Target Color changing LED nightlight

[PhotonWrangler]

I bought another one of Target's color changing LED nightlights at their closeout sale, and since the lamp wasn't glued together very carefully (and cuz I wanted to), I decided to break it open to see the LED and the driver.

From the part of hit that I can see, there appears to be a bridge rectifier, another diode, an electrolytic cap, a regular cap, a resistor, the driver chip "blob" and a 4-lead 5mm RGB led.

Yes Craig, you can swipe this pic for your site if you like. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

**Edit** Oops, server's b/w temporarily exceeded. It'll be there eventually!

 

[The_virus]

Exactly how fast does this nightlight change colours? Hehe. Is Target trying to give kids psychadelic dreams? I'd also wonder about the usefullness of a colour changing nightlight for general navigation in the dark.

Green: ah, what a pleasant colour at this time of night, easy on the eyes
Purple: yuck, I can't see a thing under this light, what's that? *ouch!*
White: Ahh! My night vision is officially wrecked, and I just stubbed my toe!
Blue: Good thing this blue light increases contrast, I can see my toe is bleeding...
Red: I can't see the blood anymore because everything's red, but with all these colour changes...I can't see much of anything!

Seriously though, sounds like a neat thing to take apart!

 

[PhotonWrangler]

It displays each color for about 2.5 seconds. The cadence is that it fades each individual color up and down, so there's a brief period between each color when the light is extinguished. In other words -

Fade up Red
Fade out
Fade up Green
Fade out
(etc)...

Yeah, it really makes for a distracting night light, but I bought a few of them to use the bulbs in holiday window candelabra fixtures. They're the same size as regular C7 bulbs and they run directly off of 120v, so they can be used in holiday lighting fixtures without modifications.

It's actually pretty cool looking when it's running with the cover off. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[kitelights]

Not sure if it's the same, but Costco has a 4 pack of color changing LED nightlights for $12. They're about 8 colors. You can choose to have them change or you can pick any color and have it stay that color.
They have a photo cell for auto on in dark and off in light.

 

[PhotonWrangler]

That sounds a little more sophisticated than the Target nightlight. The Target unit only has an on-off switch and has no control over the color cycling. The Costco unit sounds like it's a knockoff of the Color Kinetics Sauce line of RGB lights.

 

[watt4]

you can upload your pic to imageshack.us (free)

 

[PhotonWrangler]

Thanks, Watt4... I'll give it a look. Apparently I've messed up the link to my current location for that pic or the file is corrupted.

 

[geepondy]

Costco nightlights are down to $9 something for the four pack as I was just there today.

 

[PhotonWrangler]

Do these have hardwired LEDs or do they use a removable "based" lamp?

 

[PhotonWrangler]

That pic is fixed. Turns out I had one too many slashes in the URL... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/banghead.gif