Buy SE FL8824 Camping 24 LED Light

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There were reports of a potential fire hazard on this and similar lights... whether this actually posed a fire hazard or not remains to be seen, but the currant limiting resistor did get very VERY hot. The design of the light electrically is very basic and the quality of the soldering inside is very poor. The LED's are all linked in parallel, with one large 2.2 ohm resistor connected in series to limit the current. The stats are these:

6V supply (4*1.5V cells)

2.2 Ohm resistor

LED voltage drop 3.3V

-> 2.7v voltage drop on resistor

-> 1.2A current!

= 3.2 Watts dissipated (wasted) through resistor

This really is no good at all so I changed the internals ever-so-slightly...

Where the power connects the the LED PCB, remove the cross-links (actually the legs of one of the LEDs) so the boards are not connected to each other at that point.

At the opposite end connect the bottom left track to the top right and remove the other cross-link.

And that's it. I've up loaded an image of this for you to refer to.

The stats are now these:

6V supply

LED voltage drop = 2*2.9V (now 2 sets of 12 LEDs in series)

-> 0.2V drop across resistor

-> 0.06A current

= 0.012 Watts dissipated through resistor.

Now the light will be quite a bit dimmer, but now the run-time can be measured in days rather than hours and there'll be absolutely no over heating of the resistor.

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I bought a pair of these to hang over my desk where I work as it is a little darker than I was used to. One of them came to me with the leads connecting the power switch to the batteries that I had to solder back together. The mechanism to lock the bottom and top was flaky at best. One fell onto my desk when I shut it off, sending batteries and battery holders flying, rendering that lamp useless. The other one followed suit about 4 days later.

Pros:

Cheap and bright

Cons:

Not so good construction, locking mechanism was hit or miss

Other Thoughts:

I got 24 super bright LEDs for my project...

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First off this WOULD be a great light.. I've had one for a while and hadn't noticed a problem with it, thought they were great little light sources, so I bought two more. Put batteries in them and turned them on. One of them came on for about 5 seconds and went back off. I opened it back up to check it out and make sure there wasn't a broken wire of bad solder joint. I didn't notice anything right off so I turned it back on and it started smoking. The reisitor inside was laying on one of the wires and had lead on the end of the resistor had got hot enough that it melted the insulation on the wire and caused it to short out. I seperated the two leads and the light came back on, but the resisitor was still hot enough that it was smoking and scourching the plastic to a burnt brown.

I thought maybe it was a quirk with this one and that the resisitor as perhaps the wrong, but when I opened up the other two lights they also show signs of the resistor heating up enough to melt the plastic. Not sure of the resistance, but they are 1/2 watt resistors and the problem could be corrected by swapping the resistors out to a larger 1 watt resistor.

As the units stand now they could very well cause a fire if used for prolonged periods and it were laying against something combustable.

Honest reviews on SE FL8824 Camping 24 LED Light

I bought one of the Ozark Trail ones of these (about 97% the same as this one) at walmart for about $5 and was so happy with it that I tried to find it online and couldn't. I just bought 4 of these and plan to put them through some punishment. If they are anywhere near as good as the Ozark Trail branded ones I may buy even more.

My original tent light no longer goes in my tent. I hang it in the back of my SUV because the dome light back there is inadequate. It puts out enough light for just about anything even in the pitchest darkness.

I will amend or add a new review when I put these new ones through their workouts.

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I bought this to take camping. It was easy to set up and provided a nice even bright area for the tent.... for about an hour. Then the LED's started to die, one by one. Within 4 hours, nine of the 24 LEDs were dead! Out of the box, one LED was already 'dim', but by the time I stopped using it, over half the LEDs were either dead or dim, not a good first impression! And NO it did not get wet or damaged before use. I'll likely try to return this, since it definitely failed to live up to expectations. It is cheaply made, feels flimsy, and needs work to be a good product, but then again, if it was a good product, it wouldn't have been under $8, so I guess I got what I paid for.