InTheMail – Page 4

Unexpected InTheMail | Voltlog #325

Welcome to this impromptu video, as you can tell I am not in the lab, I’m actually taking a hike in the beautiful Carpathian mountains in a remote area which is actually bear territory so I need to be careful but here is what I found in my path this looks like an esd bag which two lcd panels inside.

As you may know, due to travel restrictions this spring I was not able to do the electronics components harvest in the outdoors which is a bummer, but finding stuff like this certainly makes me happy, this could make our friend Marco Reps jealous as he usually finds just capacitors in the German fields.

So these look like a couple of 2.0 inch panels let’s see what we got here, they are based on the ST7789V driver, 240*320 resolution, IPS panel with a 12 pin, solderable type FPC connection. I mentioned this before, I am working on a replacement open source control panel for the Gophert NPS1601 and this is one of the options I was considering a few months ago when I ordered these.

InTheMail | Voltlog #324

Welcome to a new InTheMail, the series that will touch both your passion for electronics and your bank account at the same time. We have a selection of different items received in this mailbag, I’m gonna start with this set of replacement cassette tapes for my label printer. You’ve seen me order these before but now I got some different variations which I thought would be interesting to try: I have Black on clear which would be nice for sticking on a white surface and have only the black text visible. I have some standard black on white cause I use that everywhere, this is white on clear tape which would be good for sticking on a black surface to have just the white text visible, white on black which could be general purpose or for sticking on dark surfaces and one that seemed very interesting security tape black on white so I’m guessing this could be used like a seal?

InTheMail | Voltlog #323

Welcome to a new InTheMail, the series that will touch both your passion for electronics and your bank account at the same time. This one will be focused on 3D Printing because as you know I recently got a new 3d printer, the creality ender 3 PRO and that means new upgrades because why would you get a 3d printer other than constantly work on it and upgrade it. That 3d printing that everyone is talking about is like secondary stuff, you will primarily work on the printer itself once you get it.

Let’s start with the most important upgrade, this is the SKR Mini E3 V2.0 which is the latest version of this 32 bit motherboard that is a plug & play upgrade for the Ender 3. It comes loaded with features like Trinamic silent stepper drivers, it supports dual Z axis and enough memory and processing power to support every feature you would want to enable from Marlin. As far as I know this even comes loaded with the right firmware, it’s a relatively new release of marlin so it’s truly a plug & play solution.

InTheMail | Voltlog #321

Welcome to a new InTheMail, the series that will touch both your passion for electronics and your bank account at the same time. We have a selection of different items received in this mailbag, I’m gonna start with this GPS module, the model number for this is ZX612 and it’s part of the Chinese gps trackers family, I think it uses a similar protocol to the relay gps tracker that I showed in a previous video and possibly connect to the same Chinese web server for data collection which poses the usual privacy risks but as I’ve shown in Voltlog #274, using a raspberry pi you can setup your own gps tracking server.

InTheMail | Voltlog #317

Welcome to a new InTheMail, the series that will touch both your passion for electronics and your bank account at the same time. We have a selection of different electronics related items in this mailbag video and I’m going to start with this 2.2 inch TFT panel which I got for the Gopher NPS1601 project, as you may know I am working together with other people to produce an open-source plug&play replacement control panel. This is a bit of a spoiler but something like this 2.2 inch panel is an option we are considering with the biggest decision factor being available space on the front panel, as you know the NPS1601 has quite a compact form factor and there are other things that need to fit in there like rotary encoders and output jacks.

This particular panel has the ILI9225 driver IC and apparently 176×220 pixels resolution. When I ordered this it was labeled differently with ILI9341 and 240×320 resolution so they must have made a mistake when shipping this to me. After a bit of googling, it appears there are indeed two variants of this module floating around, they look almost identical, same form factor but use different lcd panels. This is one of those situations where Murphy got me right when I needed to get this part faster and couldn’t wait for anymore delays. Luckily I have another order placed a few weeks after this one so I’ll wait and see how that one shows up.

InTheMail | Voltlog #311

Welcome to a new InTheMail, the series that will touch both your passion for electronics and your bank account at the same time. We have a selection of different items in this mailbag video and before we get started I would like to mention that packages started flowing in around 1st of May and things are moving, certainly not as before but there is some movement at least and I hope you guys are benefiting from the same improvement where you are located.

I’m gonna start with this multi-functional charger from LiitoKala, it’s model number Lii-402 and I actually have another one of their chargers but it’s the model with an LCD. I’ve been using that one for the past few years, it’s been working great but I needed a second one to increase the number of cells I can charge at the same time. I picked a simpler model this time, with just some LED indicators, it’s good enough for me, I mostly just plug in the cells and let them sit in there for a few hours before I return and take them out so I don’t usually check the information on that screen anyway.

This model takes a micro usb input 5V 2A so those 10W can then be distributed as mentioned on the packaging, 0.5A times 4 or something in between if you charge less cells at the same time. It can charge Ni-MH, Li-ion, Li-Fe and the battery slots are universal, they can hold a bunch of different types of cells so it’s a pretty useful charger to have. I got this one from banggood because it was in the EU warehouse but you can probably get it cheaper if you are willing to wait 1-2 months for delivery from China.

InTheMail (Survival Gear) | Voltlog #309

Welcome to a new InTheMail, my usual introductory line would say this is the series that will touch both your passion for electronics and your bank account at the same time but in this episode it’s not about electronics, it’s mostly some outdoor / camping / surviving gear that I got for my adventures and I think some of you may find this interesting, especially as our social behavior is changing now and during this summer we might spend more time in the nature.

I’m gonna start with this paracord rope, it’s 4mm wide, 30 meters long or 100ft with 7 inner strands. It’s rated for 550 pounds or 250Kg minimum breaking strength so this would work for anything when you go outdoors, tying stuff around your camp, tying stuff for transport, but obviously not recommended for anything where your life might depend on it. I try to keep this stuff in my backpack whenever I go camping because it’s pretty light and compact and you never know when you need to improvise and tie something down. The particular seller where I got this offers it in 250 different colors and styles so there is plenty to choose from.

InTheMail | Voltlog #304

Welcome to a new InTheMail, the series that will touch both your passion for electronics and your bank account at the same time. We have a selection of different items in this mailbag video and before we get started I would like to mention that during the past 3-4 weeks packages have almost stopped arriving here in Romania. I’ve been getting maybe 1 or 2 delivered per week. Even packages from Germany have been sitting for weeks before moving between warehouses so I was wondering how things are going where you guys are living? Let me know in the comments below. Hopefully things will get better as many countries are trying to restart the economy in May.

The first item is one you’ve seen before on this channel, it’s a 7 inch magic arm clone from China. The original magic arm from manfrotto is about 100 EUR and there is no doubts it’s better built, but I need a few of these to hold various stuff around the workbench, LED lights, to hold the phone in front of various instrument panels and it would add up quickly if I were to get the original.

These replicas from China are good enough for what I’m doing, they’re inexpensive and if you are curious how these work, Bigclive did a video recently, he showed how one of these works inside so check out his video if you are curious about that. The nice thing is that you have a single knob that you need to turn to lock or release the whole system and you can find these in a variety of sizes.

InTheMail | Voltlog #301

Welcome to a new InTheMail, the series that will touch both your passion for electronics and your bank account at the same time. Today’s video will be an automotive special, meaning, the items shown today are most likely intended to be used for your car. I ordered a bunch of this stuff and I thought it would be nice if I kept it all together into one video.

So let’s start with this reversing camera kit, inside we have the camera module and some long wires so you can run them up to your display or head unit. I went for this 45 degree style of camera and with white enclosure because I plan to install this on my wife’s car which is painted white and I figured going for this style of enclosure and mounting would integrate it better with the paint of the car and it would be less obvious, like you would barely notice there is something changed in the back of the car.

But this does come with some limitations, you would have to install this on a flat, horizontal surface, parallel to the road, because the camera is angled for that mounting position and you will likely end up seeing too much of the road or too much of the sky if you install it otherwise. In terms of image sensor, when you order one of these, if you go for the cheapest you will get a crappy sensor with poor low light capability so I spent a little extra and picked a SONY CCD.

Voltlog #298 – InTheMail

Welcome to a new InTheMail, the series that will touch both your passion for electronics and your bank account at the same time. Before I get started I’m gonna take a second to remind you to subscribe to the channel and hit the bell notification icon because that’s the only way you will know for sure when I upload new videos.

I’m going to start this mailbag with a lamp base, this is a retro style E27 lamp base, it was supposed to be this antique brass look, I must say it looks browner in the images, in reality it’s more of a gray color. It doesn’t feel super high quality, the metal is pretty thin so you’ll probably need to handle it with care. It’s very light and I think they mention it’s aluminium in the product description. It has this built in switch, which is continuous rotation, it has this nice positive click, I quite like it and it’s useful to have the switch built-in because if I were to add an external switch it would be pretty hard to find a vintage looking one locally.

I’m probably going to use this as it is, with it’s base sitting flat on the table but using the provided hardware you could install this on a wall as well, you might even extend the socket from the base using some copper pipe piece or you could install this on the ceiling and drop a wire from the base to the socket.