Inside a huge faulty Poundland lamp

I traded my brand new huge Poundland lamp with a local friend for his very dead and moist looking one so we could explore why it had failed.

The circuitry is slightly bizarre. It uses multiple linear current regulators for the LEDs and also to provide current flow evenly over the full sinewave, possibly for dimmer compatibility or to give the illusion of better power factor.

The wires that connect from the lamp to the PCB do not take solder well. That's maybe why the lamp failed. It's pretty common for similar lamps to use square pins on the PCB with the wires tightly wrapped around them to avoid issues like this.

I'm wondering if the failure of the capacitor was caused by electrical noise caused by the arcing. It's generously rated, so should have been OK with the LEDs going open circuit. But the arcing could have caused high pulses of current.

I've still not worked out what the mystery component in series with the LEDs is.


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