Today I'm here in Tokyo. I found something really cool that I want to show you guys. I gotta get it. It's tiny and
buried in my pocket
That is a little tiny
wireless LED
So it doesn't have any batteries and it doesn't you don't connect it with any wires and it lights up. It's like magic
Oh, yeah
That wasn't on purpose
I
Guess it's good that I have more than one
Anyway, I found it here it Yoda Bashi, which is authentically a chain camera store here in Japan
But it's really this amazing department store that sells just about everything from model trains to toilet seats to wine
They even have a few cameras. It's total stimulation. Overload
There's signs everywhere and flashing things and music and talking and video and I've spent hours in there
But I found this really cool display that had these wireless LED is now these are four
Model makers like Gunpla is huge here, which is like like models of robots
You know you want to make your robot light up
but you don't want to have to run wires through it and
you don't want to like have to have batteries that you change some ideas that you put these little LEDs in it and then you
put them on this stand and
They light up magically my guess is that this works very similar to how wireless charging works on your phone
But I really want to get one and try it out
Unfortunately, Yoda Bashi doesn't have any in stock. They only have the LEDs so I bought a kid of LEDs
So now I'm off to see if I can go find a wireless base somewhere
At maybe another store here in Akihabara
probably Japanese website of the company that makes these are this thing's called an X base and
They list a bunch of stores here in Tokyo. That should have these things in stock
So I'm headed over to big camera, which is pretty similar to yota Bashi
Hey struck out again. I did find the xbase display, but it looks pretty neglected and they were totally sold out of everything
I'm starting to think maybe this will be a little bit harder to find
I don't know it
I'm kind of getting the sense that maybe this is a failed product and all the stores are just trying to get rid of their
Stock while there's still some latent demand here
I took another look at the website and it looks like they ran a Kickstarter in 2017
But that now they're run by this faceless mega Corp toy corporation called happy net
and I don't know that makes me think like
It just makes me laugh speaking of faceless
I I can't even find an email address or any other way to contact them on their web site
I'm beginning to think if I can't find one of these bases, maybe we're gonna have to build one. It can't be that hard, right?
Even now, but I'm not willing if I'm not buying one just yet. I'm off to the next store here. It's listed on the website
That's called the fort
Vor T. Which I don't know it says
Outlet store so I don't Oh, we'll see what it is
Okay, that was not what I was expecting some serious like anime otaku action going on in there
But I did find they've got a whole hobby floor. They had some x-bases. I bought one
It was a bit more expensive than I thought
it was gonna be it was 200 bucks in US and then it was another 30 for the
LEDs that I bought over at Yoda boshy, so I guess I'm reaching the conclusion. The Japanese are very serious about their hobbies. So this
Hotel room is really small its Tokyo, but what's important part? I like try this out
There are screws. I do not have a screwdriver just the power supply. I
Feel like there is a coil up here and
Screws are necessary to connect where the power supply plugs into the bottom then I need a screwdriver
Okay, I think we've safely established that I've no idea where my a screwdriver hearing
I still totally can't figure how to say that tripping over my tongue most of the time I figured out one of these days, okay
Let's try this now oh
Yeah, that looks great so they light up most and they're gonna see services
But I think also they don't do too bad out in the open so that is it right there
I mean the big question is like how did these things work and I read somewhere that it is
Something about the magnetic field coupling. Basically. These are two coils of wire. I think there's one here and I think there's one
Here and then there is a little coil in this guy. Let's see that there and basically
It's just creating a little transformer in the air. So
There's a magnetic field
here and that magnetic field that's caused by the coil here is causing a current through the
coil here
Which then causes the LED to light up on this thing
we've got copper wire here in a coil and that's soldered on to a little PCB here and
Then there are two
capacitors it looks like one on either side and
Then LED in the middle
I was thinking probably the next step here is to remove this sticker here that says warranty void if removed and
See what's going on inside?
So indeed
It is exactly what I thought there is one giant
coil here
And then we have a driver circuit here, which is probably creating the alternating current looks like two little PCBs here
This one's just for the LEDs and this one's just for the power to mount the power back on and our on-off switch
So this is gonna be pretty simple
I want to pop open the other one and just see if there's anything inside it because there's no snow connectors
This way okay I
No longer know what I'm talking about guessing. These are cubic capacitors and
Coil and no wiring connecting it to anything else
We're officially over my head. I kinda would like to figure out how this works
My thought was well if I can't find a base
Maybe I'll just build my own and there are plenty of parts in akihabara for me to go do that
So I still think I'm collected to either do that either build my own base or um build my own
LEDs but I kind of want to understand how the base works
So I think the next step is maybe to do some googling and just see if I can get a better
Understanding of what black magic is behind this thing?
So googling chip numbers is one of the best ways to figure out how something works. It's a wireless power transmitter
Funny matte and has been developed with high
efficient power technology for
Electronic carpel devices such as mobile phones laptop and LED light. This might be the tip that's in your standard like
wireless charging map that you would put like your iPhone on found a couple PDFs
And specifically I found one about LED lighting bricks without wires nor batteries
That looks exactly like what we have looks pretty familiar to it could be
that what we're looking at is just a white label version of power republic's like
Design, I think this is an off-the-shelf rebranding
I thought xbase had done something cool that they just did a Kickstarter on somebody else's design. Mm-hmm
the plot thickens
alright
So I've had two Kickstarter campaigns that seem to be based off the same technology
That isn't theirs and they claim they it's patent pending. Oh, this is a power republic board
I'm going to bet this whole thing is power public's board or assembly and they just put their own sticker on it
Happy now. I think we should tear apart one of the little little guys
Okay, so we have one wire
Give the circuit board on top
And we have the coil
Here that started on both sides. It's soldered here to the PCB
And then here so that's just a loop of wire going around and around and around
Spindle and break that off
Success so that does answer my question
Which is that it doesn't appear like there are any chips on the bottom side of this?
So I think it it really is just a matter of the two capacitors and the coil and led
I don't think there's anything else to this. Okay, so I
Mean not enough and I think that's the teacher like
Well, there you go
That is pretty cool. Well done
You figured out a little more than I have in two days. So
In theory, we should be able to make at least this part ourselves. I think that's the next mission you just to go over
to
Akihabara and buy some LEDs and some capacitors and some wire. Let's see if I can make one of these
And just some 60/40 solder here and maybe some some cutters yeah, okay
Is this
Coding coding. Okay, perfect. Okay
All right, I
Got everything from Akihabara. That ended up being quite a bit more expensive than it would have been in Shenzhen
Prices are definitely higher here, but I've got a soldering iron
Shutters. I just got the basics in the end. I've got some components that I bought one by one, which was amazing
C wire and a wireless charger because I want to use this for testing
All right, let's try this again. I had to go all the way back to Akihabara to get more LEDs
I don't know what happened to them
so here's one of these little things and my thought it has two capacitors on it and an LED and
a wire coil around I think a ferrite core here and so my thought is can I
replicate that with just creating a coil out of wire and
Then I'm I've got a bunch of a bunch of capacitors that I bought and um, can I get the light up?
I also bought some
ferrite chokes
Which are basically exactly what this coil is. They're bigger couldn't find any of it for that small
I figured we'd give those a try as well. Let's start I've got three sizes of wire. I'm gonna take
0.08 wire and wind a little coil and
Then maybe let's just start by sputtering that on to an LED
I think I should open the window to avoid setting off the smoke detector. Yeah, okay that works things
You are not supposed to really do in your hotel rooms, but I want something cylindrical to wrap around
The hotel pen, with this led sort of across like that
Okay, so I'm just gonna use this base right here so these are lighting up this one
So it could be the missing capacitors
It could be not enough wire like not enough taken up choke. I'm gonna try one of these big chokes and put that
with with the led and see
See where we get to you
Well, there you go, um, it really might be that simple just a a ferrite choke and an LED, no capacitors needed
No, no funky engineering. I want to play around with
Making a coil without the ferrite and singing up I can get it working
It'll feel a little more DIY. I think and the bag you leave eshop paper roll of this and then wrap the wire around there
Nothing. I did a bunch of homework
Last night and this morning now. I think I have figured out what my problem is. I just need to make it bigger
specifically I need to make the diameter bigger the formula for
Inductance of a coil is relative to the diameter of that coil and as the diameter gets bigger, the inductance gets stronger. So I
went downstairs and I got a plastic cup and I figured I'd make a coil around here and see if that
does better
Okay, that's what I've got let's hope this is enough does number of turns matters too so now I'm just gonna wind this around
Hold together. I think I'm gonna try a white LED
Okay
Hmm so I went got more wire and I made a bigger coil check this out
Wow, okay, that is totally working. I want to see if this works with this USB charger. So let's see let's unplug
the big power base here
Yeah. Oh wow
That's amazing. And the crazy part is I think you could make this at home pretty easily
This is literally just an LED and a copper of coil wire a coil of copper wire
Let's see. We measure roughly how big this thing is six centimeters in diameter
Okay, if you want to do your own wireless LED kit at home
If you've got a soldering iron of some fine copper wire and an LED
This should work. This should light up just about any LED this this is clearly a fair amount of voltage here
So let me get a rough count roughly sixty windings six centimeters in diameter. And then this wire
36 th and you don't need the fancy base. You just need a
Qi wireless charger at least to get it to blink. That's that's pretty darn cool
That's a definitely thanks to Shane here for figuring that out for trying it on his T charger on his a wireless
Power bank, this is about my time into my time here in Tokyo. This has been kind of a weird
Into figuring out how something off the shelf that's for a very niche market works and then figuring out how we can replicate it
I'm Scotty from strange parts
I hope you enjoyed this adventure as much as I did hit that subscribe button down below so that you're notified of future videos
I'll see you again soon