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CanLite revD And The Global Chip Shortage | Votlog #390

Welcome to a new Voltlog, in this video I’m gonna talk about the new CanLite revision D which is now ready to be ordered on my Tindie store and you’ll find a link to my Tindie store in the description below. Yes I am already at rev.D for these boards and that’s partly due to the ongoing global chip shortage which forces me to switch to a different switch with every new batch that I manufacture but I’ll get into that later, first if you don’t know what CanLite is let me tell you a few words about this board.

The idea for this board started back when I first experimented interfacing with the CANBUS for various automotive modules like the instrument cluster, the CAN gateway. The parking sensor module, the multimedia, I wanted to see what kind of messages get transmitted on the CAN bus network, if and how I can intercept and modify those or maybe insert my own messages so basically hacking on the CAN BUS network of my car.

I did a whole video on the subject a year ago voltlog #342 which I will link on screen if you haven’t seen that and you’re interested in the subject check it out.

So I wanted to create this little board that could be installed in a car and perform various functions on the CanBus, I chose the ESP32 as main processing unit because that’s plenty of processing power for the task on hand, it’s also cheap, it has wifi and built-in CAN peripherals so it was a logical choice for me to use it.

I still needed to add an external CAN transceiver to generate the differential voltage levels for the actual physical link and while I was there I also threw in an automotive grade buck regulator and a couple of automotive grade high-side switches just in case I needed to switch a load, something like a light or a motor, or whatever you might need cause these automotive high-side switches are pretty robust and you can drive pretty much anything you want with them.

And this brings me to the reason for revD, I’m sure you are aware of the ongoing global chip shortage and how car manufacturers have to stop their manufacturing plants because they can’t get the chips they need.. Well, guess where that left with my automotive high-side switches and automotive-buck regulator?

Yeah not a great choice of parts when it comes to availability, I mean, January 2023? That’s like 14 months away just for the buck regulator, all while people keep emailing me constantly to ask about the availability of the CanLite boards. The same thing could be said about the high-side switches I was using, they couldn’t be found anywhere and that’s not the only problem.

You can hardly find any alternative parts either, I’ve spent hours and hours trying to find replacements on Digikey and mouser and all I could find is low stock of parts that cost 10 times as much and come in much larger packages, but in the end my efforts paid off and I managed to find these, the BTS452T from infineon and although these have a lower maximum switch current, I had to settle for these, I mean 1.8A per channel is still plenty of current to be useful and we still get the nice features like over temp protection, over-current protection and general transient protection that these automotive switches feature.

I also had to go for a new inductor, which was slightly different, because that wasn’t available in stock either and don’t get me started on the lack of standardization when it comes to these surface mount inductor package, it’s like every time I need to use an inductor I also have to design a new footprint cause they are never the same exact size.

10 Gift Ideas For Electrical Engineers In 2021 | Voltlog #389

If you are an electrical or electronics engineer then you probably noticed how non-technical people around you are struggling when it comes to choosing a gift for you and if you are a non-technical person and you need to buy a gift for an engineer, then this video is for you so stick around.

Unlike other similar videos which will generally recommend gift ideas without actually testing them, I’m going to recommend stuff that I personally own and have used for enough time to know if it’s any good or not. For all of the stuff shown in this video there will be links in the description to Banggood, Amazon or Aliexpress which are the usual places where I do my shopping and I decided to release this video a little early because there is the 11.11 shopping festival on Aliexpress and Banggood and you might get some nice discounts on these orders.

IV-18 VFD Clock Kit Assembly | Votlog #388

Welcome to a new Voltlog, in this video I will show you how I assembled this VFD tube based clock, I like the looks of this clock very much it’s kind of steampunk type of style and because this is a kit, it’s widely accessible to anyone, you don’t need very specific tools to get this assembled and I believe anyone can put one together. As a bonus this clock, although it doesn’t include one in the kit, it can support connecting a GPS receiver for syncing the clock and on top of that you get a remote control so you can control it from a distance which is pretty neat if you ask me.

I got this particular kit from banggood and you’ll find a link in the description of the video if you are interested in getting one, I think it’s important to watch this video before you start the assembly because you might find some inadvertencies between the provided user manual and the actual kit that you receive.

This is what you will receive in the box and this is pretty much all needed for a functional clock, if you are missing the stuff shown here you might be unable to complete your clock build. Like I previously said the GPS module is optional but depending on where you live you might not get GPS reception in an apartment building for example so it might be useless to you anyway.

Best T245 JBC Clone Handle Teardown | Votlog #387

Welcome to this short Voltlog where I plan to take a look inside this JBC clone soldering iron handle. This is the handle that came with the Best-933B JBC clone station, I reviewed this in Voltlog #340 a year ago and I’ve been using this station as my main soldering tool for the past year. I plan to do a future video where I tell you my opinion about this station after 1 year of usage but the short story is obvious due to the fact that it’s my main soldering tool, I like using it.

The soldering handle that I received with this station had a problem since day one, first use, when I inserted the soldering tip into the handle I could kind of feel like there was something wrong, there wasn’t a clear stop when pushing it in and after powering on the station the screen was flickering, it couldn’t read the temperature and this cable got hot which is a good sign that something is shorted inside the handle.

I’m not sure if I am to blame because I might have pushed the tip too hard into the handle the first time. It’s also possible that it had a factory defect inside the handle.. Other users of this station don’t have this problem but long story short ever since I got it, I had to be really careful when switching tips because I needed to seat the tip very accurately in a certain position, otherwise it would short circuit causing the station to go crazy.

InTheMail | Voltlog #386

Welcome to a new InTheMail, the series that will touch both your passion for electronics and your bank account at the same time. Checkout the items I received in this mailbag which include: raspberry pi CM4 heatsink, Mains powered PIR sensor, Parachute cord mini carabiner, Nylon tactical mini hook, DIN rail enclosure, transparent din rail enclosure, Dremel tool key, Drilling dust collector, OV2640 camera for esp32-cam, Molybdenum diamond wire, 50ohm in-line BNCload.

Get Almost Unlimited Range With This UHF Repeater | Voltlog 385

Welcome to a new project video, today I’m gonna be presenting this compact UHF repeater that I built recently and the story starts earlier this year when I got my HAM radio license and since I only have this baofeng radio, I was limited to the range and functionality of this radio or this local community maintained repeater for a national network which sometimes was offline or sometimes because of my location I couldn’t get a good signal. Hence why I decided to build a repeater.

To give you a general idea of how the whole system works, this repeater has an analog radio side which interfaces to your radio via UHF or VHF depending on the type of radio module you use. On the other end, you need a way of interfacing that analog radio traffic to a digital network that interconnects similar nodes into a big network.

That part is usually handled by a SBC, single board computer and people have used raspberry pi’s for that but there are also alternatives based on orange pi single board computers, like the one that I built here. Depending on the cost of these SBCs, their availability and the software that you plan to run, you might have good reasons to choose one or the other.

For example I really wanted to load a ready made, functional, OS image on my repeater, so I don’t have to manually install and configure everything. The nice people from the Rolink community have done the hard work and built this orange pi zero OS image which contains everything you need so it made sense for me to design my repeater based on an orange pi zero because that meant less software work for me. The software that runs on the orangepi zero and makes everything possible is Svxlink and this is open source software which evolved from the old echolink software. I encourage you to checkout their webpage to learn more about it but for the purpose of this video all you need to know is that it handles the interconnect to and from the network turning your simple node into a repeater.

In terms of repeater hardware, the most popular radio module is the SA818 manufactured by NiceRF a Chinese manufacturer and if we take a quick look at the datasheet we noticed this is a small compact walkie talkie module, it contains everything needed to accomplish walkie talkie functionality up to 1W output power. It comes in 3 different frequency ranges, I opted for the UHF version 400-480MHz range, but you can choose that based on your radio capability or how crowded the local traffic is. The module can be purchased for cheap from Aliexpress, directly from the NiceRF shop and they provide excellent support, for example they have emailed me the datasheet immediately after purchasing the module. Links for this are in the description below.

DytSpectrumOwl PCB Inspection Thermal Camera | Voltlog 384

Welcome to another Voltlog product review and in this video we are taking a look at the DytSpectrumOwl PCB thermal camera and let me tell you from the start that if you do a lot of PCB repairs or if you do any kind of product thermal characterization, your life would be so much better if you’ve had a tool like this and I’ll show you why in a few minutes.

The company that makes this product is DianYang Technology and I guess the name of the product is DyTSpectrumOwl model number CA-10, this is a 260×200 pixel resolution IR camera sensor with a 25 fps refresh rate and manual adjustable focus lens which allows it to focus from 20mm up to 2m, that 20mm close range focus and the 25hz refresh rate are very interesting features and I’ll talk more about that in a second.

I received the unit very well packed in a double cardboard box and all I have to do is to fix the vertical stand to the base and attach the camera. While doing this I couldn’t help to notice the very good construction quality, they’ve used anodized aluminium and metal parts everywhere, everything is nicely machined, rounded corners, really nice attention to detail, like for example , the work surface has an insulating rubber coating which would prevent shorting something on the PCB you are testing and on the bottom side they have nice rubber bumpers to prevent it from sliding around. Inside the box they include a small screwdriver that you use for attaching the vertical stand to the base, a couple of spare screws and a USB type-C to USB Type-A data cable.

Camera has a USB Type-C interface, looks like the shell is made from plastic and painted the same metal gray color and you get a single on/off button with a status LED on the top. On the sensor side you get this big focus adjustment wheel and we’ll play with that later on when we get to look at a PCB but since we are talking about PCBs let me introduce the sponsor of this video

Raised to its maximum setting, you get about 15cm of clearance between the work surface and the camera and that’s plenty if you ask me and you also get the option of moving the stand to the left of the work surface by using these mounting points. There are a few adjustments on the standm you can raise or lower the camera by sliding on the vertical rod but you can also do fine adjustment with this thumbwheel at the top. Then you can move back and forward from this adjustment and you can also adjust the angle of the camera so you can pretty much get this into every angle you want but I would probably use this looking straight down at a PCB.

Tasmota ESP32 Floor Heating Valve Controller | Voltlog 383

Welcome to a new project video, today I’m gonna be presenting this 10 channel valve actuator controller which I built with the purpose of individually controlling the water circuits on my floor heating system. The best part is that this is based on an ESP32, it’s TASMOTA compatible so it should be very easy for me to integrate this into my HomeAssistant smart home system.

So like I mentioned, the need for such a valve actuator circuit started when I installed floor heating into my apartment and if you ask why i didn’t use one of the commercially available options: I don’t like them, they’re expensive and they typically only work with their closed source ecosystem, I wanted something that runs open-source so I can control and customize various aspects.

I have a total of 9 circuits and these circuits have different lengths and the rooms have different sizes so putting the same volume of water through all circuits is going to result in uneven heating. This issue can be mitigated by tuning the individual flow valves on the intake of each circuit but that setting seems to vary with the pressure it gets from the pump and doesn’t allow a fine granular control over the temperature of that room which is what I want to achieve.

InTheMail | Voltlog #382

Welcome to a new InTheMail, the series that will touch both your passion for electronics and your bank account at the same time. Here is an example of how I am getting most of my packages lately, they’re bundled like this and forwarded through the EU so they take a different route and don’t go through the normal customs import and taxation protocol and I’m fine with that because VAT has been paid at the sale point anyway there is no reason to pay any additional handling fee.

Let’s start with piercer probes and if you remember I have shown something similar in the past but they were simple piercing needle probes, I have used those, they work both for piercing wiring for probing and also for inserting into female thin profile connectors. Now I got these which are a variation because they contain the same very sharp needle but I think these are nicer because they can also hold the wire you are probing and there is less of a risk of stabbing yourself in the finger as it was the case with the simple ones. On the back they have the same standard 4mm banana insert so you can hook these up with your standard 4mm test leads. I quite like them so they will be a nice addition to my box of probing accessories which is this one

A Rant on Bad Datasheets | Voltlog 381

Welcome to this short video where I’m gonna rant about the quality of Chinese electronic component datasheets because for me it’s already the second time I’ve had trouble because of missing or incorrectly presented information.