice clear area and if you do that then it's useful to have a tray that you can put a project on and just move the tree and there's no as needed quick testing and slam those wires in let's get my meter in in readiness look at the moment my original fluke well I went I was self-employed I'd used what he's flick meters with a each I still in cool electrical engineers and it was like I just it was an iconic to me at the time and it was really really expensive but I thought you know if I'm going self-employed now I should really get the best of the best so I got one of these and it's been added you know that was decades ago it's a green meter it never got taken too much out and jobs though because I I ended up keeping more more or less as a bench meter because I didn't want it stolen because as such meters are desirable so let's say keep your mind this is gonna be live let's get this tape down this is where the tape is gonna swamp out with late let's see this are just good bang actually it's lit good let's say measure the voltage across that because that will give me an indication if it's less than 12 volts it's ideal it's eleven point four one that is absolutely perfect and what about the current is um best way to measure the current is to put something in series what can I do here I know I can do it a what I'm going to do soda that wire and I'm gonna bring in the weed cheap you meter because it's got the crop clips on it or alligator clips if you prefer I'm going to turn it to the 10 amp setting which means are going to have to change that over to there I'm just looking at the fact this lead has kind of snapped here at which reminds me if you look at John Ward's channel I think he's featured at there's been a recall and some of the fluke test lamps because they've found that the leads are breaking at the point the end of the the case are and on to the circuit board the notable thing being here if you think that fluke seem to have an awful lot of recalls it's simply because they actually care enough to do the recalls being a sort of high profile name they have to protect their image so let's say this is 10 amps DC let's see what current is a flowing 260 milliamps that's kind of less than I was expecting I wonder what's top bottom doubt first it I wonder if that's what this current limiting post players limiting current lat or if it's there that upper voltage or open circuit voltage has been met there's one of me to fill that out I could just make it completely open circuit and measure the voltage across that and see if it goes much more above that 12 volts oh it's gone up to 21 volts autumn socket that is exciting right I shall disconnect that it is a current limited supply the open circuit voltage tends to float I'll change the leads back to the normal settings always a good idea with your meter one of the things that made me like this meter so much was because it's a really tough rubber case they give our specification to be dropped from a great height when you look inside this it looks a bit primitive because it is an old meter and if you search for Irish Capone stock 2 or 3 4 8 9 it would have been discontinued a long time ago for reference the serial number on it is five three seven six one three seven four and this is an original american-made meter all the flip meters these days I think the standard meters are all made in China now which makes sense because it's just the way things have gone isn't it right I'm happy with that so what going to do now I'm going to put this post play of the week I'm going to open that light fitting and explore the inside so Dee sort of the solid connection I shall bring this up and take a look inside no this has a incoming plug and and it's got an outgoing socket end but I don't need the sock end because it's just going to be used they're fed from one end which will make it things a bit simpler but let's say I try to open this up and I can see it's got these little tabs down here hopefully this isn't going to be too destructive it's chewing the plastic up it's already got a bit destructible that's then end off that's good so what we got here is that the does this switch have to come out this is me probably busting it I'll try not to burst it that looks kind of okay and what it's a secondary is that a secondary sleeveless go in there then for our secondary installation not really sure that's strange so I don't need this end so let's just cut all the wires I don't need the wires into this end cut either so let's say chop them I'm guessing that when they're constructing this the will just ultimately just terminate these wires and twenties end caps last Oh actually I'm seeing there were two wires looking there so that may have been looking back that's I've probably screwed things up badly right that's not really much a surprise for me ooh okay there's a little air end cap is a fairly standard looking a tube connector with the rotating contacts at the end interesting let's get this off so that is that I tell you what that looks like just a little reinforcing bit in the end to sandwich this into a look of it not sure almost like just a strengthened and kind of intrigued what's in here now so let's cut some wires this time I'm going to cut these wires it wouldn't need these ones and I do need these ones shame they don't come out maybe they do come out they look like those pins are pushed in then snap him/herself maybe they're actually heat welded in Oh they've sort of the connections on maybe maybe I should rewire this completely by putting that back with my hips and disorient that sounds like a good idea it's probably a terrible idea that's okay I do want to keep a switch intact I just want to aim to this thing and see what's inside I want to see a little driver for the tube just let say there are couple Wars let's drop down the floor so didn't say this somewhere is that driver and it's gonna kind of be fold by the fact that I've got this switch in here oh there's a driver I should be a bit more careful because I think it was turned on fairly recently oh that's a right okay I think we'll have to rewire the switch as well there we go that says that's me everything is there here is the driver okay this is a fairly classic oh that's quite it's actually it looks fairly decent quality let's there discharge that big capacitor there that's the spicy one others will give me a bang but not quite as much as that one if it holds a charge no that's not holding a charge finger test that's good well I've got here we'll get that fuse commune we've got the m-class Y special bastard we got a common wood spesh talk a bit more filtering we've got the bridge rectifier with the diode scattered everywhere they've just tried to fit this in and then a smoothing capacitor foreign of all three points you make for it and then this very common arrangement here which consists of two transistors and this is the inductor that's a being used to limit the current through the tubes we've got the feedback toroid if you ever take apart a compact fluorescent lamp because this is basically a compact fluorescent lamp driver and but just driving the longer tube if you take one of the part you'll find that it's got the little tour ID in here great for making jewel thieves but the interesting about this is that the toroid is driving it's got three windings on its car winding in series with the tube and then dr. and it's got two other windings that drive the transistors and it's a very simple arrangement it's triggered initially when you turn it on by this that all Dayak here when the voltage reaches certain threshold and then because of the arrangement of diodes I'll cover this in a separate video one day because there it makes is an interesting circuit it's absolutely minimal they could do and it's triggers it and then it basically starts a circuit oscillating with these transistors pushing and pulling coupled directly with their selves with their bases being driven directly from these windings it's very clever other things worth Evernote there are capacitors in series to limit the current through them and also this device down here is a PTC thermistors which is probably being used as a soft start initially when you turn it on or pass a hard current through the heated cathodes at the end to heat them up and then once it's been running for a while it will go high resistance and it will lower the current through them looks like a classic circuit right I'm going to completely rewire this to think now so I will probably put the circuitry down at this end it's just going to fit in this there's going to be a real project killer if this doesn't fit it's gonna fit so I'm going to make a hole at this end with a drill and then I'm going to rewire this I'm going to basically have the live and neutral commune and the neutral will go straight to that power supply but the live will go up and it'll go through this switch at this end and then come back down to that power supply so I'm just going to pause momentarily well I got all the wiring and I won't pause I'll just keep going that's the best thing then you don't miss anything what happens here that means that you guys get the choice of whether you watch it or you skip let's find the wire it's quite thin wire I'm not really bad about that it's not a very high current circuit so I'm going to roughly place this in at the end here so it's going to go in there I'll drill the hole fairly close up to here okay okay and now I could feed it from the other end couldn't I I could actually put the clip on and then the feed would come down via the switch to other end that would make it much less cluttered and then that means the other end it would just be like the brown and blue wire that sounds like a good idea so I shall start down can you tell I'm making this up as I go along to start off then I'm going to get the wires onto the plug end this end is not needed this ere is the socket end so I'll just cut them flush at the end miss using these snips as always I shall get the plug end which I've misplaced there it is and I shall also pair that heat shrink over those just as an extra precaution so I want the neutral running up from one end to the other I shall cut them a little bit longer there's no harm in having a bit of extra length I use my strippers here people often ask about these strippers there are universe strippers it's just the ones I got I think they came from Bill's tool store in Glasgow this is a non-polarized it is actually a polarized connector not too bothered it's not going to be that critical technically speaking it is slightly critical you're supposed to output the switch in the live but it doesn't really matter because it would just be unplugged completely every time so I'm going to reflow some solder on to these I'm going to tin this wire this is what putting heat shrink on before and would probably have been a good idea but not to worry I didn't um I'm guessing I was trying to get that wire down inside it's not gone down inside that looks pretty good yep okay and and I'll have a shorter since I'm putting that at this end I'll have a shorter brown wire coming out for the I'll just pull a loop home so just connect a full length bit of wire on and pull the probe the switch should get the wire the wire is my generic connecting wire it's the stuff I use all the time that provide a link to before but it's got seven strands I think it's point zero two millimeter I'm not sure I'd have to check that again it's quite a thin Keeble but it's amply rated for the sir application and the fuse in the plug because it of course is the Yuki it's a scrip and plug the other end of this it's a three amp fuse which air is fine this cable is probably rated approximately one or two amps I could change the fuse to have one amp fuse we do them but they're not a standard fuse size officially only fuse size is recognized the plugs are three and thirteen amp right this is looking good so far I'm going to go and get some heat-shrink I have a choice I've got this one which looks just board alone or this one which is actually looks too big excellent have a good choice then we'll go for this like your bigger one and hope it shrinks down enough it's much easier than trying to thread on a one that's too small so I'll just slide that down there but Dad over there use the heat gun which I'm no firing heat into us of confined ear so I'll probably end up melting all the plastics oh that's pretty looking pretty good that's fine all I really want to do is clamp onto the sort of like there cameras down there that's pretty good that's done the job at showing interconnections I'm not too bothered about putting these back in because they're just not needed so I won't I don't think it's gonna affect their cool no it's not gonna affect the clamping of the the diffuser so I'm going to thread these wire in the middle now this is where they just will consistently do not want to go down the middle I've just suddenly realized that this means the switch is going to be the other end from where I normally have it but that's okay I'll soon get used to that oh you know what hey these must have a purpose I reckon these are quite important so suppose I better use them then I so I'll there and pull this out shove it down inside like that I think it just there is gives extra to their rigidity in here yeah looks like it's probably in Portland I'll put them in for us these wires down your hope they actually go all the way down then side and don't just snag off and inside as sometimes happens and through edge of this end can just get snapped in which it's just done and I've got the wires hanging out at the end I want to pull a lip out in the brown and I want to solder it in line with that switch so I could use my long nose pliers for this the long nose pliers which are in there lose it there though I'd say grab the brown wire the longest pliers pull a little bit out leaving enough at the other end I can actually connect with that looks good to me so I shall cut this strip it this should be good actually because if anything that area of the where I use the computer it's always been a bit bright and this should lure them tensed a bit let's see if I can actually get this air sleeve off the switches now switch connections and also put another bit of sleeping back on afterwards you shall get that sword off we have to floor some nice juicy lead-based solder on this just to actually air just to make that flow better it always works better can get rid of that module so let's say flu some fresh solder on it wets it just makes it meet better and also if this is LED based so lead-free solders on that already it means it will just be a bit of a higher temperature to the lead-based solder I always recommend a lead-based solder ignore the people are seeing it's dangerous it's poisonous it's not not in this subway we are using it things get blown out of proportion you get the serve people who just always take an extreme stance and things this heat shrink is what I'm going to use I'm going to particularly all sniffer this another snippet just basically to shield these terminals once these are soldered on sometimes I wonder are these videos when I do something like this when don't keeps a cutting hair are they too long that's you recall if you think they're too long or not let's get the heat shrink on over that that a big great idea before I saw the connection that is a textbook error that air I've done it in the past I'll do it again everybody does that could be worse Air MD who makes off audio connectors and stuff that will have been the situation they've needed connector off lots of furry little terminals and then once they've done it they've realized they didn't thread the cap over it so it suddenly makes it very bold they basically have to disorder the whole can try again that is super annoying when that happens and even veterans of the industry make that mistake still it's just how it is it's very easy to do this wire is somewhat shorter because it's the one that's coming directly from the incoming supply if I'd be really methodical there I would have actually poked a tester into the a cable and seen what the polarity of those air two connections then because it does look that a fairly keyed connector but it doesn't really matter it's not there there's nothing really in this that would pose a hazard affair it's not like there's a fuse in there live in this unit that's in the plug so I shall shrink these down looks a bit wrinkly but that's alright it's Fame danish will decide which we don't want that connector yes sir live wires tried to sneak up the end does it come back again you know it's not it's flanking up in the same rail caps it so which we don't want it if I am up there I turn it on by going back up to it that way yeah that looks pretty good I shall put it in like this job done excellent so now I've got my lighter neutral lane that I'm going to cut to the same length cut down in size a bit and I'm gonna want to push this down there's plenty of room for that so I'll cut these down don't worry I do use all the little bits I use the mr. jumpers for all the things and a goodness sort of these directly hunt the inputs this power supply here they're going straight to the bridge rectifier no fuse or anything which means that when it fills it will go with a bang oh well that's what happens so I want to turn these wires one good thing about a long videos is that some of you just want to dip relax and watch a long video and others who don't can skip forward that's the joy of YouTube it lets you just skip to wherever you want I should actually seriously be zoomed in this but you know faint well what would happen I'd end up there going way off short as I often do when I'm engrossed so let's a reflow these of juicy lead-based solder let's crop these wires down just a tiny tiny bit sort of that on there basically I've turned these wires solved I'm just reflowing them and there there is another option but it's going quite extreme if the current had been too high if the voltage have been floating up too high on the LED tape I could theater have changed a resistor in here that little cent resistor on this circuit board don't think I'd need it though this is also going to run a bit cooler than it used to in the past because it's usually in a very small area so now I want to drill a hole in here but there I have to keep in mind that this thing is coming up to about there hmm which is actually come in a bit too far from my liking maybe I'll just end up leaving that I walked happen is that just not gonna latch no it's not gonna latch if I leave that oh that's why that's there that's just a little bit annoying but not to worry and I shall improvise I need to put the LED tape up this is where I could actually mount let's stick the LED to let's bias it down to the other end so let's peel this off the sticky back and see where this is gonna leak in Italy it's gonna go from there to about there okay yeah that that area where the wires are coming through is actually right where that little thing is that so we've it annoying best okay we'll improvise so I'm gonna peel this off I'm going to make a dog's dinner of sticking alone I'm gonna do my best here but you just never know will it actually even stick maybe I should have roughed that plastic up there acetone is good for that just taking a sort of creating a sort of rough text from the plastic that's looking all right I'll give it a rub on to see if it can make it stick to any level then what could do here that could theoretically oh you know that that would work really well and if I was to use a pair of snips to just cut those pins off completely or even hike them out can I hike them out [Music] cut them in as much as possible I can theoretically run the wires through that out and then fold them back across there if that would work winter so where's my positive the positive is not where I want it that's exactly what happens pep perfect so I'll fold that wire cover down inside I'm gonna bring these through here this is going to be a disaster this is gonna be disaster I'm gonna clip this in then find the wires to reach oh hey I'll just cut it down Susie a Stickley with their thinking it's going to work oh no and then we'll see if these wires reach they do perfect so technically speaking I should have had a cable here so I could actually demonstrate this mmm I don't have a key words parrot but a cannula is gonna work so let's flow a bit fresh hold on to these the positive is going there let's say crop these wires down a bit that would be very professional winter if I made it look like I actually wanted to make a decent job so let's a crop load off put that down there this will also let me see how long it actually took me to do this because these are all tasks that doesn't seem likely taken off a long time but that's because you're engrossed in them and there's nothing quite like being gross than a job to make time fly so let's set floor that wire onto there give us st. cool and this wire under here make sure I don't touch myself the solder I see almost did it again let's say get round here and do this yeah we have been verified been zoomed in for this but it wasn't not to worry that looks pretty good the module is down talked about under here um all I need to do theoretically know is click the cover back on the diffuser and that should theoretically be it fixed turned into an LED light of course if you had a vehicle or an off-grid system you could actually use this just with a 12 volt supply you you could just convert an existing 240 volt supply with the LED tape no I have to have to pause and roughly wire this up so you can see the result because they you'd have to see the end result when you can't just there I can't just leave it hang like that so just one moment okay I've used a non complaint electrical connection method evolve ting wires and heat shrink and let's plug it in so the switch works yes which works power consumption is a three point seven watts per a factory but that's okay it's very little power anyway and the illumination level looks pretty good I'm just going to turn this light off that's perfect actually that's much better because there this way is not it was swampy a bit too much rooms a bit too bright before and no it's not to brain well it is now sir that's ideal the if you notice the hop you have just stopped flickering just because there because it's darker now the framerate is a lot of exposure times longer and it gets rid of the flicker from the multiplexing so that's a good result my late is now fixed and I'm going to install it and then surf the internet because that sounds like a good idea

Channel: bigclivedotcom

Views: 418,138

Keywords: fluorescent, led, strip, tape, conversion, repair, light, connectable

Id: 7_ds5XFJvPs

Length: 35min 31sec (2131 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 12 2018