Poundland light USB mod.

Great video's Big Clive I'm glad I jioned, one time you said you like to do more with Arduino, I'm into Halloween an Xmas allot and I'm looking to make some Prop controllers 4 and 8 channel with sound. it needs to control lighting, PWM motors, some drill motors, like the PicoBoo from Frightprops.com . but i know with your help it would be a lot better than there's. and i got some DMX lighting to add in Tell me what ya think, Keep up the good work

As a joke sometime, you should actually continuity test the photo and use a foot switch to fake it working. See if and how long it takes people to notice.

Kadah

Well this is good timing, I bought a set today to do just this!

David Rickard

BANG !!

God 420

Depends on the USB supply -- the LEDs have a voltage drop of 3V but will happily accept about as much current as they can get, even if it'll destroy them, so without the resistors you basically have a short circuit and if the supply can provide enough amperes, you'll destroy all the LEDs.

41 MegaWatt seems a bit high... poor leds!

Paul Schuur

Great video. If you hadn't used resistors what would have happened when you switched the LEDs on?

Gadgetman

I got a lot of the Padauk micros they come with a blank top and on the sot 23-6 the power and ground is pin 2 and 5 but you can get custom footprint and pin layout.

Zach Allin

On this occasion no, nor did I fit a diode to protect the USB socket if there were batteries fitted. It's the 50 string of coloured ones, not the 120 whites - they don't seem to be running hot at all, but they are flashing, not on solid.

Simon, did you use resistors when you connected the usb lead to the pcb as per Clive? I purchased some led strings from China that only use a usb cord and they run very hot. Some of the supplier’s feedback mentioned this too. I’m thinking they need a resistor as I don’t see one in the supply lead.

We just finished timing it - they went off after just shy of 6 hours. I kept the box, and just drilled a small hole in the side for the cable to come through. They still work on battery too!

Good call. I wonder how the slightly higher voltage affected the current and timing. Did you get rid of the box?

Big Clive

That's one of the redeeming features of the Poundland 4000mAh 3-cell powerbank. It just puts out 5V all the time.

Big Clive

I modified a set for a friend but connected the USB power cable onto the PCB to maintain the flashing/solid and timer functionality too.

A sawn-off USB lead, weapon of choice for any hardware hacker :)

Phil Collins

Intellegent power packs are really annoying for things like this. For lights I specifically want on (parties etc), I use one of these. <a href="https://www.sotabeams.co.uk/usb-battery-pack-keep-alive-load/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.sotabeams.co.uk/usb-battery-pack-keep-alive-load/</a> . They do waste a bit of power but I figure it's worth it esp as power packs are easily replaced and recharged.

41.6666 MW per led

God 420

Hey there Clive!