Hi, We're going to do a quick teardown of this: DMX Stage lighting, disco II type light controller that I scored from the J car sale and if you haven't seen that, click over to the previous. J Car video I Got two complete sets of these. There's actually four lights came in a padded bag and everything else. We've got the DMX controller itself and I got them for a dollar.

So like you know me anyway, we're going to take a look at them. They look pretty crusty. You can smell the da genus in this thing. The first thing you notice is that it doesn't really have a brand at all.

I'll link to that Jake our page down below. it's like this was like a $400 set or something like that. I Don't think they could sell them at 279 or whatever and like there is no branding on these at all. The bag itself they'd be padded bag had rave on it so it was like sold under the rave brand.

But yeah, there is just nothing on this controller at all. There is absolutely no branding whatsoever so you know right there it sets off alarm bells that this is the cheapest heap of crap you're gonna find. And yeah, it just feel luxe and feels like the cheapest quality thing possible. So here's the big padded bag.

It came in with the rave symbol and it came with this foot controller as well so you can suspend it. You can call up the menu and you can go up and fool. So yeah, you got four lights with it and it came with a this is supposedly non-working faulty XLR socket controller doing really strange things. Hmmm.

Anyway, that's why it was in the dump stock for a buck. but I don't know I tell you what I might have actually been ripped off for a dollar. These are pretty crusty. these actually fold out like this.

These arms fold out so you can plug the controller. You can have the lights spread out so there's actually the four sockets on the bottom here for the four lights and the controller interface. DMX in an in the menu and Inter and power? Well yeah. I'm gonna violate the rule and actually pair it up.

so I want to see if these things do actually work now I Have no idea if you're going to be able to see this or not. excuse the reflection. Some lights overhead, but some of these LEDs in here look different to some of the others so it's really unusual. This is supposed to be like a full RGB matrix but when I look down there, some of like that one is different to all the other ones around.

It's almost if it was like you know a different colored LED in there you might. You often find that in selectable colored LED lighting systems that you can buy for your home and stuff like that. you know different color temperatures and they do that by mixing white LEDs of a certain color temperature, mixing them with that yellow and other and maybe other colors I'm not sure. but anyway, mix them with like eight yellow LEDs or something like that just to change the color matrix.

but yeah, they do look slightly different dye inside the lids in some pattern anyway. I don't know. we've got 12 volts and our G and B in there. but yeah, these things 10 millimeter LEDs they look pretty crusty, but even for a dollar just stripping the RGB LEDs out of these things got to be worth it.

Check out this socket he adds I'm dodgy. Alright, it's like it's falling out of there. it's been stripped or something. anyway.

I'll see if I can actually plug it. made it up and plug it in. alright baby up and whoa. Well they flashed, got some goggle D and gobbledygook on the display.

there menu were PU 75 P 45 What? P 37 dis No, it wasn't display was it? no what? it's all over the shop Wow no idea, you'd have to read the manual on that anyway. I'm gonna try a foot controller menu. Nope up, nope and no full night. full controller doesn't work but you saw it as LEDs came on.

let's try that again. Gonna let the cap discharge? There we go. Whoa Yeah, red, green and yeah, anyway, they kind of sort of work. Anyway, let's tear down this puppy down and way ice has got to be crusty as inside I'm sure.

Well, there you have it. That really is quite me inside here. We're going to sauce a bunch of switching trainees here, which is what you'd expect. I'll show you those up closer in a minute.

Oh, that's really how you doing worrying on that dodgy as one hung low brand. XLR Connector Jeez, No genuine stuff in here, No siree. Bob Anyway, we've got ourselves an Atmel processor there. we'll have a squiz at that, and a couple of, probably, well, a 74 7400 series something rather.

I don't know. We'll take a look, but there's not much doing there. The solders soldering is crusty. Yes, actually.

let me show you that. what the hell's going on there? There's no solder on these pins. What is it on the other side? I Don't know, but that's as dry as a dead dingos. Donna Unbelievable.

Yeah, that's an 80 mega 16 for those playing along at home. And we've got ourselves 20 No.3 and Channel MOSFETs down in here. the finest that Aliexpress has to offer and you'll notice bugger all heat sinking on these things. They just haven't bothered.

So I don't know what the ratings of these LEDs are What? I know absolutely nothing about this thing. It just says like power consumption 120 watts maximum. You know, like like means absolutely nothing. So yeah, these things and I'm gonna be.

well you know the bosses in Am I gonna be relatively small, but still, they're just. they're in power packages and they're not. There's no heat sinking on those at all. And of course 7, 4 HC 5, 9, 5 See I used to love these when I was a kid cereal.

Addressable latches. Absolutely fantastic. Still used in a ton of stuff these days. very common for dry, you know, individually addressable LED drivers and stuff like that.

and of course via DMX control, it allows you to set the brightness of the LED So these are just our PWM in the presumably I Well, I is there a constant current Driver Power supply looks like, just hope there's no. Are we gonna find dropper resistors in the LED lights which will take apart in a minute? It's looking? likely so far from being a little bit dodgy. you know, like it's all cable tied? Okay, and they've put protection sleeving over these which go into those that swing it which goes into the arm that swings around here so they've gotta have that. That's alright.

And the mains input was okay. They've actually meant they went to the effort look to scrape off the anodizing there. Although that saw, ah, you know, no, they should that's not properly crimped. Anyway, power supplies up under there somewhere? Hmm.

once again, we've got the finest at Aliexpress has to offer HSE power. It's a hundred watt 12 volt output. LED Driver doesn't say well, it's mostly in Chinese but I couldn't get an actual data XI Pat There's you know it's a hundred watt supply and twelve volts DC nominal. So presumably it's 12 volts DC output and it's not a constant current driver.

So yeah, looks like we're gonna find dropper resistors inside those letter A's hmm because all we're doing here is basically generating just a 12 volt our power supply and then over here. we're just using these MOSFETs to pulse width modulator the 12 volts going to whatever LED strings mean how many we got there 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12. So we've got three of those per. Alright, and that makes sense because you've got to have one for the red, green, and blue.

And sure enough, if you look at the wires, we will have three for each one. What? plus yep, plus two power. So it got ourselves a hundred and forty five. RGB LEDs in here and we're going to have the a dropper resistor in each string because you can't fit.

You know it's not like they are all in one string because I've only got 12 volts compliant voltage. so we're gonna have multiple parallel ones with dropper resistors in there. Presumably they might have sprung for dropper resistors, but this is not going to be big power anyway. I mean the wiring we're talking about here.

This is really pissant wiring in there so you know really, these things are not high. Parador these will be these. LEDs will be from whatever stall in the Shenzhen market that they're able to get them from. That much, no doubt.

And let's take a look. I Mean that's just that is some crappy polycarb. Anyway, yeah the these weren't for heat sinking. If you're thinking that the aluminium around the outside here.

no, it's just for show. There's no heat sink at all. These are you getting the illusion of high power without the expense. So let's have a look.

You can see some jumper links in the centre of the board's there. I demagnetize this the other day I'm gonna I've got a magnetized this puppy and there we go. Sweet! So you've got to get one of those. Make the choices.

Demagnetize is if you don't have one. by the way and here we go. We're in like Flynn and little piss it. 12:06 Dropper resistors thank you very much.

You can see how they've I glued those down so they've actually wave soldered the entire back of this thing. You can see those little red red marks there, the glue underneath the resistors holding them down so they go through the bubble bath solder bubble bath. I mean look at this. They didn't even bother with a proper connector on there.

I mean they had the through-hole thing for the connector and there's winner. and I Screw that and um, those pins are sticking out a long way. They're sharp as but yeah, that's really pathetic. What else is there more to show you in this thing? It's just sorry.

boring is a completely crappy built down to a price. dmx LED lighting, disco, E-type thing. yes it did actually have. it has actually a microphone inside here so you can.

one of the modes is actually just to set it up so you don't have to do any DMX control at all. You can just buy these, set them up at your party, or whatever, your rave and and just have the lights as flush in different colors just based on the music and everything else. How complicated that is in there. It's not going to be doing FFT or anything fancy like that I'm getting the spectrum or whatever and and doing the colors.

so it's just yeah thinking some light show based on the audio level, but that is just crap quality. that is awful. Anyway, if you're gonna your ideas what I can do with that because they're on it like there's a controller. It's no good.

even like the shezzy, it's just the crappers quality. shezzy. Unbelievable. but I don't know.

is that any good for anything? Shinzon Market no-name RGB LEDs I don't know. Ten millimeter RGB LEDs that's a reasonable score. You know you could do Sol to those and put them in your parts drawer or possibly, um, use them for something I Don't know, but who knows what the specs on that those things are. Couldn't really care less.

Tell you one thing though, they've done a reasonable job getting that layout single sided without. You know they've only got a few links. You can maybe see those little jumper links down in there I Don't know, but you've got away with that without any links. but I Hate the white solder mask.

It's hard to see the traces underneath. Pain in the ass. Okay, so let's power this turd up and see how much current she draws. There you go.

It's only one and a half watts. Good point, that's full power. Wow So there you go. The green draw is 5.6 watts set for seven amps or thereabouts, and the red is a measly one point four watts.

This is hopeless, but this is assuming of course that the MOSFET is completely on and look, even the pattern is not complete I'm assuming that like it is like not Universal pattern in there like it's not like in symmetrical, consistent whatever you want to call it. Well, the blue 5.7 watts as well. So blue and green are the same, but the red is completely piss-poor The blue though, does seem to have a symmetrical pattern on it. Yeah, and the green.

But the red? Oh so, as you'd expect with heaps of crap like this, you know, just one hung low, slap together no-name stuff like that. they're not even the intensity, power, and LEDs and everything else. not even our control. Between the red, green, and blue, our channels.

that's massive difference. They're not gonna bother getting my spectrum spectrometer out and you know, light meter and things like that and getting readings, it's just not worth it. These things are just crap. Yeah, they kind of work.

You know you're buying from JK's set them up your party and you switch the microphone on. No. I reckon nobody use these with the DMX I like I'd be very surprising cuz usually you know DMX implies some you know you're at least doing something semi professionally. I don't know I'm sure there's a lot of people who jump down my throat on that, but you know you're going to effort to control this.

You have to do software to control it and everything else. You got to have a controller than the whole works. I Reckon most people who bought these would just be like using the internal mic. These want some lights to flash at your party in a well.

you know it's probably gonna do the job, but yeah, it's just really built down on cost. Instead it's a heap of crap really. but you know it kind of sort of works. Hmm.

so I guess I was pretty naive to think that they that would be a full RGB matrix array at any So well and you it wasn't going to be like a high-powered thing. And yeah, it's not. it's you know, bugger-all but yeah, and the you know, the efficient these leads would be like the super crappers ones I can get as I said whatever came. Whatever they can get at the markets at Shenzhen markets at the time probably went in this thing.

if you bought him like a year later, they wouldn't have the same LEDs they wouldn't have the same parts that if something else slept in them terrible. Muriel and when I pick these up at the J cos Allah didn't even know what they were I just saw ah look lights, they look like I don't know some form of crappy studio light or something like that I used assumed that they were white LEDs and that you can control them off and on or something like that I didn't know that there were full color so I thought I don't know. maybe they'd be useful as some studio lights down in the bunker or something like that. but the RGB ones like this, they're useless to me.

you know. got two sets of these so I've got eight light steps in it. but I only got one controller though. and but I've got two foot switches.

Oh the foot switch. Hang on. Actually, the foot control is probably going to be the most useful thing out of this because you know you could have these under your bench and you could control stuff you could control like a paste dispenser or anything. Use your use your imagination and we flip that out which is gonna be a bit of perspex under there and there's our switch.

Oh that is so how you're doing is that hot snot down in there I think it is. Say these. I really built down a price I'll just have a quick squeeze inside but that's terrible. but still.

you know it's you know, nice and sturdy box. it's all together. You know it's got a XLR interface on it so that's that's might be the handiest thing out of that. Maybe that's worth a buck.

Hmm. and that's the finest hot snot and dry as a dead dingoes Don their joints down there look at that. So did I get a bargain for a buck? or did I get ripped off? Let me know in the comments down below. catch you next time you.