Welcome to a new Voltlog, as you may remember last year I did a summary of all the orders placed in 2018, related to electronics items, the stuff that I show in my InTheMail segment. I did that video because I was interested in knowing the numbers and how they evolve over time but the viewers responded as well, they provided feedback with their own approximate stats so this year I’m doing it again. Same as last year, please let me know in the comments if you have any stats on your own purchases.
Tag: Aliexpress
Voltlog #270 – 11.11 Shopping Festival Discounts Real or Fake?
Welcome to a new Voltlog, this will be just a short video, I want to talk about the prices and the discounts that we get on shopping festivals, because most of us think and myself included here, we think the price cuts we get for these shopping festivals are not actually true, we tend to think prices are inflated some time ahead only to be discounted on that day which makes them go back to roughly the same price they normally sell for.
Even in my past video with shopping suggestions Voltlog #269, I got such comments and I don’t blame people for thinking this, because like I said, I tend to think the same but I also want to find out the truth so what I did some time ago, beginning of September to be more precise, I save some screenshots of various items that I was interested in from A
liexpress.
Today it’s the 11th, the sale started so we’ll compare prices before and after, to see if the sellers actually raised their prices before the sale and are we really getting any discounts today.
Voltlog #269 – 11.11 Shopping Suggestions For Makers
Welcome to a new Voltlog, it’s November and that means the biggest shopping event happening in Asia is coming up, I’m talking about the 11th of november. There are some numbers published for last years event and it seems they registered more than 30 billion in 24 hours in sales, yes you heard right, billions. So it’s a very big event with nice discounts and opportunities for makers like us to get some new gear. That’s why I prepared this video which will be published 1-2 days before the event so you can get some ideas of stuff that you could purchase. I assembled a list, these are products that I’ve tested and used myself which I think are good value for money and a nice addition to any hobbyist lab.
Voltlog #265 – FT232H USB to JTAG/I2C/SPI Interface With Python & PyFtdi
Welcome to a new voltlog, today we’re going to be talking about this little board which I designed and assembled myself, it’s a breakout module for the FTDI FT232H which is a usb to serial converter but with a nice twist. This particular chip from FTDI has the built-in Multi-Protocol Synchronous Serial Engine (MPSSE short) which allows you to run a variety of synchronous serial protocols like JTAG, I2C, SPI or simple bit-banging of IOs. You can imagine it can be really useful to be able to interface with a sensor over I2C or SPI straight from your computer over USB through this interface. You wouldn’t need an arduino or other controller in the middle if you plan to do some data acquisition for example.
Voltlog #262 – Is This The Future of Our Hobby?
To be honest I didn’t think we were going to have services like these available so cheap so fast. I mean yes I know pcb prices have been so low in the past couple of years that it no longer makes sense to etch your own PCBs, unless you are in a big hurry. But having smt assembly service so cheap? Soon enough it would not make sense to hand assemble these boards because it would be equally cheap to have them assembled at JLCPCB
Voltlog #260 – How do you test usb to serial converters? (CP2103 vs CH340E vs FT232RL)
Welcome to a new Voltlog, today we’re comparing a few different serial to usb adapters and the discussion started ever since I showed the CH340E breakout board I designed in voltlog #249. People wanted to know if this CH340E affordable chip would perform similar to the well known FTDI or Silicon labs chips, and I’m thinking at high throughput and reliability here, the kind of application where you are sending lots of data, fast and you need it to be transferred reliably.
So today I’m going to compare the CH340E with a CP2103, and the FT232RL. I wasn’t sure what measurements to take and how to test these but I devised 2 testing methods.
Voltlog #238 – Finally Printing Shrink Tube Labels With A Brother Printer
As shown in the previous video I had to trick the printer to accept this type of cartridge by masking some of the micro switches it uses to detect the type of cartridge but that solved one problem and created another one. The text was now mirrored because that works out for regular label tape which gets printed on the inside of a transparent film. However for heatshrink where the label gets printed directly on the tube, it will end up reversed.
I’ve only tried one combination with the 3 micro-switches but some people suggested in the comments that I should try other switch combination and boy were they right because I did find another switch combination which causes the printer to accept the cartridge and mirror the text as well. So this is the right combination to use with my type of printer and this type of cartridge. The two bottom holes need to be opened, and only the single top hole needs to be covered. You can use a small piece of kapton tape like I did here.
Voltlog #237 – Can You Print Shrink Tube Labels With A Cheap Brother Printer?
Welcome to a new Voltlog, today we’ll have just a short video talking about label printers, I’m gonna show you this heat shrink type of label that you can get and it’s pretty useful to label wiring and how the manufacturers of these prevent you from using certain types of label cassettes in lower end printers.
In my case I am using a Brother PT-H107, this is a bottom of the range label printer, it was practically the cheapest I could find around here.
Voltlog #227 – Identifying Pure Nickel Strip vs Nickel Plated Steel
Welcome to a new Voltlog, if you’re a frequent viewer of my videos you’ve no doubt seen me build this spot welding machine that I use occasionally for building battery packs for my RC planes. I use this machines to create nice welding spots between nickel strips and the battery contacts. My battery packs do not exceed 20A passing through and that’s only in short bursts but there are people building higher current battery packs and so it’s important for them to be using pure nickel strips instead of nickel plated steel strips for making the links.
Voltlog #224 – InTheMail
Welcome to a new InTheMail, the series that will touch both your passion for electronics and your bank account at the same time. We’re gonna start with this small and modern looking remote control. I actually like how this feels, even though the cost was just $3 shipped it just feels well built, the quality of the plastic is nice, the buttons have a nice click and it comes pre-loaded with batteries.
You can then use this remote control to open the garage door or whatever you like to control. But do note that this will not work with all 433MHz remotes, because some remote controls employ some form of coding, to protect the signal from being easily cloned. Take for example the automotive key fobs, some of those work on 433MHz but you won’t be able to clone them with this remote. Nonetheless, useful for creating a copy of your garage door remote control or even better, you could hack this remove and integrate it into your car dash console on some of those unused button slots. That would be a cool project.