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 little guy, it’s a pulse oximeter. The model number, at least on the packaging, is YK-82C with a pretty recent date code as well, September 2020. So I got this pulse oximeter to keep around cause during these times, I think it’s a good idea to have such a device to monitor the level of oxygen in your blood, you know just in case you have an unfortunate event with well you know what, let’s not name it. I think this particular model is pretty nice, they also include an EVA carry case. It doesn’t come loaded with batteries but it uses 2 x AAA batteries which is nice. Single press to turn it on, it will auto power-off if there is no finger present for taking measurements, that’s pretty nice. Short press of the switch will cycle through a few different display modes in a couple of orientations, as we can see it uses one of those popular two color OLED displays.
Tag: Electronics Mailbag
InTheMail | Voltlog #334
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 rather big development board based on an STM32F407 microcontroller. This particular microcontroller has 512K of flash memory and 192K of ram which should be enough to cover most needs. What I liked about this development board is that it comes loaded with peripheral interfaces like CAN bus, RS232, RS485, Ethernet, USB, SD Card and a bunch of IO so you can pretty much build any project you can think of. I’m particularly interested in the CAN interfaces so I’m planning to have a play with those.
While the product might be available from different sellers at different prices, there might even be different variations of this board I will place a link in the description to the seller where I got mine because it was the only one that offered a support pack for the board which contains schematics, documentation, example code, it even contains like a bundle of keil compiler with a keygen which ofcourse I’m not going to use, that would be illegal but you get the point, the seller will offer you a download link for this pack which is like 1.7Gb worth of documentation so I highly recommend it. It also ships the boards in these cheap plastic carry cases which are great for protection during transport as well as storage afterwards.
InTheMail | Voltlog #329
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 these quick connectors, these are a 2 input to 4 output type and they can be useful if you want to split a two wire pair, into multiple pairs and have those connected without having to solder wires or twist them together. They are rated for 600V 32A and can take a wire with a diameter between 0.08 and 4mm but as always take these specs with a grain of salt and don’t push them to their limit if you want to stay on the safe side. What I like is that they also have a couple of mounting holes so you could attach these to a panel.
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.