My wife bought my son some Cars branded bedding and it came with a free Cars branded nightlight with the fan favourite Lightning McQueen on it, it’s one of those big button lights that toggles on and off when you press the dome. Needless to say it was a big hit, he loves Cars, Lightning McQueen and buttons.
He carried it around with him, clicking away turning the light on and off for about twenty minutes until he dropped it and the light didn’t work anymore.
At first I thought maybe a battery got knocked out of place, or maybe a wire came loose or broke off? It wasn’t a connection problem, it was an equally simple but more frustrating blown mini incandescent bulb.
It’s not really a big deal, bulbs blow all the time and they’re probably cheap if you can find them (which isn’t as easy as you’d think, I looked around). It’s not something that I had lying around and then when I did eventually find one it suffered the same fate as the first in approximately the same amount of time. Turns out incandescent bulbs and three year old boys are not a good combination, this needed a different solution than a bulk order of bulbs.
I came up with a simple solution using a dollar store purchase which ends up being cheaper than a few new bulbs which wouldn’t have lasted very long with continued abuse.
Nothing too innovative about what I did, I just took apart a small LED dome light, made sure that the switch was in its closed position, detached the wires from the battery connector in the small enclosure and attached them to the battery connector and switch in the larger enclosure. Quick, simple and works great. The best part is that my son is happy that I fixed his light and he can go ahead and use and abuse it however he likes and we should have no more blown bulbs.
Another benefit of this hack is that it uses less current. The bulb used about 120mA and the LEDs are using only 20mA, we should expect the batteries to last around six times as long!