Hi.
I took the lantern apart and this is what i found.
The lantern has a remote control feature, so some of the circuit will be for that.
Can anybody tell me if this is a resistor or a buck circuit.
thanks
John.
i'm going to go out on a limb here (as i'm essentially unfamiliar with modern electronic circuits used in LED lights - not my area; hopefully will be soon enough). Hope no one minds me putting my ignorance on display.
RESISTOR, NOT Buck (don't see a coil/inductor anywhere - anything hiding underneath the circuit board?)
again this is just a guess, i'm going to say series resistors are used to drop the voltage. Why MAYBE(???) two of them in your lantern? My guess is that your 20LED lantern has two banks of 10 LEDs - each responsible for providing 180deg of lighting, maybe. Perhaps the two transistors are acting as switches - one for each bank??? Do you have two banks/vertical-columns of 10 LEDs each? Or, do you have 4 banks of 5 LEDs in your lantern? I think from the pic, it's 2x10, but i could be mistaken. How does it look to you when it's illuminated? I don't have a great deal of confidence here as, thinking about it a bit more, unless i'm really missing something (which could be the case, i'm not the sharpest tool in the shed) the +6VDC would not be sufficient to drive a bank of LEDs in series, so maybe the LEDs are in parallel and not in series.
Someone who is familiar with the circuits used in LED lighting devices can chime in here anytime and correct me and provide more accurate info, if this is wrong. There really is no substitute for experience, IMO.
Would really like to see you draw an electronic schematic diagram of the PCB and components. I can't see any labeling on the 8-pin chip and i don't know what the 4-pin device is. We could do a web search on it and probably be able to identify those two though if you're interested.
the 8-pin chip might be a flip-flop or 4-bit binary counter chip being used to implement a digital switch to turn the transistors on and off instead of a mechanical switch for switching the lantern on and off. does you lantern have a momentary switch for a control? if so, then the chip functions as a digital switch is my guess (where's a schematic diagram when you need one???). if so, then the chip probably switches the transistors on and they handle the heavy current flow which is too much for the chip to handle.
You also have a diode, two ceramic disk capacitors, and one electrolytic (can) capacitor on the board. Oh...and another resistor near the electrolytic - really would like to see that schematic diagram. i'm not sure what part they're precisely playing in the circuitry.
maybe one transistor drives the LEDs and the other the red light on the top of the lantern (is that a red indicator light on top of the lantern???)?
Sorry i can't be more help. Don't count on some of what i said above as being correct. some of it (after the theorectical part) is just semi-educated GUESSES. I hope someone experienced who knows what they're talking about can be more help to you.
