Welcome to the first and so far best episode of 2020, the third year of this podcast. Thanks for sticking around and making this happen, or alternatively, thanks for just tuning in - hope you like it.

After a quick word on hot glue applied to mains wires, yours truly talks about being surprised by a SOT23 500V constant current driver (BPS BP9918C) in an LED lightbulb.

Super-exciting, all of this.

A cheap RGB LED strip decoration revealed a 5-24V LED driver (Greeled Electronic Ltd SM16703P) as higher voltage drop-in replacement for e.g. WS2811.

Apparently not all christmas magic is done with those newfangled LED things - oldskool still has its place in an incandescent light decoration with smooooth ramp up/down effect.

Perhaps being of more practical use, we talk about how the body converts food energy into mechanical energy, and show that exercising for the sake of losing weight is not the best approach. #spoiler

Projects I actually worked on or even - *gasp* - completed, are a double pole mains switch, an ongoing hack including driver board for an LED icicle decoration, and a big clunky resistive load that also turns out to be inductive. (Turns. Windings. Inductive. Get it?)

Links to relevant stuff (links to datasheets are probably volatile):

• BPS BP9918C datasheet (SOT23 constant current 500 V LED driver)
• Greeled Electronic Ltd SM16703P datasheet (3x 5-24V PWM serial constant current LED controller)
• article on energy needed for some weightlifting exercises by John Garhammer
• Wikipedia's Food Energy page

Pic of hot glue ghetto-enclosure:

BPS BP9918C example circuit:

Double pole mains switch:

32-channel LED driver board (30x30 mm):

Resistive load: