#116 Repairing A 30W Day Night LED Light.
Over the past year I’ve had to replace multiple LED lights with Day Night switch sensors in them. after multiple failures I decided to open one up to take a closer look at the cause for failure. Usually the LEDs are running hot and driven very hard from the factory so it’s not uncommon to see many black spots indicating burnt out LEDs in the light.
One way of extending the life of the led light is to reduce the power burning out the LEDs. This can be done easily by inserting an AC film capacitor in series with the live wire before connecting it to the light. this works great for reducing power and thus reducing the brightness of the light but it did not solve my issue.
In this case my light fails to switch on. when I opened it… The LEDs were still ok now on looking at the day night sensor I determined that the circuitry had failed. Failed how?
Well I had to investigate for a bit but eventually determined that the capacitive dropper was not supplying enough current for the transistor to swich from day to night. Why?
Well because the capacitor value had decreased somehow.
seems that low quality film AC capacitors are used and their capacity drops maybe they deteriorate or loose electrolytic liquid I’m not exactly sure but when I replaced the capacitor with a new one everything worked again.