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Advice for those who got inspired by this: don't repeat this design. Author is doing the very ugly soldering job right next to 110V live wires. The ugly solder
by theamk 3mo ago
Advice for those who got inspired by this: don't repeat this design.
Author is doing the very ugly soldering job right next to 110V live wires. The ugly soldering is normally not a problem - we all started somewhere - but doing it next to live wires is a very bad idea. An unlucky bump, and you have a smoke and, if you are very unlucky, miniature fire on your wall.
A much better idea would be to either start from USB-powered device, so there is no live wires anywhere, or modify it to be 5V only.
For this particular case, if I wanted to reuse the device I already made, I'd simply remove the PCB and replace it with USB input. You don't even need any PCB in this case - just remove AC connector and green PCB, and put a USB input with a resistor that gives a pleasant brightness.
Or if you wanted learning experience, put a PCB with a ESP chip and make this light internet-aware. There there will be no need for smart plug behind it, it could talk to HomeAssistant directly. (As of now, the transformer-less power supply is not nearly powerful enough for ESP chip, but switching to external 5V input will fix this)