Tag: inthemail

InTheMail | Voltlog #398

Welcome to a new Voltog, Happy New Year and what other better video to start the year with, than a genuine InTheMail to feed that need for new and interesting electronics. Just a quick heads-up, I’ve left the most interesting item in today’s mailbag to be presented last but trust me it’s worth watching till the end if you like to keep your electronics workbench clean.

Let’s start with this set of replacement foam pads for these Sennheiser headphones. I’ve had these for a long time, never used them that much but as with all headphone cushions, they started to disintegrate after a few years and I feel bad letting these go into the trash, knowing that they are perfectly good headphones. So I decided to buy a replacement foam pad set to repair them and maybe give them to someone that needs a pair of headphones so that we’ll get maybe at least another couple of years out of this good product. That’s how I generally feel about products that have served me well, they don’t deserve to end up in a landfill, how do you feel about that? Let me know in the comments below and if you find yourself needing some replacement foam pads for your headphones, check out the links I’ve placed in the description of this video to find some for your particular model.

Next up I have some tactile switches, these are just generic ones that I got from aliexpress, they are right angle through hole mounting style and I’m using these on my esp32 thermostat valve controller board and this is a suggestion that I got from a viewer in the comments, because it makes the switch easily accessible through the openings in the din rail enclosure. These are likely a clone of the SKHH series from ALPS because I used the footprints for those, found in the standard Kicad library and they match. Even though I got them for cheap, they seem to be of decent build quality but getting them from aliexpress is always a gamble because on the next batch they might not be the same so I’ll be using these for my prototypes but I’m looking for alternatives from a known supplier to eliminate any quality issues.

InTheMail | Voltlog #393

Let’s start the mailbag with this tiny PIR motion sensor switch. This little guy is rated for 12V up to 2A load so it’s got an input, you supply 12V to that and it acts like a switch for the output with a 2A load capability. It comes with these connectors witches makes me think it’s meant to be used as part of led installations, maybe for custom furniture or cabinets because it has this mounting bracket and that’s probably how I am going to use it, to light-up this warm white LED tape that I have built into a piece of furniture. This is rated for indoor use only so don’t go using this outdoors as water will get in and corrode the electronics inside. Same as usual links for all of the items shown in this video will be placed in the description below and while you are down there, why not smash that like button, because it really helps increase the chances of this video being seen by more people, it’s just how the algorithm works.

Next up I got some transparent heatshrink, I needed some of this recently so I got two different thicknesses, Sometimes you just want to be able to see through the heatshrink part or you might just want to insulate some metal rod without adding any color so the easiest way to do that is to use some transparent heatshrink.

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.

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 

InTheMail | Voltlog #373

Welcome to a new InTheMail, the series that will touch both your passion for electronics and your bank account at the same time. And I have some news regarding the import of our packages from aliexpress into the EU. As you may have noticed Aliexpress started collecting VAT according to the new IOSS system and you would expect that an EU member country would have the system in place to process these packages because you know they asked for this system, they created it so you would expect the would have the system ready. 

But it’s a complete shit show over here, there is a double taxation happening, the Postal company here slaps a 1.6 EUR fee for processing packages and also collects VAT according to the value declared by the sender on the package, even though you already paid VAT and you can prove you paid it with the invoice that Aliexpress provides.

When asked why we have to pay the VAT twice, the Postal service said, they have the system in place to process packages coming through the IOSS system automatically and avoid double taxation but the customs authority doesn’t have it’s system ready, hence the issue of double taxation. And you can guess what the customs authority said when I asked them why we are being taxed twice, they said, it’s all good, we shouldn’t be taxed because tax has been collected already and yet the postal service is not releasing the packages until the fees are paid.

It seems that right now, the only way to avoid double taxation is if you do the import papers yourself or if you use a 3rd party company that offers those services but their fees start at about 50EUR per import and the forms aren’t exactly easy to do so yeah, cheapest option right now is to just pay the postal service fees and get the packages. I’ll share some more info once I have it but right now, at least here in Romania, it’s as bad as it can be and the authorities don’t seem to have a solution. But enough ranting, let’s get on with the items I received.

InTheMail | Voltlog #369

Welcome to a new InTheMail, the series that will touch both your passion for electronics and your bank account at the same time and I must say that I’m worried about the future of mailbag videos given the new EU regulations on imports from China which are going into effect starting 1st of July here in Romania, I’ll have to do a separate rant video on the subject but there might not be any mailbag videos going forward.

I’m gonna start with this mailbag with a brand that you are already familiar with here on the channel, it’s difficult for me to pronounce this, I don’t know how it should be pronounced but these guys make affordable adhesives and related products. I haven’t had this one before, it’s the first time I’m getting the Kafuter K-5203 which is a thermal adhesive and to be more specific, their description is reinforced thermally conductive silicone elastomer with great adhesion, insulation and dissipation. And to give you some numbers they claim it can withstand variations of temperature between -60°c and +280°c and it has a shear strength of 30kg/cm3. The thermal conductivity is 1.2 watts per meter kelvin. I don’t need to tell you how to use this, it’s good for attaching stuff to a heatsink, in general stuff that also needs some form of bonding to the heatsink.

InTheMail | Voltlog #366

Welcome to a new InTheMail, the series that will touch both your passion for electronics and your bank account at the same time. I’m gonna start with this EVA hard carry case, it has a rather strange shape but, this will fit one of these budget label printers perfectly. And if you are like me, using the label printer in the lab, where everything is clean, it might be perfectly fine to just keep it in a drawer but at some point a friend asked for my help to figure out the networking wires in a building, basically to identify every wire, crimp it and install some networking gear. Well when you start doing stuff like that you need a carry case for your label printer because it’s gonna get dirty, there will be dust and grime and the LCD might get scratched, you might want to toss this into your tools bag so that’s when I decided to order one of these hard carry cases, they’re fairly inexpensive so well worth getting one.A higher price printer might get one by default from the manufacturer but for these discount $30 printers you can’t really expect to get one from the manufacturer so you need to order it separately.

InTheMail | Voltlog #363

Welcome to a new InTheMail, the series that will touch both your passion for electronics and your bank account at the same time. I’m gonna start with this little board which is an ethernet shield type of module which can bring TCP/IP connectivity to your project via a SPI bus. So this could mean any microcontroller that is able to talk over SPI to this chip can become internet connected. Now ofcourse these days the ESP32 is pretty popular, everyone is using wifi but for the highest reliability in network, wired connections are still preferred and there are also other microcontrollers that do not have a built-in ethernet interface so you need to add it externally with something like this. It’s fairly inexpensive so I think it’s worth keeping one of these around however interfacing to it might not be as trivial so it’s best to stick to the platforms that already have libraries written for this chip, like Arduino. Same as always, you will find a link to this in the description below the video.

InTheMail | Voltlog #360

Welcome to a new InTheMail, the series that will touch both your passion for electronics and your bank account at the same time. For this video we have a wide selection of items and we’re gonna start with this jewelers magnifying glass, I’ve had one of these for years and it’s been great for reading small numbers of chips but recently I found myself needing more than one between the home lab and the office so I got a second one. Here is an example of how I would use this to read some very small numbers. Of Course I have the microscope but I usually keep that unplugged and covered to protect from dust so for reading a chip number it’s just easier to use one of these. Same as always if you are interested in getting one, you will find links in the description below the video.

InTheMail | Voltlog #354

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 this video with an item I do not recommend buying, this is a power meter that has been sitting in my mailbag basket for over a year now if not more and these past few days I powered it on for the first time, I realized it’s not very useful, because the accuracy is pretty bad. It does claim to measure up to 140A which would probably make it okay for some high current measurements and that was the original reason I got this to measure to brushless motor power consumption at various loads but if we’re talking about currents below 5A the accuracy is pretty crappy so I wouldn’t recommend you get something like this.