I am taking apart an Aurum motion sensing light fixture because its sensor and control circuitry has been damaged by water and no longer performs correctly. The pair of lighting modules still light up on command, though, so I'm hopeful I can find another use for them elsewhere. Let's see what's inside.

Based on my understanding of the sensor circuit, each of these two pods are capable of functioning as standalone 120V AC lights. White wire for neutral, black wire for live, and green wire for ground.

Supplying power lights up this little yellow circle of bright white LEDs, roughly one centimeter in diameter. It's such a small surface area for a bright light source, especially relative to the volume of the rest of this pod. What is all that volume used for?

Like the sensor pod, a single fastener holds the elbow joint together and is easily disassembled.

Next is a trio of fasteners, easy enough to remove to let us see what's inside the cylinder.

The answer: mostly air.

I had expected to see some AC to DC power conversion circuitry and was surprised to see such emptiness. The ground wire screws to the metal enclosure, but the live and neutral wires kept going to the front of the pod. There's nothing else except access to three more screws.

Loosening those three screws released the front of the pod.

The plastic front was originally clear, but now yellowed and clouded with age. Moving it out of the way gives us a clear look at the LED array.

Cranking my lens to "Super Macro" mode enabled this picture, showing an array of 6 * 7 = 42 LEDs all wired in series. That would require north of 120V DC to drive, a pretty close match for rectified 120V AC. But I haven't seen that rectifier yet.

Removing the oval plastic cover revealed this LED module in COB (chip on board) form factor. Made by Paragon LED, this compact circuit board accepts 120V AC power directly on its pads labeled L (line) and N (neutral). From there it takes care of everything else necessary to convert that power to light.

The second-biggest module (after the LED array itself) is this BT10S rectifier from HY Electronics, converting 120V AC power to DC and sending it onward to the LED driver somewhere under a black blob.

The Paragon LED module is fastened to the metal can with a gray square of soft sticky material. This must be a thermally conductive adhesive pad. And thus I have my answer to why we need a big metal can to support less than one square centimeter of LED: the COB needs a hefty heat sink.

Now that I have my answer, the next question is... what do I do with it? I don't know yet, but I can write down some notes about the constraints involved.