Possible Diorama Buildings...

Hey Super,

My latest find on AliExpress that may be useful, some little self contained battery powered glowing balls (yes very funny I know ) They may make useful cargo for trucks on christmas layouts (especially the coloured cycling ones) or simply put inside a carriage to light it without any mods to the carriage

Mini Christmast Balls

[Super]

What a brilliant idea Nigels... they would look great sprinkled about an Xmas layout. Ripley, take note for your Holiday Layout. They may even be of use atop a lamp post created for train station mod or the like. The only drawback I see, unless I am missing something, is there is no on/off switch, you have to pull out a little insert for On and reinstall the insert to turn it Off. Keep browsing AliExpress Nigels as they must have a lot of never seen before items.

[ripley802]

Those are very cool. I have a strand of the small ball like lights that I used in my last Christmas layout but these would be a great addition, but as you say Super, if there is no on/off button that may be a turn off (no pun intended) for theses.

[Super]

It may be Okay if you had a handful of the flashing multicolored ones and do like Nigels suggested in filling up some troublesome trucks with them as then you would have moving lights. Then the reinserting of the inserts might not be so bad as having a hundred to turn on and off. At first sight I thought the lights were turned on and off by pushing the protrusion bump where the light is which would be perfect..

I just think these are so cool, I can think of numerous uses for them, get some white ones, turn one on and toss it inside a trackside building, instant illuminated building. put one behine a bill board that has a paper banner etc... Really makes me think what they could be used for and to be honest at the price would it really matter if you need to turn them on/off, replacement batteries may be more expensive than the actual units lol!

[Super]

Good ideas Nigels and the cost of the batteries was exactly what I thought about those Lego Block lights that we bought too which were included with each light. I wonder if the batteries are replaceable with these balls or are they glued together?

I'll let you know when my batch arrive, btw if you need new cells for the other lights you can buy them very cheaply off Amazon, or at least you can in the UK - got over 100 for just a few quid

Ok, well my bag of balls turned up yesterday - those illuminated ones I mean. I was quite surprised at just how small they are, they can be no bigger than half inch across (thats about 1.2cm for you youngsters out there).

They are also lovely and bright as well, much more than I thought they might be to be honest.

Anyway I've been carrying out an experiment today to see just how long the run on the batteries they come with. So at 8.30am this morning I started one white and one multicolured ball to see. As of now they are both still alight, the white one just as bright as when I started it, the multicoloured one though is on its last legs. About 10 hours in it started to slow down cycling through the colours and then about an hour later the blue colour stopped, now it is finally down to just the red LED working (they usually need less current than the other colours). However this is now nearly 14.5 hours into my test.

This is quite impressive to my mind and even when the batteries are exhausted it will not necessarily be the end of the experiment as I intend to crack them open (if they don't just pop apart) and see what the innards are like. My thoughts are to attach wires to the battery terminals and then potentially I have a standalone lighting unit that could be fitted anywhere - in a lego brick, in a building, a train coach or whatever and powered from a switch/battery If its possible to extract the mechanism from the ball they could prove an even more economic tool for lighting models

[Super]

Those modifications sound interesting. Look forward to seeing what you come up with.

A quick update, the 'flashing LED' ball was still flashing (red only) 48 hours after the test started. The White LED is stil running which is now 90 hours continuous lit so far