Last year I bought a second one of these hanging flaming baskets from Spirit Halloween. This year, I put them out again and a couple of hours into the first night the newer one failed, completely.

Unimpressed, I brought it back down and took it apart. Inside was a very cheap 120 Vac to 12 Vac board, slightly modified from the standard part with the same part number to add a 12 Vdc output to drive the fan that blows the material up to emulate flames.

Given that I couldn’t get an exact matching part to replace the one that died, and that these are only about $25 to buy new, I decided that instead of fixing it, I would improve it.