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Good morning, all today, i'm going to take a look at this. It's a pack of two led light bulbs, they're warm white and they're e27. Now the reason i bought this - if i bought two or three of these, i think, is that they were marked down to one pound for a pair of light bulbs, which i think is pretty good. Now i don't normally buy e27s because i don't have a lot of e27 lamp holders in my house.

I think there's one outside none inside but um. I wanted to take these apart and see what's inside, so this one's still intact. This one i've mangled and gouged and managed to get the lid off so we'll take a look inside there. So what do we have in here? Well, we have one two, three, four, five: six, seven, eight nine ten ten pairs of warm white leds, so 20 leds on there and there's an eight pin chip.

We'll take a look at that, and that looks like it's a bp 5116. I think that is it's very difficult to illuminate that, let's see if we can find a data sheet for that, so this is a bright power. Semiconductor bp5116dj high voltage linear led driver. Now from this diagram, it looks like it's designed to be put straight across the ac mains.

We need a four diode bridge rectifier and a smoothing capacitor. Those are not on the aluminium pcb. As far as i can tell, and then there's the eight pin chip a current setting, resistor and, of course, the led array, so i can't see on here the rectifier or the smoothing capacitor. They must be underneath now.

There are some clips here which are sort of uh one-way sliding connectors onto what looks like a double-legged pcb coming in from underneath. So i'm just going to bend these barbs back and try and ease this pcb this aluminium plate pcb out of the lamp. So the connections are bent back they're out of the way, let's try and get this plate pcb out of the lamp and see. What's underneath and well, we've certainly got a large capacitor there have we got the bridge rectifier? Yes, it looks like we have in here.

There is a four diode bridge rectifier. Now the four diodes are integrated into one package. There d1 there's a 105 which is one mega ohm resistor across the capacitor, so that it discharges moderately quickly once the mains power has been taken off and then that high voltage dc, which would be about 300 and something once rectified and smoothed goes into this board. Here's the current setting resistor it's actually implemented as two resistors in parallel.

I think you can just about make out there in parallel from the tracking on the board, although it is coated in this shiny substance. So it's quite difficult. There's a zero ohm resistor there. That's probably just because they couldn't make a track connection.

This is uh, certainly going to be a single sided pcb. What's this smoothing capacitor, it is a 6.8 micro, farad, 400 volt, because rectified mains is up in the 300 and something volt range 125 degrees c, because uh this metallized casing is going to get quite warm. So that's it! That's! What's inside one of these levano lux warm white, manes, light bulbs, and i think you'll agree that two of these for a pound is pretty good value, not sure if your local lidl is going to be uh, discounting them quite to this extent, but might be worth Checking out.

By Julian

Youtuber, shed dweller, solar charge controller aficionado

15 thoughts on “LED Light Bulbs from Lidl”
  1. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars thinge27 says:

    Thanks Julian, 1 pound in the UK, 13,99 euro in Holland………i have to come over to get some…..

  2. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Fuzzy Electronics says:

    They seem well designed. Nice effort to keep heat away from the capacitor which is a high temp rated one. Also cooling for the leds looks good as well. And a bonus is the conformal coating to keep damp away from the board to prevent corrosion/tracking failure.

  3. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars My Project Box says:

    These bulbs are almost identical to Poundland LED bulbs(with the linear current regulating chip). I think they might be slightly better quality, they have more LEDs in parallel.😉

  4. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Clark Mills says:

    Warm white is falling out of favour… BUT we have an old villa and really need to seek them out to maintain a consistent "feel" for the place.

  5. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Steve Perry says:

    We have seen Big Clive pull this type apart a few times, increasing the current sense resistance by removing one of the 2 paralel resistors will greatly extend the life of the led's 🙂

  6. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Namirred says:

    I bought some E27 by mistake, I got some adaptors from Amazon for about £6 for 5. I just searched E27 to B22 adaptor

  7. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Chris Clarke says:

    Seems like good value but probably worth checking that all the leds light at the same time and you don’t have one or two working extra hard during the cycle.

  8. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars The Embedded Hobbyist says:

    You now need to change the resistors to lower the output power, I showed one on doing it after big Clive so now it your turn to take up the soldering iron. I put it down to a out 2 watts and its great for a little bit of light on the landing all night.

  9. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Clive Flint says:

    E27’s are the work of the devil!
    Seriously, the bayonet type are much more secure and can’t work themselves loose over time. 🙂

  10. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars UpLateGeek says:

    Those E27 bulbs are so annoying. For some reason my local supermarket thinks everyone uses E27, but clearly nobody does since there's never any stock of B22 bulbs. They've got over a dozen different kinds of E27 bulbs, but only a few types of B22. And their stock of the E27 bulbs are overflowing, so the only way to actually find the one B22 with the right power and colour temperature is to pull all the E27 bulbs out of the B22 section to find the one errant bulb that's left.

    One day I'm just going to pull out all the E27 bulbs that are in the B22 section and dump them somewhere else.

  11. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars magnets1000 says:

    I've had some similar Lidl lights and they were an awful yellow colour. They were 95cri. Lidl also sell osram lights that are the same awful colour!

  12. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars darkknight145 says:

    Should have done a complete BC and knocked off one of the current sense resistors to reduce power and heat.

  13. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Alan King says:

    You can never have to many LED bulbs stripped down, and Bigclive is currently obsessed by ionisers, ozone generators and his sodastream.

  14. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Roger Cox says:

    If you use a hair dryer to warm the joint between the cover and main body it will be much easier to remove the cover without damage (press in slightly around the rim and also twist). Also, by removing one of the two current setting resistors of the BP chip you will greatly reduce the stress on the led’s and increase the life of the bulb a lot. Obviously the brightness will be reduced a little, but often it is noticeable as the led’s are being driven hard in the first place. Big Clive has taken lots of these apart over the years and demonstrates how to do the modifications.
    The connection between the 2 pcb’s on your lamp is a little different as they are normally soldered.

  15. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Steve Rayner says:

    I often wonder why is it that external lamps tend to be E27 and internal lamps tend to be B22. Pretty cheap way of getting an LED array, but can we use them in our projects with lower voltages?

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