Description: a Chinese lantern with 32 LEDs (quite bright really; 2 levels of brightness); rechargeable (no information on battery currently); without any external power adapters (plugged directly into AC socket by a simple 2-wire cable). Bought on a local Ukrainian (Vinnytsia city) market. The design somewhat reminds of a kind of grater.
After a prolonged storage time (but less than a year), I turned it on for a checkup, and it still shined brightly. Anyway, I connected it to the AC outlet (220 V, 50 Hz) to ensure it had a full charge, and green LED began to glow.
After a hour or so, two sudden bursts of cracking noise caught my attention... Finally, I rushed into the dark room where it was plugged into AC socket. The bottom part of the device was burning in a yellow flame with significant amounts of disgusting pungent smoke and soot... Fortunately, it was easy to disconnect the fire device from the power supply (the wire with plug hadn't melted) and blow off the flames... (Yes, the window was then left opened for a prolonged time to remove the bad, nasty, acrid-smelling smoke).
After some cooling down on a concrete floor in a cold corridor, surprisingly, this wonderful device was even proven to power on / off and even emit light from its LEDs (even without turning it apart and cleaning).
Preliminary conclusions:
- when you're buying some Chinese fireworks, please make sure they're certified of safety standards compliance;
- never let suspicious low-quality devices on AC power out of view, or they can catch fire;
- for emergency cases, it's better to have at least a metal bucket full of sand in your apartment.
To be continued (?)
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