inthemail – Page 4

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 | 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.

Voltlog #295 – Weekend Update

Welcome to a new Voltlog, this will be just a short weekend update video, to let you know what I’ve been doing in the past couple of weeks. So I’m staying at home and only going out for important stuff, which gave me more time to tinker and work on projects. I hope you are doing the same because social distancing is a good way to slow the spread of this disease.

One of the things I’ve been thinking of doing for a long time is a bench tool holder, the kind that will hold my tweezers, soldering iron tips, flux syringes, stuff like that. So far I’ve been keeping them in one of these pen holding cups but they fill up and it’s hard to grab the thing you need quickly. So I’ve started designing my own in Fusion 360, I included 6 deep pockets, 2 shallow ones in the front and 5 tubes for holding syringes.

The next thing I did with my 3d printer is related to the current pandemic, as you may know, medical staff in many countries which have been hit hard are lacking protective equipment, they just don’t have enough mask or suits or face shields, not to mention enough ventilators which are desperately needed for those in critical condition.

In parallel I’ve been designing the battery monitor circuit for the power drill I reviewed in Voltlog #285, this is the first revision of the PCB, the circuit works as expected but I’m still waiting on some parts to be delivered and I’ll do a separate video on this subject. It probably needs a second revision of the PCB because this one doesn’t quite fit in, the way I thought it will.

I also started designing a T10 automotive LED bulb. It’s using a linear constant current driver and some decent LEDs, because what I’m currently using in my car are the aliexpress bulbs which kinda start dying after a few months of usage. I’ll probably place an order for this panel today but who knows when I’ll receive it.

Voltlog #294 – InTheMail

Depending on which part of the world you live in, you might be dealing with the same isolation measures as I am, the government is recommending we stay inside as much as possible here in Romania, to avoid contact with other people. So that gives me more time to work on projects, learn new stuff and of course discover and order stuff from the internet.

I’m gonna start with this notebook which has a retro looking leather cover, I think it’s quite neat looking, I’m not sure if this is real leather or not, description just said leather. I always keep a notebook around the workbench, it can be useful for drafting a quick schematic, some dimensions or just for writing down some measurements. Another cool feature of this notebook is the binder style clips you have inside, which allow you to insert or remove paper and what’s even nicer is that you can find this type of paper with different grid styles and they’re very affordable.

Voltlog #293 – Buying From Banggood and Ebay Tips & Tricks

Welcome to a new Voltlog, this is a continuation of Voltlog #291 where I shared some tips and tricks about buying from Aliexpress, if you haven’t seen that video, I will link it on screen right now. Today I’m gonna share my experience with buying from Banggood or Ebay. These are my secondary buying channels, some of the stuff you see in my mailbag videos comes from Banggood or Ebay.