|
|
Rank: Power Flinger
Joined: 2/8/2007
Posts: 5
|
Hi!
I got my 3/17 MB today (like many others) and was chagrined to see the cell phone lights, poker watches, and XBOX surge protector.
I checked out the cell phone lights and found something interesting. Since they are meant to be attached to a hard surface, there is no solid back to them behind the adhesive. This means that the button press often does not engage the switch. I found that when I stuck one to a piece of wood, it lit up just fine.
While I will not ever use these to attach to a cell phone, I found that when I stuck two together back to back, they make a nice mini flashlight, that, with 4 LED's is actually quite bright.
So... instead of 48 less than working lights, I can have 24 giveaway/disposable 4 LED lights.
Thought I'd throw this out, FWIW. I have no idea whatI'm gonna do with the XBOXsurge prot.
The poker watches will go out as gag gifts.
Peace,
Random
|
|
|
|
|
|
Rank: Power Flinger
Joined: 11/16/2007
Posts: 17
Location: Illinois
|
I also got my mystery box in today and while going through the 96 lights they all worked. While some require more force. Which without opening any yet it does seem to hold true that on a hard surface they would work better and that's a great idea about putting two together. So I'll probably do that and have 48 flashlights instead of 96
|
|
Rank: Hot Flinger
Joined: 3/5/2008
Posts: 426
Location: Perry, NY
|
I just got mine and while looking at the one I opened I started wondering if there was a way. For anyone who has not taken one out of the package there is no backing to it to make it slimmer. Whatever you put it on IS the back. Good eyes randomthinks!
Rock Rock On!
|
|
Rank: Power Flinger
Joined: 2/14/2008
Posts: 82
|
Yea, I just figured out the same thing. Weird though, some of them are MUCH brighter than others. Also, at first it took quite a bit of force to get both to light up (and my hand had to be held on particular way) but after a while it works pretty well.
|
|
Rank: Power Flinger
Joined: 2/14/2008
Posts: 82
|
Almost forgot. If you have one of those souvenir keychains with an engraved design on one side and is flat on the other, you could stick a flashlight to that too. No guarantee it'll stay for long though, the adhesive is pretty craptastic.
|
|
Rank: Crazy Flinger
Joined: 2/14/2008
Posts: 218
Location: Illinois
|
I have a couple of rolls of magnetic tape (it is a roll of tape that is like scotch tape but the tape is a magnet for those that don't know) that could be used to make the backing of the lights magnetic. This would make them more useful at sticking than the semi sticky stuff I have heard are on most of these. It can be picked up off Ebay for a couple of bucks and has many uses like business cards and for making fridge notepads.  I was also wondering that if you have the lights stuck back to back, won't they heat up from having the batteries basically on top of each other? I haven't seen these lights yet so I don't know much about them.
|
|
Rank: Power Flinger
Joined: 4/6/2008
Posts: 94
Location: Eugene, OR
|
I have an idea for making lemonade out of this MB. I have a few old glass electric line insulators. I always liked the art deco look of them and have been considering making at least one of them into a small lamp, using LEDs. Thanks to TF, I have all the LEDs I need. I'm going to make one for a stylish night-light for my son's room and maybe a couple others for mood lighting. This will give you an idea of what it would look like. Right now, it's just sitting on top of a 3-LED touch light.  Oh, and just because I'm curious to see how it affects the resellerratings, as of 8:30 pm, 4/30, the six-month rating is 9.32 (it was 9.40 when I looked about 15 minutes ago) and the life rating is 9.16.
"A boat's a boat, but the mystery box could be anything. It could even be a boat! You know how much we wanted one of those!" -Peter Griffin
|
|
Rank: Crazy Flinger
Joined: 12/18/2007
Posts: 348
|
Just got mine and, being an engineer, ripped one apart. Testing the batteries, they were at a very full charge, so the real problem is, as pointed out, the poor connection resulting from using a bit of sticky tape as the back support for one side of the connection. I'm betting that, if you have a non working light, you squeeze the power button AND the back portion of the body (inside, this is where the brilliant designer put sticky tape which attaches to the battery terminal and pulls it AWAY from the battery, breaking the contact) you'll get it to work. As for variable brightnesses, I'm betting the low standard for the LEDs (judging by the rest of the design) resulted in some being better than others (I think LEDs are usually graded based on quality and brightness...the cheaper they are, the more variability among the lots being used.
Flings flung: Holiday Mystery Box 2 / Holiday Mystery Box 3 / Color-Changing Weather Clock / Linksys NSLU2 / Maxell Video Screen Total Cleaning Solution / The Almost Mystery Box XXXI / APC Black Cord-It Cable Management System / Altec Lansing IPod Speaker IMMINIX /  SpyFling prize box / Valentine's Day Mystery Box / Flare Alert Beacon Kit / Almost Mystery Box XXXIII /  LadyFling Special box / 3.77 Mystery box / GE Light Sensing Timers / Advent Wireless Powered Partners / The greatest $29.99 Mystery Box
|
|
Rank: Crazy Flinger
Joined: 2/18/2008
Posts: 189
Location: Texas
|
I didn't know we had a thread going for this but I had posted how I fixed our lights in the other thread. Thought I'd go ahead and paste it over here.
I don't know if anyone has posted this yet ... way to many pages in this thread to go back and check. I saw somewhere that if the lights were twisted they'd work. Made me think that maybe the prob was with the battery contacts. I took the covers off some of my lights that would only work when twisted and found that the contacts were sitting above the batteries. I took the batteries out and bent the contacts and carefully slid the batteries back in so not to raise the caontacts back up. All of the lights that I did this to now work fine. And thank you to whoever had the idea of sticking two lights together, my kids love thier double lights and now Mom doesn't have to worry about them being stuck to anything. I know that some of you might not want to go through the hassle of fixing all of the lights that won't work, but hey ... this isn't the first think Mommy has bought and had to end up working on before giving it to the kids. Anyways, hope that helps some of you out.
|
|
Rank: Crazy Flinger
Joined: 12/14/2007
Posts: 758
Location: Dallas
|
I received 48 lights, and ALL but one worked. So, I took the non-working one out of the package. Just for grins, I stuck it on my husband's bald head, and it lit up like a charm. So, if you are bald, have a bald husband, uncle, friend, etc., try sticking the non-working lights on their head and see what happens. Or else, as someone suggested earlier, you could always spit on it (the light - not the husband)!!  P.S. - hubby was NOT amused............. 
|
|
Rank: Serious Thing Flinger
Joined: 1/14/2007
Posts: 23
Location: IL
|
[quote=HendersonHenderson]I received 48 lights, and ALL but one worked. So, I took the non-working one out of the package. Just for grins, I stuck it on my husband's bald head, and it lit up like a charm. So, if you are bald, have a bald husband, uncle, friend, etc., try sticking the non-working lights on their head and see what happens. Or else, as someone suggested earlier, you could always spit on it (the light - not the husband)!! P.S. - hubby was NOT amused............. LMFAO!!!!! A human light bulb!   
|
|
Rank: Hot Flinger
Joined: 3/18/2007
Posts: 254
Location: Da U.P. of MI. eh
|
BLESSED ARE THE CRACKED FOR THEY ARE
THE ONES WHO LET IN THE LIGHT!
|
|
Rank: Hot Flinger
Joined: 3/18/2007
Posts: 254
Location: Da U.P. of MI. eh
|
Zack wrote:HendersonHenderson wrote:I received 48 lights, and ALL but one worked. So, I took the non-working one out of the package. Just for grins, I stuck it on my husband's bald head, and it lit up like a charm. So, if you are bald, have a bald husband, uncle, friend, etc., try sticking the non-working lights on their head and see what happens. Or else, as someone suggested earlier, you could always spit on it (the light - not the husband)!! P.S. - hubby was NOT amused............. Ah, but we were.....Great idea, but I still have most of my hair  And to continue from above, was it a DIM bulb 
BLESSED ARE THE CRACKED FOR THEY ARE THE ONES WHO LET IN THE LIGHT!
|
|
Rank: Crazy Flinger
Joined: 3/8/2007
Posts: 3
|
All my cell phone lights worked also. I had to fool around with about half of them to get them to be somewhat reliable. The two stuck together flashlight is way cooler than the key light I got before in another MB. I noticed many of the lights can be fixed by slightly rotating the batteries. There appears to be some oxidation on the top connection that causes many not to work. Slightly rotating the battery will put a new unoxidized connection under the contact. Don't bend back the top contact to get out the battery! It will never bend back tight.
|
|
Rank: Crazy Flinger
Joined: 12/14/2007
Posts: 758
Location: Dallas
|
Zack wrote:Zack wrote:HendersonHenderson wrote:I received 48 lights, and ALL but one worked. So, I took the non-working one out of the package. Just for grins, I stuck it on my husband's bald head, and it lit up like a charm. So, if you are bald, have a bald husband, uncle, friend, etc., try sticking the non-working lights on their head and see what happens. Or else, as someone suggested earlier, you could always spit on it (the light - not the husband)!! P.S. - hubby was NOT amused............. Ah, but we were.....Great idea, but I still have most of my hair And to continue from above, was it a DIM bulb Well - it was dim until it made contact with hubby's head - now it is - oh hell, I'm not even gonna go there.......lol
|
|
Rank: Crazy Flinger
Joined: 1/21/2007
Posts: 1
|
Thanks for the tip about putting the cell lights on a hard - wood, metal - back. I was rather disappointed to open 3 and have NONE of them light up upon pressing the on-off button! Will try sticking two together tonight, see if that works any better. But, overall, was VERY disappointed in the TF MB this time! I know a Mystery Box is a mystery, but you're entitled to expect that whatever you receive will WORK when opened and many of these clearly did not.  
|
|
Rank: Power Flinger
Joined: 12/7/2007
Posts: 1
|
I ordered 3 mystery boxes. So I ended up with like 4 boxes of the cell phone lites which we tested and decided to discard the ones that wouldn't light with 2 tries (about 2/3 of them seemed to work). Somehow ended up with 4 poker watches (???) and 2 PDA keyboards and an Xbox power center. Actually the usable item for me is the power center. No xbox but it's a surge protector and has a switch so I'm going to make a circuit for the cable modem and router that is protected by that. The other stuff is a 'mystery'.
|
|
Rank: Casual Flinger
Joined: 9/26/2007
Posts: 4
Location: MO
|
Thanks for the idea of sticking them together! I can toss one in each car, nightstand, and backpack so no matter what I have a light if I need it. This definately makes them more useful to me than the keons from the 3.77 mb.
|
|
Rank: Power Flinger
Joined: 4/17/2008
Posts: 16
Location: Here, there, and everywhere
|
Thanks for the information.
I picked two lights that didn't appear to work at all in the blister packs. Stuck together at first they kinda worked, but were rather temperamental. Pulled them apart and tried twisting the batteries-a bit tricky with that adhesive film over everything. Stuck 'em back together again, and huzzah, a 4-LED flashlight that seems to work fairly well.
Seems like the plastic housings could readily hold 4 LEDs each. I'm not enough of an electronics geek to be able to pull that one off on my own. But assuming the two batteries per unit could adequate power four (or maybe 8?) LEDs, configure a couple that way, attach a loop for hanging from a keychain or (ironically) a cellphone, and major points if the two sets could be operated by one switch.
I know, an awful lot of work for ultra cheap gadgets to begin with. Not to mention it would become a real pain to replace batteries when that time came. But that would make at least one useful item out of all this sh^H^Hstuff,
11 Flings Flung:
The Infamous THINGFLING Mystery Box x3
Mini Fluorescent Cover Lite with 2 Outlets x3
Free 80 Watt DC to AC Power Inverter x1
Auvi's Dual Mode Cordless Internet Phone x2
The Return of the $10.00 Mystery Box x3
2 Port PS2 KVM Switch with USB Connection x1
Auvi's Dual Mode Cordless Internet Phone x1 (Needed a 3rd)
Outdoor Barbecue/Flexible Neck Utility Light x1
Samsonite Worldproof 1.4 Digital Camera Bag -Blue/Black x1
Weigh Station Combination Kitchen Scale and Cutting Board x1
The Mystery Box Mixed - A mix of left over items x1
|
|
|
Guest |