Inside a Samsung LED retrofit tube. (Older style?)

[@CyberlightFG]

After manually reviewing it, I hereby confirm this is original BigClive content.

[@Nono-hk3is]

I watched this on a big screen tested, and I still value the zoom-in.

[@alexatkin]

I sometimes watch on a 55" TV, still find the zoom-in useful.

[@Shaun.Stephens]

It wouldn't be right if nobody disagreed with you so I will. I only watch on a 24" monitor but I still find myself leaning back quickly in my chair when Clive zooms in. I mean, I could see everything before that just fine ans there's no issues with stuff going on later out-of-frame.

[@OffGridAussiePrepper]

@@alexatkin me too but 44 inch

[@jackadams99]

I dont like the zoom in at all, its pretty unpleasant when sitting at my pc.

[@ethelryan257]

We all do. If course, there always some poor dear who has to complain.

[@Uncle-Duncan-Shack]

I think if I changed the round fluorescent tube in my closet to something modern my routine would get scrambled. Standing there while it pings and backfires until it brightens up is somehow harmonious with my morning routine. Great talk on how complicated a bit of new technology is in the beginning. That tube must have cost a bomb to make, much like cfl's were in the new. They were like 20 times the cost of an incandescent bulb in the beginning.

[@tappel0]

Oh, 555k subscribers, would it be a time for a 555 special?

[@asmolbean9300]

Yes! Clive should do stuff with 555 timers that they're not supposed to do... maybe make a few go bang... A recomposition of his resistor sonata

[@IgnoreMyChan]

557k you mean... ;-)

[@Mark1024MAK]

Lilly like da flower - hey, what about a 556 special?

[@phils4634]

Looking forward to the Op Amp Special when BC gets to 741K (shortly after the foray into TTL "logic Lego" when he reaches 740!) :-D

[@marquisdemoo1792]

@@phils4634 Would I be showing my age if I said we could also have an 807 special (CV807).

[@ThacMan]

Big Clive should voice for audio books. Audible hook this dude up.

[@mjouwbuis]

Look for Hellfreezer, he does various narrations with a similar voice and accent.

[@MladenMijatov]

I love the fact there are still companies out there that care about good engineering.

[@kitecattestecke2303]

Yeah this is pretty much power factor correction, no flicker, no emi interference (extra copper plate pcb) Very good product from samsung😮 I will buy these as replacement led thingies from Samsung now

[@mikeselectricstuff]

main reason for the fuse in the starter is in case someone puts an old-style tube back into the fixture.

[@bigclivedotcom]

That would apply to where the ballasts are bypassed. In this case I don't think the cathodes would pass enough current to blow the fuse. They'd just glow in the same way as when the starter contacts weld closed.

[@frogz]

....i dont know if i'd rather see mike or clive try doing things you arnt supposed to like this, actually, both of you can just leave it to photonicinduction :D @bigclivedotcom i think i agree with mike on the reason, when starting a FL tube can take upwards of 100+ watts per tube on a magnetic ballast due to the thermionic coils glowing, i haven't tested it directly but if you leave them glowing, the total current probably would pop a slow blow fuse after a while

[@erikjohansson1814]

Frogz photonicinduction channel is since long gone and the internet has become a better place. Some say he is in India saving the planet while slurping curry.

[@frogz]

Some say you can still hear his voice every time the UK power grid dims

[@Graham_Langley]

Or if someone takes it to be a normal starter and puts it into a standard fitting.

[@ThinkHarder]

i was like 343 and clive is still teaching everyday , love the guy for the captivating way he teach things and how fun he is

[@petehiggins33]

C8-R16 is a snubber to damp down the snap-off noise from the flywheel diode (D5). The switch in the chip appears to be only rated at 18V so the external MOSFET is a common gate stage to boost the voltage rating up to 400V or so.

[@twotone3070]

"I am not a number"

[@petehiggins33]

​@@twotone3070 You are number six.

[@twotone3070]

@@petehiggins33 I am a mere fraction of that Leo.

[@wimwiddershins]

I wonder if we'll be stuck with the fluro tube fittings long after the traditional tubes are out of production? A bit like horse and cart -> road width -> car width.

[@NOWThatsRichy]

That's a bit like we still talk about dialling a phone number, even though telephones haven't had dials for decades!

[@bland9876]

@@NOWThatsRichy my phone definatly has a dial that's how I called my school when I needed to schedule something with someone without having to make a contact labeled school and input the phone number there

[@NOWThatsRichy]

@@bland9876 The genuine old dial telephones would still work on a pulse dial exchange but i think you may need some sort of adapter to use them on a modern tone dial system.

[@bland9876]

@@NOWThatsRichy can't use an old phone unless there's some way to connect it to a cell phone tower luckily I have a smartphone and it has a button on it which says dial and when you click it a bunch of numbers pop up and you can click them and if you inputted the right numbers you can click another button and it will call that particular number without having to make a contact or anything in your phone it's really cool and has come in handy a few times

[@tubastuff]

That Oh Henry bar looks to be identical to what we know as a "Payday" bar in the US. A lot of fixtures with soldi-state ballasts use the so-called "shunt" sockets, where the two pins on each end are connected together (the tube heater isn't used). I retrofitted a number of 4-foot F40 fixtures in my home with line feed at either end, so that shunt sockets don't have to be replaced. The replacement tube instructions state that you can leave the iron ballast installed or remove it (better efficiency). The lamps are quite bright and have no flicker, so I suspect a high-frequency inverter is part of each tube.

[@djblackarrow]

For the LED-Starter i often see a fuse inside. But some manufacturers has nothing but a jumper-wire inside. The one with the fuse are better, because for some reason when you want to replace the tube with a old Vacuum Tube the Fuse blows by the time. With a jumper wire the preheat-coils in the Tube are always on and the CCG heats up and can cause fire.

[@GeorgeGeorge-xj2bc]

In fact the lower part of the schematic is a typical buck (step down converter) but is floating connected in the high side for driving the lamps.So the free-wheeling diode is connected between +310v and mosfet's drain and passes through the buck coil that is connected to drain and the output load.The led voltage is measured against the +vcc of the rectified input voltage.The buck mode coil has a secondary isolated output since as said it is floating against the ground and is used for the ic power supply and output voltage feedback monitoring.

[@Miata822]

Lots of suppression because tos long power busses will make great antennas.

[@anoimo9013]

would be nice to have some oscilloscope readings of the working circuit. just to confirm power factor and working frequency

[@mrfluffytailthethird]

“Vintage led” That made me feel old

[@bigclivedotcom]

Not as old as I feel when I think back to when LEDs were first sold in electronic component shops and cost quite a lot for a very dull red or green one. (I chose the green one.)

[@cdawson198600]

bigclivedotcom hell not many component shops anymore.

[@millomweb]

@@cdawson198600 Do CEF not sell red leds for 3p ?

[@RFC3514]

It's been downhill since we switched from good ol' torches to that fancy modern gas lighting.

[@frogz]

@@bigclivedotcom remember when laser pointers were $100 for red? the first pointer i got was $30 usd, came in a folding padded box with 2 AAA batteries now you can get a red blue and green 3 pack for $15 including a pair of 18650s and charger

[@Nono-hk3is]

So, if this is an early application of LED lighting, then it might be fair to say that we are seeing a circuit before it goes through what AvE would call "Value Engineering". Do you think all the additional coils and caps and FETs are there to make this circuit more reliable and robust? I ask because I've had a couple "high end" LED lamps fail on me. Thanks to your channel I'm pretty confident that it's the power supplies that have failed, due to there being lots of noise on the AC side from a dehumidifier sharing the same circuit. (Not ideal, but nothing I can fix without getting a new power distribution panel in the house.) It annoys me the theoretical reliability of LED lighting won't be realized because of cheap power supplies that work for weeks or months an end up failing as commonly as the incandescents that they replaced.

[@acmefixer1]

No no I have a LED light that has run over 75 thousand hours, and it's still going strong. That said, there are some simple cheap LED lights that use a series capacitor to limit current. They are supposed to use an X rated capacitor that will fail open, not shorted. But instead they use those red gumdrop caps rated for only 400 volts, sometimes less. Well, 120VAC is 370V peak to peak, so the cap is running at its max, sometimes over maximum. So failure happens, and it takes the rest of the circuit when the current becomes excessive. Just pray the light doesn't catch fire! 😱😱😱

[@alexku8452]

@@acmefixer1 I have seen some LED tubes fail, not just the cheap ones. Dissecting them showed either signs of crappy build quality, crappy cheaped out capacitors, or 80 % of them temperature issues. They put the led strip into a plastic difuser/reflector, shrouded that one with another difuser lining the actual glas tube... By the way a pain in the ass to disassemble the way they glued everything in place with the usual white goop.

[@fromfin90]

yeah youtube is being silly, thank you for being you and providing good content for us!

[@paulmartin42]

Sadly YT is going off the monetisation rails. I suspect that the multiple levels of management within the Empire have to justify their enormous salaries by experiments. The bad news for them is that while content creators migrate down the road in Silicon Valley to Apple (!) et al the shine (and $ returns) is reminiscent of FW Woolworth

[@rolfs2165]

They have gone back on the de-verification, though. Anyone already verified will stay verified, the change will only be for future new verifications.

[@maicod]

@@rolfs2165 why did Clive get that message then ?

[@licensetodrive9930]

KZbin are a law unto themselves, they let someone else take my /licensetodrive URL which I'd been using for many years, so now I have to tell everyone it's /user/licensetodrive I signed up to Twitter to contact them and try to sort the issue out - fat lot of bloody good that did, they stopped responding after a couple of days. They don't care. F* them.

[@GregM]

@@maicod Because KZbin is run by a bunch of people who can not think clearly. They were caught with their collective pants down when they initially announced this decision only to be astounded by the content creators complaining about this decision. I never thought the checkmark meant the channel was being promoted by KZbin. I took it to mean that the creator behind the channel had been verified. Even moving one's mouse cursor over the checkmark indicates that. I guess KZbin feels that the majority of their viewers have low IQ .

[@hullinstruments]

I haven’t been able to find these locally in the states. The guys at Home Depot and Lowe’s told me they were discontinued and there isn’t a drop in retrofit available any longer… Without completely overhauling or replacing the fixture. I bought these several years ago and they’ve worked for me great probably going on eight years now maybe six I don’t remember… However I sent my dad to buy some for his shop.... (because florescence give him headaches)… And he was told they don’t make anything like this anymore … And that was just last week. Maybe I’ll try to order some of these on eBay for my father and for my remaining fixtures. I always greatly enjoy your videos!

[@5roundsrapid263]

It’s not hard to rewire old fixtures. You can leave the ballasts, just disconnect them. I used double ended bulbs, so I just connected one end to live, and the other to neutral.

[@StarkRG]

BigClive: I don't know what 420 is. Also BigClive: Look at all these LED grow lamps.

[@simonupton-millard]

Hope you are OK, seen on the news about the flooding on the island, not far away on anglesey its very wet and windy here

[@bigclivedotcom]

There are signs of flooding, but when we choose the house here we choose a location with less storm exposure.

[@simonupton-millard]

@@bigclivedotcomglad to here you are OK, hope there is not much damage on the island and that no one gets hurt, flooding sounds bad on the news though

[@bigclivedotcom]

The TV news has mainly featured one road (Glen Road) in Laxey.

[@ThriftyToolShed]

I posted a video a few months ago of a very similar type A LED retrofit tube and I was amazed you drew it out almost identical to how the Feit bulbs were. Then very surprised how different the internal circuitry ended up! Your video of course 100% better than mine! Great video!👍

[@marquisdemoo1792]

I have a 1960's 4ft fluorescent fitting in the kitchen that is on its 3rd rebuild. It originally had a combination starter and 40W? bulb as ballast in a light fitting at one end. Sometime in the 1980's my mother forgot she had spare stock of the combination starter bulbs and as they were now unobtainable I rewired the light with an inductive ballast and ordinary starter in the light fitting. The lamp hangs from a single thin plastic conduit tube pendant so given the increased weight of the inductive ballast I had to move the pendant to rebalance the fitting. Then in the 1990's I assume an electrician replaced the ballast and starter with a starter-less ballast. Last year I found the stock of combination bulb starters so I flogged them on eBay to someone with the same light fitting. Around Christmas I again rewired the lamp for an LED tube, junked the ballast altogether, and relocated the pendant to its original position to rebalance it. All was well until the onset of spring and sunny weather when the lamp began to flicker. Eventually I tracked this down to the proportional immersion heater controller which uses the surplus energy from my solar panels. I assume the noise ripple from this is enough to cause the light to flicker, albeit I have conventual LED bulbs on the same circuit that do not flicker. Therefore I'm guessing the 4ft LED lamp is of the simpler design that Clive was expecting here, so I am now looking for a 4ft LED tube with the control circuitry. PS Ordered and fitted a Crompton LED T8 Glass tube; flickering gone.

[@ofar4452]

Between BigC and Electroboom I am in my happy place. Thank you Clive for the hard work to putting great content into KZbin. This is very hard to do week in and out and your passion makes a difference. I appreciate your work and willingness to go places where others do not and pour your time into it

[@chilly1661]

Do watch diodegonewild he also makes awesome content about pulling things apart

[@AmigaWolf]

@@chilly1661 He is great, he sings when he talks, always funny to listen to.

[@Nono-hk3is]

The instructions didn't appear to say plug power back in after replacing the tube and shunt starter!

[@tomboxyz5564]

At my previous job we had a lot of LED lamps made by just having a frame, with plastic conduit clips, which the led tubes fit into, and then it was connected by 2 connection blocks to the cable, with a piece of plastic conduit slipped onto the end (perfect fit) to cover the connection

[@lostjohnny9000]

Yellow transformers can also be a VW Beetle.

[@j-man72b72]

Or a yellow Camaro.

[@whuzzzup]

With LEDs I mostly care about flickering. So much difference between different lights. This is why I use normal Tubes in my room with a 40 kHz driver. This, along with the fluorescent screen of the tube prevents flickering 100%.

[@SaNjA2659]

MOSFET Q1 in common-gate configuration. Probably to allow the chip to handle higher voltages.

[@Graham_Langley]

That was my thought too.

[@mjouwbuis]

Also my first thought. I skimmed a not zoomable version of the datasheet and I think it said the internal FET can only do 22V or so.

[@szaki95]

I think it's a normal single ended LED tube, one end is the input and the other end is just short circuit. The LED starter is also short circuit (in this case a fuse), it can work with the ballast because the LED tube consumes less current than the fluorescent, so the ballast is just there (in practical use can be considered short). Some people strip out the ballast and the old wiring, but in my opinion it can be benficial as it protects the LED against spikes and also compensates the capacitive nature of LED supplies.

[@markiangooley]

Fascinated by this. The small condominium I live in has 9 fixtures each with its own magnetic ballast driving one old-style T12 4-foot fluorescent tube. I replaced all tubes last year with identical Philips LED tube-replacements designed for that. Purely plug-and-play. No problems so far. I wonder how similar the circuitry is. 2100 lumens but the LEDs point downwards, supposedly 20 watts power use each.

[@ScarredRealist]

It's like you are inside my head - I recently replaced three tubes in the garage with Sylvania LED tubes (from Wickes) which also came with 'dummy' starters (or so I assumed - I haven't opened mine!). a) that made me tear apart an old neon starter to see how it worked and b) it made me wonder what was in these new tubes and I thought "I wish Clive had done a tear-down of one of these". I wonder if it's the same circuitry as these Samsung tubes..

[@stevenunn3075]

There's something about the word tube, spoken in a soft Scottish accent!

[@sammy61187]

I watch Clive before I got to bed his voice is super relaxing plus the videos are pretty awesome

[@leeeeeee2796]

Tshubz

[@deesoundrecordingstudio9739]

I have no idea what this big guy is talking about, but i could listen to you all night, thanks Clive :)

[@randycarter2001]

The 2 foot length specification is for the fixture. The lamps are shorter to accommodate the socket at each end. Same for the 3 and 4 foot models.

[@gregorythomas333]

Pretty clever splitting up the circuitry to just the two ends.

[@LanceThumping]

Circuits like that constantly blow my mind because it looks like so many things are cross connected that I have no idea how to follow what is going on from startup.

[@andreasdill4329]

These retrofit LED lamps work absolutely fine with completely removed ballast, both tube and compact style. A good way to salvage light fixtures with defective ballast, just rip it out and connect the LED lamp directly. But you have to provide a fuse inside the fixture in case someone tries to put in a old stile fluorescent lamp. And this is the only way to retrofit double Lamps with serial circuit and only one ballast. Its especially useful in cases where you have dozens or hundreds of downligts, one fails and there is no equal looking replacement anymore.

[@rocketman221projects]

Not all of them will work without a ballast. I have some that would immediately release the magic smoke if run without a ballast to limit the current.

[@andreasdill4329]

@@rocketman221projects never seen one like this yet.

[@misterhat5823]

C1 in the schematic is needed to provide a path for the high frequency current flowing in the buck converter loop. It does distort the zero crossing of a power factor circuit though. So its value is a compromise. It's normally in the 1uF range.

[@misterhat5823]

The external MOSFET is used with the internal MOSFET in a cascode. Essentially the external one limits the voltage across the internal one. This means the external one is doing all the work while the internal one has a the control. While looking odd this allows the external MOSFET to be added and not need to worry about gate drive for proper rise/fall times.

[@alunjones3860]

Yes, according to the data sheet, the internal MOSFET has an absolute maximum voltage rating of just 18V, hence the need for a higher voltage external MOSFET.

[@alexku8452]

I would not say it is an older style, it is just as you said for retrofitting older style fixtures. Those blind starter dummies will not work with an electronic ballast, for those you have to take out the electronic ballast and reqire the fixture. those blind starters usually contain either just a wire or at most a fuse. The fuse is to pretect everything else in case someone erroneously uses this blind starter with a regular non LED tube. The shorted out end is helpful if you eliminated the ballast and wired the sockets over cross, this way it does not matter which end goes in where. I for myself eliminated some electronic ballasts and simply put the warning sticker that was included with the led tubes I used to the wired end. My tubes have all been marked something like "power from this side"

[@pauldzim]

So for those of us not in the UK, can anyone explain who he was having a "wee pop at" at 8:00? Also, why would a fluorescent replacement tube be rated for a 30 seconds on/off cycle? Is it meant for a flashing sign or something?

[@stevecraft00]

Its just examples of how long itll last if you regularly switch the thing on and off. For example with occupancy sensors.

[@alexku8452]

I got the electronic guts from a simpler build quite recent LED tube, just electronics on one end. Not sure if I may send it over or first try to fix it. Also not sure what actually failed. The originally 120 cm tube got at least a more shipping friendly format now, as I absolutely shattered the glass tube when I tried to disasemble the thing. Pretty resilient stuff this white goop they used to glue absolutely everything in place. had to peel of the plastic sockets in strips to release the board.

[@francisdoherty5580]

21:00 Could C1 be the capacitor tied to the harness? For smoothing?

[@spamletspamley672]

Is having to make and assemble all those components really better for the environment than the one 5ft tube that's been working fine for half a century and doesn't flicker like the LEDs under the kitchen units do? (There have also been several lots of 'link light' CFLs under the cabinets in that time too: each of which generation is identical except for the yearly redesign of the linking plugs, so you can never actually link another one without cutting the leads off and replacing with ordinary wiring connectors! That really used to annoy me, though I still have a single one that makes a handy lamp during DIY.) Is there a simple fix for LED replacement 'bulbs' that flicker, by the way? My 12V under kitchen cupboard ones actually flicker in time with the oven fan. :/

[@thomasamsterdam]

I think that this tube is not actually "using" the inductive ballast. The fact that it is intended for conventional control gear means that it will not work with HF-ballast. I recently placed a LED-tube made by Philips. They come with instructions on how to modify a fixture with an HF-ballast (which means taking the ballast out and doing some rewiring). So, the modified fixture does neither have a ballast nor a starter. There are also led-tubes available which work in HF-fixtures without modification, but they are more expensive.

[@bigclivedotcom]

At the beginning of the video I was unaware that the tube had significant active electronics in it. The way it was shown with the original ballast suggested it might use it as a current limiting component. By the end of the video I realised that the ballast is just a coincidental component in the circuit after the tube has been installed.

[@musicinspire1745]

That secondary circuit with the transformer looks like it acts like an OPAMP with degenerative feedback in order to provide additional protections and regulation that would otherwise not be available to just the power supply itself.

[@CanizaM]

There are(were?) retrofits which don't even need the starter replaced; they are much simpler, consisting of a pair of bridge rectifiers on each end, a smoothing capacitor, and as many LEDs as needed to make up a similar voltage to the original tube.

[@riftalope]

One "side effect" of the double mosfets setup would be short or no radio noise. Have you got a Phantom power mic? See if a hum happens when you turn on a tube?

[@theR6969]

There's a complicated circuit in the Phillips LED T12 replacement tube equivalent to this one. the ones that are directly connected to A/C are much simpler. I know because I bought a bunch of different kinds and the Phillips was the most complicated one.

[@theR6969]

oh yeah! one more thing, those Phillips replacement tubes indicate that they are designed to work with magnetic ballasts and shouldn't be used with electronic ballasts. I tested that and if used with incompatible ballast, they stop working.

[@coilsmoke2286]

Maybe T1 circuit looks for AC imposed on DC supply ...? AC present at that point could indicate several failure modes and trigger a protection feature that shuts the thing off ....

[@God-CDXX]

556K subscribers NE556 timer builds seems logical

[@Graham_Langley]

I think you may be misreading things. The box has CCG (conventional) and VVG (low-loss) ballast markings just to indicate it can be used with in these fittings without bypassing. (Electronic ballasts are -EEV- ECG.) But you can use the tube direct to the mains - every LED substitute tube I've bought in the last few years can be used like this and Philips ones even have L & N markings on one end.

[@mjouwbuis]

I just got an ad for grow lights, KZbin must be thinking Clive is all about 420.

[@GrahamDenison]

I picked up a few 5ft ones from Aldi for 99p each earlier in the year. A bit of chocbloc on the feed end and looped power between four of them and I’ve got an illuminated garage for a few quid.

[@RFC3514]

2:09 - Speaking of that capacitor, most of the documentation I found online suggests that capacitor should have a value between 2 and 13 µF (depending on the tube), but I had a look at the one on a 36W fluorescent tube in my kitchen (which should be 4.5 µF, according to the interwebs) and it says "0.045 µF" (0.07 measured out of circuit). Any idea why the 100x difference? This is the stand-alone (PFC) capacitor across the magnetic ballast's input, as shown at 2:09, not the tiny capacitor inside a normal fluorescent starter.

[@mjouwbuis]

The tiny capacitor is just an interference suppressor. A PFC capacitor can either be wired in series or in parallel. In older industrial fixtures, it was wired in series with one half of a double fixture to compensate for stroboscope effects.

[@RFC3514]

I'm aware of all that. My question is why does this light fixture come with a capacitor rated for 1/100th of the value recommended in all the documentation I was able to find.

[@CRSolarice]

Hi Clyde. It is quite a coincidence that a day after I bought 2 18 inch Great Value 15 watt Non Dim T8 or T12 LED lamps, similar, I suppose, to the one you just discected. One is 2700k the other is 5000k; the label states T8 25.4mm T12 38.1mm. "Replaces T8 or T12 in you fluorescent Fixtures... Both the old style fluorescent tubes went belly up so I bought these to replace them (one is Soft White the other is Daylight. Well short story of it all is aaater I installed them I plugged the lamp in and they immediately came on. Unplugged, plugged, same thin frever, I suppose. Before, with the old style Ihad to hold the "ON" button down for a second or two before they would energize and start giving off photons. These LEDs lamps come on as soon as I plug i in. The OFF switch does nothing as in when I push it the lights stay lit, no flicker, no nothing, just bright Daylight and soft white. They aren''' running hot, smoking or giving of fumes of any kind but I still decided to unplug them; 10 minutes later your video popped on my youtube screen. In all of your eletrical wisdom would you be able to just give me a guess as to why this is happening? Unknonw damage? Balast gone bad? Oh, btw the lamp is a 2 tube portable lamp. The sticker on the bottom: E69325 120v 60hz 1115Wx2 0.48A AC ONLY Made in Taiwan Another sticker: Inspected 0922004. And a small oval, blue colored UL sticker.... 2 buttons = ON and OFF and no visible ballast(s). It does have some handy phillips screws on the bottom, holding the case together. Thank You O Wise One.

[@1Soniccool]

Big Clive is a good KZbinr that doesn’t make content that KZbin can demonetize him.

[@RedneckRepairs]

It looks to me like IC1 is the control, and Q1 does the heavy lifting as directed by IC1?

[@750kv8]

03:14 - Striking won't happen until the starter - as the bimetalic strip cools down in it - opens up again, applying full voltage across the tube again, plus a little EM kickback from the ballast, which results in a high voltage spike. An aged, faulty tube with worn off thermionic emitter, often in one end, starts to rectify the AC current, which results in too high voltage drop accross the starter during every second halfwave, which results in a neon glow discharge, even that the tube is essentially stricken. This makes the starter close and go back to preheat mode until the bimetal cools off again. And the cycle goes on. Removing the starter at the right time stops the cycling, and the tube stays lit, but it'll be awfully flickery. The ballast may also overheat. Fun experiment, even I tried: replacing the ballast with a 100W incandescent bulb. That's quite a complicated thing there. Flywheel diode?? I know it as a freewheeling diode, but flywheel diode sounds almost like blinker fluid. xD Compared to this, classic fluoros are a piece of cake!

[@demef758]

These line-connected LED regulators are hard to understand, but in this case it's an "upside down buck regulator" where the entire topology is flipped around the horizontal axis and "normal polarities" are all reversed. C7 is the output filter cap, D5 is the catch diode, T1 is the inductor that is has a small secondary tap to power up the controller chip. Ignore the common mode choke LP1, then draw a few LEDs for the load. Once you do that, you can see the rudiments of a buck regulator, whose purpose is to keep pumping the LEDs with a triangular current at all times as opposed to just hitting them with 100/120 Hz hits, which cause flicker. Unlike a conventional buck where the flyback action happens when the inductor swings below ground, in this one the flyback action occurs when the inductor swings high through D5. The external PFET is a bit of a puzzler, but draw in its body diode and you'll see that when the controller chip switches low, it drags the drain low with it. I'm still unclear what happens to the PFET during flyback. The Samsung boys are using a buck switcher to feed their LEDs, which is highly efficient at the expense of complexity!

[@andrewedis9907]

Clive would you cut one of the old style "starters" open please. Also why do the "old style" tubes make such a loud noise when you break them?

[@bigclivedotcom]

The original tubes have a vacuum in them so they make a loud pop as the air rushes in. kzbin.info/www/bejne/p33EdWRnga6HmLM

[@amorphuc]

As always, Very Cool. Thanks Big Clive. That really is a bunch of circuitry which I was initially thinking necessary because of the random orientation the tube might take in a fixture. Nope. Like you said, just spread to both ends of the tube to make use of the space in between. Pretty neat.

[@maicod]

I wonder how many of these so called home professionals forget to replace the old starter with the new 'starter' cause people don't read instructions

[@alfoncejean8826]

none because the led will keep flashing!

[@Jako1987]

Or the other way around. Thats why there is a 2A fuse and not just bridged connections. Normal tube would just warm and warm up and never "start" until a failure or a fire.

[@leexgx]

Unless somebody put a 13amp fuse in the holder

[@WernerBeroux]

Nice analysis. I would be interested to check using an oscillator the effect of that additional circuit at the end.

[@Gizmo42Rodeo]

This made me finally get unlazy enough to look up options for replacing the tubes in my kitchen that stopped working about 2 weeks ago. Lead me to find the Philips t8/t12 universal LED tubes that are supposed to work with either magnetic or electronic ballasts. I guess I'll give them a try. No idea what type my light has, it's an apartment so I'm not going to replace and rewire their stuff.

[@whitehoose]

425 - isn't that the temperature that peanuts start to burn ?

[@whitehoose]

@Natty Fatty Powerlifting Burning things is a bit of a hobby :D - there's an old solderers saying; "If you can smell bacon, you're holding the wrong end"!

[@danrulz98]

I (and Project Farm if you want to see a video) retrofitted my shed with Hyperikon LED retrofits, which intend for you to completely remove the ballast and have live at one end and neutral at the other. You can get these on Amazon. Very good lights though. A bit harsh for the inside of the house, so got some Philips retrofits for that, and they needed a switchmode ballast (there is a list of "compatible" units) which luckily it was easy to find a $12 unit that was on the list

[@johnpossum556]

I've done a lot of mine with toggled dimmable ones from home depot. The 5k color was quite an improvement in my shop. I was even more impressed when they turned on properly on a subzero winter night.

[@alankingvideo]

Although the term 4:20 used as code for smoking Marijuana originated in 1971 (originally a meeting after school at that time) it primarily remained an American term not widely used outside that country. American TV shows especially cartoons have made the term more widely known in the UK. Even by me a 57 year old man.

[@danielthechskid]

I can't remember if I've posted this before, but the Feit Electric 73992 www.feit.com/products/fixtures/utility/1850-lumen-4000k-single-4ft-led-utility-light/ that I have is an interesting critter, like this tube the input filtering and rectifier is at one end but connects to the LED strip with a 2 pin connector and the driver is at the other end and connects to the strip with a 3 pin connector. The strip is 2 parallel sections of LEDs in series. The interesting part is that it uses what normally would be a boost converter arrangement to drive the LEDs but the LED negative is the same as the rectified mains positive. That took some time to wrap my head around especially since the markings on the strip are p-gnd for the rectified negative, - for the rectified positive and LED negative, and + for LED positive. The controller IC is a tiny SOT23-6. It is non-isolated and the inductor has a feedback winding.

[@sounddaddyno1]

Clive, I bought 10 of these for my workshop, they’ve been running for 2.5 years now without ballast (straight mains connection) I was concerned at first but I got them from CPC for £1 each on their clearance, so was well worth the random purchase

[@bigclivedotcom]

I think that's where I got this one, and also on clearance.

[@Basement-Science]

Interesting! I was wondering about that. I would kind-of expect it with such a sophisticated driver.

[@keiffitz689]

If you have a Walmart near you you should get some of the universal replacement leds that are rated for use with electronic and magnetic ballast as well as direct wire. They’re made by intertek iirc.

[@plasmaburndeath]

The on off cycles due to inverter ballast charges, it actually is less damaging for the 2 second cycle vs 30 seconds on off since 30 seconds it discharges further and cools further and of course heats further when on for 30 second test. Thus 2 second tests temperatures stay less varied and damage is reduced vs 30 second test.

[@tinplategeek1058]

But in the real world, you tend to turn the light on and leave it on for a long time. In workplaces for 10 hours plus. At home for less time. So what would be more useful from the manufacturer is the impact for those situations.

[@OAleathaO]

9:12 - How did that get melted? I didn't think BC's house ever got above 15 degrees C. lol 9:49 - That _Oh Henry_ bar looks very similar to the _Payday_ candybars here in the States.

[@Leatherkid01]

Yup... it is similar to Payday.... but not as sweet as payday........ also, only available in Canada .

[@coilsmoke2286]

Fluorescent starters don't require contacts, they are just neon bulbs that light and conduct under high voltage until the tube starts to conduct. When the tube fires the voltage across it and the starter drop below the voltage it takes to light the neon. So the neon bulb acts like a voltage dependent switch. Ballasts without starters are just poor transformers. They produce a higher voltage that naturally drops under the load of an operating fluorescent tube.

[@bigclivedotcom]

Most starters here have the bimetallic contacts that physically close the circuit intermittently.

[@mjouwbuis]

Since the neon plasma still drops around 70V or so when ignited, they actually do need bimetallic contacts to send a reasonable current through the tube heaters. I'm not aware of any exceptions, but if you can point me to one I'm happy to add that to my knowledge.

[@ewozniak5228]

I guess screening in the UK is the same as shielding in the US?

[@bigclivedotcom]

Both words are used here. The screening can be a foil shield.

[@parkerlreed]

Sometimes those confidential marks are just overlays (if the text is searchable). They can be removed for example in Inkscape.

[@musicinspire1745]

I wonder how many of those LED tubes experience a blown fuse, with people them throwing them away. It's worth it to keep the failed tubes and use all the parts (after replacing the bad component(s), reconstruct a different type of light, and continue using them for other lighting. I'm too much of a techno-nerd to throw stuff away that cost good money to throw out because of a wee cost of a part.

[@dlcarburetor]

@8:00... yep, agreed, here in the states as well

[@DumahBrazorf]

557k, now we need a special about pnp transistors...

[@Peter_S_]

Seems we have some specials waiting.... 555k timer special, 556k dual timer special, 557 PNP transistor special, and soon it will be time for the 558k quad timer special.

[@bigclivedotcom]

The 555 video is coming up, but it's NOTHING like you'd expect. Clue. It's E555 and involves ethanol.

[@maicod]

@@bigclivedotcom haha you little BIG :D rascal

[@86abaile]

With these retrofit tubes, could you just put 230V directly to the tombstones without the need for a ballast?

[@bigclivedotcom]

Most are rated for direct 240V to one end.

[@LMacNeill]

The circuitry seems so much more complicated than it needed to be, based on what you said in the first half of the video... But, like you said, maybe it's so complex because they're trying to make it more efficient? Make it so its power-factor is closer to 1.0 than it would otherwise be? And to add some stability to the output current? Either way, I definitely did not expect such complexity... Excellent analysis, as usual. I always learn so much on this channel -- thank you so much!

[@mircobandini]

How could I extend life of led tubes like these? I have many of them and i’m annoyed to see them fail after 1-2 years. I tried to open them and change the capacitor but apparently the circuit regulate current itself and it does not make difference.

[@bigclivedotcom]

The best way is to adjust the current sensing resistors from new so the lamp runs cooler.

[@mircobandini]

@@bigclivedotcom i watched a lot of your videos, unfortunately i don’t have a background on electronics, just a lot of curiosity and experiments. Thanks a lot, I will check and see if i manage to find and work on that component.

[@mircobandini]

@@bigclivedotcom I removed one of the two current sensitive resistors. Power has dropped from 10 to 8 w, light is slightly less but ok. It’s heating less but still quite a lot so I also decided to drill two holes in the top center at sides of the led bar and two holes down near the sides of the tube.

[@myutube6422]

While replacing a bunch of them, I dropped 2 and broke the glass covering. What happens if you just throw 110 across the right set of pins?

[@bigclivedotcom]

If it's a modern tube and uses a bypassed ballast then you should be able to power them from the non shunted end. Just be aware that exposed circuitry is probably referenced to the mains.

[@myutube6422]

In these, you leave the ballast in the circuit.

[@bigclivedotcom]

@@myutube6422 It would depend on whether they used the ballast for current limiting or not.

[@Peter_S_]

bigclivedotcom, I lived for a decade less than a kilometer from the birthplace of the number 4:20 in popular culture. There was a group of students at San Rafael High School in San Rafael, California who called themselves "The Waldos" in the early 1970s who for a time met daily after their after-school activities in front a statue of Louis Pasteur in the school courtyard at 4:20 PM to then drive out to the coast at the southern end of Point Reyes, California about 40km away to hunt for a cannabis patch that had been started by a Coast Guard serviceman and then had to be abandoned. As they passed each other at school they would say "4:20 Louis" to acknowledge their later meetup. They had a map but never found the patch. San Rafael was also home to the rehearsal studio of the Grateful Dead and once it hit that community it spread. I've used the number since 1987 as a cannabis reference but in the last 20 years it's become cliché commonplace in the USA. Apartment listings were perhaps the first place it entered mainstream as people advertised flats on a website in San Francisco called "Craigslist" that were "no smoking/420 friendly". My father had lunch once with the sculptor who carved the Pasteur statue, Beniamino Bufano. He was a prolific sculptor but his Louis Pasteur became his cultural masterpiece.

[@peterzingler6221]

Hey Clive I have a power supply here that passes mains through.. I don't know why it works fine the complete casing is earthed but I can measure half mains voltage from case to ground(won't trip breakers or so also) I just can't find a Damm thing wrong but the shocks are short and nasty

[@bigclivedotcom]

That sounds like a common capacitive coupling issue between the windings. On some supplies they reference the negative output connection to the grounded case to prevent that. If the grounded case seems live with respect to local grounded objects then check for continuity between them. There should be no significant voltage. If there is then there is an open circuit in the ground circuit somewhere.

[@GMCLabs]

420 was the police code in California for weed smoking in progress, also happens to be the date when the temperature is warm enough in most areas to plant your seeds outside. So potheads made that their favorite time to smoke and April 20th is like national pot smoking day to them. So if you smoke weed on 4/20 at 4:20 you appease all the pot gods and they will bless you with a bountiful harvest. Ok I made up that last part! Lol

[@DanBowkley]

We definitely can't risk having a lame harvest though.

[@bettyshallcross4547]

What can one do with florescent ballasts from fixtures converted to led tubes?

[@holden_tld]

if i pay extra can i get some lead or mercury?

[@bigclivedotcom]

You can buy it on eBay and add it yourself afterwards.

[@keiffitz689]

Bet

[@MysteriousDrJ]

We fit loads of these in the factory i work, annoyingly the majority of fittings are digital fittings and need rewiring. The older generation of tubes with the L and N input at one end the opposite end pins are common'd out and causes a big bang if you accidently insert the tube the wrong way round!!

[@bigclivedotcom]

The modern tubes have the feed from one end and the other end shorted. The ideal wiring arrangement is to have live to one end and neutral to the other. with the starter wire linked out. That way the tube will work either way round.

[@IAmOrion]

@bigclivedotcom any interest in dismantling a cheap “solar charge controller” - model: DY-002 apparently. I replaced it as it was temperamental and thought you might like pulling it apart for the hell of it. I’ll just bin it if not. Do you have a PO Box to send stuff?

[@coyote_den]

Can retrofit tubes be used in a fixture where the ballast has been bypassed? Reason I ask is I'm working in a place with a lot of failed electronic ballasts. They keep trying to start even with new tubes. It would be cheaper to retrofit LED tubes, but I'd have to bypass the dead ballasts or the LED tubes are going to do the same thing.

[@bigclivedotcom]

You can get tubes designed for use with bypassed ballasts. It may be better to bypass the existing ballasts if they've failed.

[@JasonHalversonjaydog]

i tried one of those in my kitchen light that still had the old ballast in it but it didn't work for me. after a couple hours of use they just went dim and flickered. so i had to go back to the original fluorescent bulbs. not sure why they didn't work in mine

[@syaz4380]

Why does this and some philips lights use a special starter?

[@bigclivedotcom]

To bridge the circuit from one end of the fixture to the other.

[@Lucien86]

Wow this thing is a complex mystery.. It looks to me like they're trying to balance out the mains ripple without using a huge capacitor. Its complex because of the low frequency and its a phase circuit. The telling thing would be that there should be less or no flicker when the tube is running.

[@thewhizard]

Your going in to a full wave bridge without a capacitive dropper - do you need power correction?

[@TheOneTrueMaNicXs]

If every foot is ran in parallel then you can you the same strip in different lengths for 3 foot and 4 foot.

[@mr.dahliaking.202]

Sylvania Erlangen has just launched their new development next generation LED fluorescent tubes by the name "Helios". They do not use the simple strip of cheap led inside a plastic pipe, but an actual glass tube with glass welded mounts like a traditional fluorescent tubes, coated with phosphor to diffuse the light, and the inside there are two rigid wires going from one end to the other and many, like 100 pieces of sequential parallel connected individual very high quality led filaments. Those are the real deal. If I would ever give in into this LED forced nonsense (says the guy who has 8 boxes of T12 fluorescent tubes stashed away for future use, some in halo 530 color even) I would definitely use the Helios ones. They are weather, moisture and chemical resistant, and with a proper ballast they could be used in factory settings where traditional fluorescent tubes are still king, mainly because of oil, dust, thinner fumes, etc. that would basically ruin and dissolve the cheap LEDs.

[@thatgeezeruk]

Hey Clive, wouldn't you imagine, as I, Samsung would have had a more elegant solution and circuitry?

[@heathernute943]

looking at retrofits -my fathers 500w security floodlight recently popped its bulb, i was trying to decide whether to replace the bulb with an equivalent LED or replace the whole unit -however i've struggled to find a suitable r7s LED bulb above 2500lumen (these go up to £25 at which point I can buy a whole new lamp) the old R7s was ~8000lumen? have you looked into this? i've seen previously you looked into led cob style flood lights but couldn't find anything on your retrofitting linear LEDs into floodlights, it would be great to see what you suggest is best!

[@bigclivedotcom]

If the contacts at the end of the fitting are clean then it might be worth trying a retrofit lamp in it. I'm afraid that the LED floodlights are never going to last as long as the original light and generally require the whole fitting to be replaced. If the light is on a movement sensor then it may be more cost effective just to find a new tungsten lamp.

[@heathernute943]

@@bigclivedotcom thanks for the swift reply :) (became a fan of yours whilst renovating our first house) hmm no, the bulb I removed looked like it has slightly corroded ends and i'm not entirely convinced that wasn't what did it in, in the end -there was not a small amount of water inside the (IP44 hah!) rated casing when my father opened the front glass...I think we will go for some nice v-tac PIR lights i've seen on CPC, they go up to 50W with a sensor.