There’s certainly a strange smell in there. I think it could be a mouse. Or possibly a squirrel.
What definitely has died are two of the LED striplights that I bought a couple of years ago. They’re quite common on that south American river shopping place: 40W 4′-ish LED batten lights that run on 240V without an external transformer. They’re very bright and quite low-profile, so handy in a workshop. In that respect they’re much better than the fluorescent tubes I had previously. Unfortunately they don’t seem very reliable.
I’ve replaced three so far that started flickering and eventually died after I’d ignored them for long enough and a fourth flickers very badly when I start up my table saw, though appears to be fine the rest of the time. Fortunately I’ve had a few replacements from the vendor, but it’s still a pain.
After replacing one this morning I decided to open it up to see what was inside. Not very much is the answer.
I’m guessing that what we have there is a low power transformer and rectification circuit. Actually, two of them, one for each strip of LEDs that make up the light. There’s no sign of component failure that I can see and it’s a bit of a mystery still that both strips of LEDs can fail in the same way at the same time, but I suspect the electrolytic capacitors (the purple components) are most likely to blame.
I bent them upwards so I could see the spec.
100V 68µF. I can order a few of those and swap them to see what happens. Shouldn’t be expensive.
Moving them also revealed what I think is likely to be a surface-mount bridge rectifier, but I’m unable to make out the part number because the printing is quite faint.
More on this when I get hold of the capacitors.