Reverse engineering is fun, first because you tear things down, second because your break it apart, and last but not least, because you explore others designs and ideas.
In today's post, I am writing about how I reverse engineered a dimmable LED light from IKEA which stopped working and was shouting out TEAR ME DOWN.
But before I start, here is a disclaimer, after the usual "dont do this at home", I love IKEA products and admit they are just Brilliant!
Here is the product
The top lid can be rotated about 10 degrees, which allows for adjusting the light diffusion pattern. You can start counting, Brilliance 1...
Ok, so, the first step was to open up the casing, this is done by prying the lid with a flat screw driver
Then removing three screws and pulling the LEDs PCB out.
Brilliance 2, the pass through connector is just smart, no wires mess up, and easy (and cheaper) assembly.
Now pulling the PCB
Ok, Brilliance 3, just how smart are those long connectors to the GX53 terminals, without soldering!!!
Here is the complete assembly breakdown
Anyway, time to for the real thing, lets look at the PCB and read it out
And the result after tracing all the traces
Awesome, we can already see the sections with just an initial rough sketch. Let us label it
Quite great result, only a single IC I could not identify, but I could guess it is a current driver.
Fantastic!
Have a good day everyone
