Turbo magician's thumbs

The classic glowing thumbs trick has been around a very long time. It's very commonly sold in magic shops, but this version is the new turbo remix that uses a rechargeable lithium cell to absolutely blast current through an LED for short bursts of time.

The module has no PCB. It's literally hand-made on a thin sliver of plastic with hot melt glue holding everything together, and the connections are hard wired with thin wire that then has more glue on it.
The entire assembly is then covered in heat shrink sleeve, with holes cut for the LED, charge port and button, and the other end of the sleeve closed with pliers while still hot, before being cropped flush.

The 400909 lithium cell has no protection, partly to save space and because it might trip with the spikes of LED current. The primary use of the cell appears to be in bluetooth earbuds.

It's quite hard to test the actual LED current, since the meter leads and internal current shunt may limit the current.

You can find these on AliExpress if you search for keywords like magic thumb.

I'm not sure how the massive current spikes will affect the lithium cell. They will probably shorten its lifespan at least, but then, it's only used for brief bursts of light.



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