Weird 1W (0.1W!) LED lamp from eBay.

You're forgetting that a lot of current will be going through that stupidly low value resistor instead of the capacitor. The impedance of that capacitor on 50 Hz is about 32k and the resistor is 100k, so about a quarter of the current – roughly 2 mA – wil be going through the resistor. That adds another ~0.4 W. So your meter was spot on showing 0.5 W.

Just a late addition, they use V*I to get the power, and not a dinky little meter like that. 7mA on 244V = 1.71W.

What does the 100n/400v capacitor do? I see this a lot, but do not understand it at the moment.

I'd swap out the LEDs for RBGs

How may watts would that 100k resistor be pulling?

Still brighter than a darkroom safelight…

How is it possible to get 12V (or 16V if the leds are 4V EA) from a wall socket (220-240V) without a stepdown converter or a transformer?

Clive! thank you very much for the hours of entertainment I have got out of your videos. they are awesome and unfortunately I have now binge watched them all 🙁

wait a second… how did he measure 7mA without breaking into the circuit?

I use 4 of those 1w bulb in anteroom 24/7 and I can say that its give nice warm light, and I really don need to use main light at all, and electric bill didnt even saw the difference after all that time of using it.

Such light is really good for night decorations of home entrance or patio/garden.

I picked up one that looks quite like that one, except it is run from USB, same light setup and makes a nice light for use when soldering while sitting in my recliner.

Someone could use it as soft light for restaurants.

Are you sure that this LED isn't 1W equivalent instead of 1W of power draw? In the US, manufacturers rate LED bulbs by their incandescent equivalent, but they actually run a lot lower.

How can you measure the current as shown at 2:17 without breaking up the circuit?

this is a disaster lamp, it is working on the same principle as those light switches that have a led inside when they're off. Power is obtained via that capacitor and usually when a capacitor is used this way by connecting it to 230V it can give very low miliamps current.

Using a transformless or non-regulated power supply like that is used to power devices that req vey very low current. The normal way of doing this is by using a switching power supply like the one they use in ccfl bulbs.

A candle light is better than this crappy lightbulb.

What's the lumen rating?

might be worth getting them if they are cheap enough, just to use them as the base for projects

.007 was the main current to the cct so u must multiply it by main voltage to get the power !

This is perfect for procrastinators

A 1w bulb could work well as a wired garden light. Not as bright as to light up the neighbours and waste energy, but longer lasting (using a dawn/dusk timer) than a solar garden light, many of which don't last the whole night and are of poor quality.

I bought some 1w (claimed to be) led bulbs in a golf ball shape with ES fitting. I doubt they are even 1w like yours but strangely they continually glow slightly even when switched off. Any ideas?

You are the market, Clive. They sold one! Yippee they shout! Seriously, though, how is any money made from the cheapest crap sold on ebay? Surely it is all just making a loss and they are trying to shift problematic stock. I really would like to know how they make any money. Do they just get stuff that is being thrown out from various places, then assemble some of the bits to make a product? Nearly every cheap electronic product I have bought on ebay has had a problem that is either immediately apparent or manifests itself a few months down the line. I assume they are rejects and that is why they are cheap. I mean, for this lamp, 99p including delivery. How??

hey you said MILLI amps…well well….

My god, these Chinese nuts get away with murder! No isolation? Not even as much as a proper power supply, just a capacitor and resistors, off a 220V source? Granted, isolation isn't particularly important in this case, but the energy lost by relying on resistance to drive the voltage, that's… crazy. And in response to an earlier comment, there's no way this'd last longer than a real, properly built LED circuit that actually uses a regulated power supply… oh, there is so much wrong with this circuit, it hurts my head!

Lately I'm seeing allot of "we made it because we can" products from China…

nice little decorative lamp

My guess is night light too. In pitch black, even the LED from a phone notification light can illuminate a room enough to see. Either that, or low-power low-heat illumination of multiple objects in a darker room.

I'm not sure I missed something or not, but how did you measure the current into the LED without breaking the circuit?

put magenta leds in it

It's odd….

Somehow I think their demographic for that particular lamp is that one big, bearded guy what does them electronics videos from a big rock in the Irish sea. 😉

strange that they put the resistor before the capacitor, it's usually in series with the lads, which might have lowered the flicker.

Some good scope for modding, could bump the power a bit with a higher dropper capacitor

I brought a couple of the UV version of this light for my insect lamp. It melted the plastic over the LED's over a week's use.

Clive where did you get your plug-in power meter? It looks so much better than my Energenie one but I cannot find it on Ebay.