The even slightly more clever way to do it would be to use something like the Tiny13 microcontroller and a low on-resistance FET to pulse power to the LEDs. You could have it sense the battery voltage and adjust the duty cycle to give you consistent brightness as the batteries discharge, but without the need for an inductor, since you really don’t need to drive LEDs with DC.

However, that’s probably getting more fancy than is strictly necessary :)

In the instance of this heater, I seriously doubt that three things would come together to make this a forged labeling. 1) Walmart would not investigate the approval before stocking the item. 2) the heater as a whole having a holographic label on the cord and 3) that switch having the mark molded into the body.

Finally, let’s not forget that even if we assume that the marks are legit, that switch is still over 50% overloaded! No wonder it overheated and melted.

I’ve been watching the UL problem for years. I just chose to write about it now when I had a few spare minutes. As a neonist (someone who makes neon), I’ve had a particularly difficult time with them. Basically, they chose to issue standards about something in which they had not a clue. I treat a UL mark as something avoid with neon equipment unless the customer demands it and I can’t talk them out of it.

Then there’s the whole scam of the “UL approved shop” but that need a whole article of its own.

thanks for commenting.
John

One wonders whether the sale of such a falsely labeled product (assuming that you could even prove it) would subject the retailer to legal action[1]?

[1] I’m not a big fan of lawyers, but sometimes, the best way to get a big corporation’s attention is to hit them where it hurts. ;-)

Dave