Gadgetory

in front of me I have something called a Xylo band from a Coldplay concert these are handed out to millions of people who attend Coldplay concerts or other events this particular bracelet has been smashed to bits by the what's inside YouTube channel they gave it to me with the challenge to bring it back to life again and that's what we're going to do I'll show you what a non cosmetically destroyed bracelet looks like in just a second but to explain these bracelets receive a radio frequency during the concert that allows the LEDs in the wristband to flash along with the music a pretty cool visual effect when the whole audience is wearing one but after the concert without that proprietary radio signal the bands go dead and never blink again completely useless and I imagine most of them get thrown away unfortunately so what I'm going to do today is basically bypass the radio receiver and the entire circuit board then hardwire the LED band directly to the power it's actually a lot easier than it sounds I'm touching the tip of my ha soldering iron to the base the red wire the heat liquefies the solder holding it in place and then I can pull the red battery terminal wire out of the circuit board LED stands for light emitting diode and a diode is a semiconductor that only allows electricity to flow in one direction so it's important that the red wire goes here and that the batteries are oriented in the right way when you plug them back in otherwise this simple circuit just won't work now for the black wire this is the fun part where you get to decide what color you want your band to be for now you just get to pick one color but I'll show you how to add multiple colors later in the video it's a bit more complex I'm going to stick the batteries back in these are quadruple a batteries I'll link some of these down in the video description since they aren't a standard size sold in most stores now that I have power you can see that each time I close the circuit on each one of these little solder points a new color appears the bottom color is green then above that we have red and finally blue is third from the bottom since we are bypassing the circuit board entirely we don't need this little receiver so I'll remove that along with the two little wires that connect it in place I chose green for this band and since there is so much solder on the joints already I don't need to add any of my own solder I just need to melt the solder that's in place and stick my wire in it while it's liquid kind of magical the way that works it's probably a bad idea to our live wires but here we are after you reassemble the band it'll stay lit until the batteries die and then you have to swap batteries next time you want to use it now I'm going to show how I add a switch into our circuit this time I'll use a bracelet that what's inside didn't smash to bits they aren't always super nice to things they open up the process of adding a switch is basically the same once it's open I can cut off the radio receiver to give me more room and then I pull the red and black wires from the board I'll reattach the red wire to the same point I did on the last bracelet and here is the part that is different I still get to pick a color so for this band I'm going to do blue but instead of wiring directly to the battery I'm going to add this little tiny switch these switches were about five dollars for a pack of fifty and I'll link those in the video description along with this soldering iron that was only about eight dollars i'll solder the tiny switch between the battery terminal and the LED this interrupts the circuit and I'll be able to turn the band on and off whenever I want without opening it up to pull out the batteries I'll only need two of the pins on the switch the center one and then whichever pin is on either side it doesn't matter which side you pick soldering moving wires is always a little bit difficult so if you have a stand with those little alligator clips on it to hold things in place it'll be a lot easier if you want access to the rest of the colors you can either add a switch for each individual one or you can get a three or four-way switch and then solder each color to a different pin on the switch to go between all of the colors kind of fun I'll just cut out a hole in the top of the band and slide my switch through it and then tack it in place with some of the gel Stiles superglue that way the switch can be accessed while the band is screwed shut again the full destruction of the first bracelet can be found on the what's inside youtube channel that'll link at the end of this video and in the video description yeah yes you fixed it I fixed it how did you fix this look at it it's completely is all he dented it and you my dad cut it with the razor blade and hit it with a hatchet a bunch of times yeah and he still fixed it I was pretty shocked that it's still working but basically I just bypassed the board wired the power directly into the band and that was it uh okay no clue what that just meant but okay