what is going on what did what the hell
hey guys what you see in front of you
here are two of these very
strange-looking philips LED light bulbs
you may never have actually seen one of
these before but the very early era of
consumer LED bulbs these were pretty
common say in home-improvement stores I
don't think they gained a lot of
popularity though because they were $25
each if I recall but this was sort of
Phillips's first good quality consumer
grade LED bulb and things have changed a
lot in the time since then we have the
whole era of $1.00 bulbs you can check
out my other videos on that if you're
interested in seeing a tear down of
those now I found these bulbs in the
e-waste bin and I'm not sure why they
were in there I gave them a try and they
seemed to work fine but maybe they have
some intermittent faults now first off
wooden thing you notice when you pick
these up is they are really heavy this
is a metal heatsink and as you can see
it kind of extends up into this top part
that parts plastic this is plastic but
this is all metal so clearly they were
concerned about heat generation on these
now if we look up close this is an 800
lumen bulb dimmable 12.5 watts at 2700 K
these are not multi-voltage bulbs now
look at anything with this weird yellow
color on this outside part you almost
feel like there's just no way that these
can produce an actual white color light
right actually you'd be wrong it
produces a really nice approximation of
incandescent bulbs there's none of that
telltale 60 Hertz flicker so clearly
there's good capacitance in here and the
only issue that might be is probably the
uniformity because as you see when I
turn it there's a dark spot there but
this isn't gonna be a teardown I want to
show you something that's very different
about these so this bulb here I've
already removed this top plastic piece
and once you do that you can take these
off look at that a little breakage going
on there I'll talk about that a sec the
covers or Globes came right off and
what's happening here is this plastic
underneath it was probably some type of
a diffuser or a light diffuser I guess
over time since this bulb runs really
warm these have just dried and gotten
brittle now with the globe's off when we
take a quick look at the construction
here
you'll see a circuit board probably
ceramic with three LED chips and it's
attached to a thermal pad there which
obviously conducts the heat from this
board into the metal heatsink here on
the top there's a little circuit board
with three connectors on it which is
where these plug in so this is clearly
an expensive LED bulb I mean look at the
construction quality it's nothing like
the cheap ones we have today but there's
something else that's really weird about
this watch when I power this up what
happens the light that this is putting
out is an extremely bright blue light
and these covers when you cover this
actually change the blue light into
white light what this is called is
remote phosphor so essentially a white
LED is typically actually a blue LED
just like these ones here and then
there's a phosphor that emits the white
light painted on top of the LED chip and
if you ever look at a white a warm white
LED chip you'll notice that they're kind
of a yellowy color when they're turned
off but when you turn it on they will
glow white and there are different
phosphor colors for different color
temperatures a link to an interesting
study by Cree which just shows that
remote phosphor LEDs like this are
actually more efficient okay let's do a
quick test to see what voltage these
chips are running at sorry I don't have
the LED light in the frame it washes out
the camera okay eight point four seven
volts per board and each of these boards
obviously has three chips on it so 8.47
and we got three two point eight two
volts per LED that's not bad
it's definitely not over driving them
but disconnect one of these boards we'll
be able to tell if it's running them in
series or in parallel with each other
oh boy everything is breaking okay well
that connector just disintegrated and
broke I can't I can't cut that off so I
guess this bulb is probably not gonna
work anymore or it may work let's see
yeah it doesn't work anymore so now that
this doesn't work this is obviously
running the board's in series that means
we're
the power supply at about 25 volts for
this entire assembly here so I got the
wires back on I just the connector is
broken but it had the little metal I
clipped still so I just push the wires
back onto the terminals and yep the
blades working again so this is where
I'm contree by these bulbs if you look
at my little screwdriver thing here this
is fluorescing extremely brightly so
looking online it seems that these
remote phosphor LED bulbs always use
royal blue LEDs which is 400 t7
nanometers and very interesting is that
color blue really makes things fluoresce
and I shine this around my basement and
anything else that might fluoresce under
a blacklight also glows really brightly
so that got me thinking could I use
these for retro Brite now I've talked
before about the fact that where I live
in Portland Oregon there's just not a
lot of sunlight in the winter but we're
nearly an autumn right now and
essentially if the sun's gonna be gone
for the next several months so any kind
of retro writing will have to be done
indoors
I've had people suggest to me that I
could use black lights I could use UV
lights I could use all sorts of
different things but I don't have a
backlight and I don't have any UV lights
and all of that stuff would cost money
but these blue lights with these covers
remove the course these if these work
this might be a good solution and
especially for this reason I have quite
a few of these I found a good number I
think I found eight so if these all work
properly and with the covers removed I
could easily build a box with some
really inexpensive light sockets put
tinfoil around the inside and just make
a really insanely bright blue box okay
so I need to know if this works so let's
test this I'm gonna show you my test
setup right now okay so the start of the
video you saw this blue glow coming from
over here so what you can imagine now is
that I have a little things set up here
with something actually being retro
brighter right now so let me unplug the
lamp first I have an Amiga mouse wrapped
in plastic wrap and I have the cream the
volume 40 cream under there and I took a
little box and I put some aluminum foil
in there which just will hopefully
direct any extra light onto the sides
now
found that the bulb runs very very hot
and of course in here it's not really
getting a lot of airflow because this
thing is designed for incandescent bulbs
so I set up a little 12-volt fan and I'm
blowing air into there but this Amiga
mouse has already been in here for I'd
say a couple hours and here's a before
shot that I took and as you can see it
was really yellow and I really think
this is already working pretty well
actually there appears to be a huge
improvement so what I'm gonna do is I'm
gonna put this back in here but let me
talk about something while I'm showing
you this so you can't see in the camera
at all because it's completely washed
out but originally when I put this under
here the parts of the mouse that were
actually quite yellowed we're showing up
as sort of a reddish color under the
blue light and I can still see some of
that and I know you see someone the
camera there but that's not that's not
what we're seeing I see red up here and
up here now I don't see any on this
middle section we've originally when I
put it in there was a lot of red if I
flipped it over to the part that wasn't
yellow there was no red color so it's
almost like the UV damage shows up has
sort of a reddish color under this blue
light so I don't really know if that
means anything but at least it helps we
know if this thing is d yellowing
because as the yellow goes away the red
fades and it's definitely doing that now
it's fading so I'll probably check on
this a few more times before I go to bed
it's around 8:45 right now and then I'll
leave it overnight and we'll see how it
looks in the morning
well it's the next day we're it's in the
morning so I'd say it's about 12 hours
let's give these a wash and see how they
look I hope they're not damaged maybe I
left it in too long I don't know let's
take a quick look at the stuff out of
the blue light so you can actually see
it so on the bottom plate here we had
yellowing along the top edge here and I
think it was are there on this side oh
it was on this side I could still see
some yellowing there so I had this sort
of propped up like this all night where
the light was shining down on the top
and it wasn't really shining on the side
here so the rest of the bottom was
actually completely fine and on the
other part I had rotated this around
several times and tilted it up down and
every other which way but absolutely
just looking through this plastic
through this plastic wrap this looks
amazing
[Music]
all right so yeah I just dried these off
I stuck them on a paper towel here and I
liberally sprayed them with this 303 UV
protectant my friend is a car detailer
swears by this stuff and I apply at post
retro right to all of my plastics but I
have a feeling and this is not
scientific this is just anecdotal that
applying this may help plastics from
real yellowing I have a couple things I
retro prided over a year ago they were
very yellow I have applied this post
retro Brite and none either of them have
reload here are two Apple extended
keyboard twos they were both very yellow
because you know Apple's ABS plastic and
the space bar here very much yellow not
the PBT keys but what I do is when I
clean these I retro righted the case and
the keyboard and then I applied 303 very
liberally to everything including the
PBT keys so I hope that that keeps these
keyboards nice and fresh looking for the
rest of their lives or at least a long
time but I'll just let this sit for a
while maybe 20-30 minutes and then I'll
use a rag to wipe it and buff it down
and then I'll reassemble the mouse and
we'll take a look
so here's the finished product and I
have to say this looks fantastic
it's probably just slightly yellow
versus how it was when it was brand new
but this mouse looked like crap and it
was horribly yellowed when I got it I'd
say this looks great I also cleaned up
the cord just made it look nice in
general but yeah
can you retro bright under blue LED
light the answer at least in this case
was yes people are saying you need a
zone or you need heat or you need UV
well 457 nanometers which is the royal
blue LEDs used in this is not UV and yet
it happily retro Brea this smells
perfectly but anyhow I will do further
experiments and probably create another
video to update you guys but if you
found this interesting or have any
questions or comments you know you know
what to do put them in the comment
section below you can subscribe for more
videos
thanks for watching bye