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Comment by petercooper | Hacker News Reader

If, for some reason, lighting teardowns are a fascination of yours, I thought I should mention "bigclive", a YouTube channel devoted to this very topic :-D https://www.youtube.com/user/bigclivedotcom/videos (the author of this blog post also has a channel at https://www.youtube.com/user/electronupdate/videos )

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One of my favourite Big Clive moments was when he turned up on Barry Lewis's channel (a thoroughly nice and decent British amateur cook and kitchen gadget tester) when Barry had plugged a 120v rated grilled cheese toaster into a UK 240v household supply, near kitchen conflagration hilarity ensues:

Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H66Fbg9nrk4

Clive's comment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H66Fbg9nrk4&lc=UgyLpu-CcVthk...

"The best bit about this video is seeing you plug a 120V appliance into 240V without realising it, and then watching the horror unfold as the grossly overloaded appliance makes loud stressed noises and emits flames. The appliance doesn't just run at twice it's normal power, it's closer to four times the power. Good job. Very entertaining."

I've followed Big Clive for about 5 years now and he's a great presenter. Especially his "what cheap shite I bought from my local Poundland on the Isle of Man" videos...which actually kinda reassure you that Poundland's "cheapo" electrics aren't that terrible or are going to burn your house down.

Indeed!

Also https://www.youtube.com/user/mikeselectricstuff/videos for lighting and scrap medical/industrial equipment teardowns.

If you are into RF dark magic, https://www.youtube.com/user/TheSignalPathBlog/videos for teardowns (and repairs!) of GHz scopes, network analyzers, etc.

"Hi!" Don't forget EEVblog! https://www.youtube.com/user/EEVblog

It put a big smile on my face that big clive is the first comment here :-) His videos are hypnotically good! He's tied with aVe IMO as the best teardown channels on youtube.

But only one of those two is family friendly :)

Some of Clive's videos are definitely not family friendly. For example, the surstromming one

I admit he got me good with his "Scottish Army MRE" video though in my defense, who expects an April Fools video in January? I really enjoy his teardowns and the accompanying circuit diagrams - amazing stuff.

For the first few minutes he had me going as well, even as a Jock :)

He has a lot of other stuff too, but I agree, he has probably made the largest and most in-depth collection of LED lighting videos on YouTube. Unlike a lot of other review videos, he doesn't just take the lamps out of the box, plug them in, turn them on and make some comments; he takes them apart and scrutinises them in a lot of detail.

Never expected to see cheese and electronic teardowns mixed.

That whole stuffing 240v into a BabyBel cheese and Co-op mincemeat pies thing was quite amusing, I guess the festive season can be "slow news" days even for video bloggers. That said, back in the early 90's when I was a field engineer, a mate and myself used apply 240v to foodstuffs in the company workshop "just to see what happened" when things were a bit slow. The resulting smells were somewhat odd.

Have you ever seen "PhotonicInduction"? He did a lot of very dangerous and borderline insane stuff with electricity like running up a 20KW bulb in his house: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT5_-A0m8_U (or, more famously, chucking a cinder block into a washing machine)

Yeah I followed him until he sadly stopped posting, thought he was tremendous.

Didn't he have some trouble moving to India or something?

He married someone from India and the UK Home Office wouldn't grant his partner a visa initially. I think it's all sorted now and she's now living with him in the UK:

See the pinned comment on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8EwYOwplyw

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