Lithium – VoltLog

Voltlog #285 – Is a Cheap Cordless Power Drill Any Good?

Is a cheap cordless power drill any good? That is a question I’ve been asking myself for a while now because I was in the market for a cordless power drill. I can get a well known brand like Makita which sells a kit with two 18V 3Ah batteries, the drill and a charger for about $200. The thing is I’m using a tool like this maybe once every 3-4 months for a couple of drills, generally soft materials or maybe to assemble some new piece of furniture and I don’t feel like spending $200 for a tool that’s not going to be used and worked for that money.

So I started looking at alternatives, there are the clones of Makitas and Dewalts available for probably less than half the price of the genuine stuff but why go that route? I don’t care about what’s written on the label and the color of the drill. One thing I care about is the shipping of the item, preferably I would like something that can be ordered and shipped from the EU for fast delivery and no additional taxes being paid for customs.

So I started looking at Chinese brands, this particular model got my attention on banggood.com, they call this a 36V cordless drill, it comes with two batteries and it’s available from a warehouse in the EU.

Voltlog #257 – ESP32 PIR Motion Sensor With Deep Sleep & MQTT (revB part2)

In this video I’m gonna show the second revision of my esp32, battery powered PIR motion sensor. This second revision contains some optimizations to improve deep sleep power consumption as well as to fix some of the errors I had the first revision of the pcb.

Voltlog #244 – InTheMail

Welcome to a new InTheMail, the series that will touch both your passion for electronics and your bank account at the same time.

Voltlog #240 – ESP32 PIR Motion Sensor With Deep Sleep & MQTT

Welcome to a new Voltlog, in this video I’m gonna show you how I designed and built this board which functions as an esp32 based, battery powered PIR motion sensor. So I started by designing the circuit, I used some common building blocks, I added the ESP32 with it’s bypass caps, some test points and the programming circuit with auto-reset, I then added some connection points for the PIR sensor, an RGB LED because why not have a nice way to signal this is one of those very small digital RGB leds, it’s just 20x20mm, it’s connected to 3.3V even though it’s only rated for 5V so I’m hoping this is going to work even on 3.3, it’s also worth having a temperature/humidity sensor to also sense that in whichever room the node will be placed and finally the power supply circuit which is a simple low dropout regulator with an 18650 battery as the input.

I did not include a battery charger circuit on this module, because I wanted to keep things simple, I’ll have a battery socket so I can just remove the 18650 cell and charge it separately plus the whole circuit should run in sleep for extended periods of time giving me a long operating time so i wouldn’t have to charge the battery too often.

Once the schematic was finished I did the board layout in a hurry so it’s not exactly pretty or optimized

but I tried to move the esp32 antenna to the side, to place the PIR sensor in the top side as the module will probably sit vertically, I tried to place the temperature sensor in the bottom side to keep it away from any components that might get hot and also placed some isolation slots for the same reason.

You should check-out revB of this board, I made some improvements present in the video below.

Voltlog #109 – ISDT Q6 Plus 300W Battery Charger Review – It’s well built!

Today I am taking a look at the ISDT Q6 Plus, a 300W battery charger. I was pleasantly surprised by the build quality of the device.

Product page here and some pictures from the teardown below:

Voltlog #103 – InTheMail

Today we are taking a look at my electronics related mail, I’ve got a bunch of random stuff and links for all of them are provided below the video.

Voltlog #100 – InTheMail

Welcome to a new voltlog, today we are taking a look at my electronics mailbag items and it’s episode number 100 so I would like to take the time to thank you guys for your support. Every view like & share I get from you motivates me to continue producing these videos.

Here are links for all the items shown in the video in their order of appearance:

Voltlog #93 – Bluetooth Receiver Weekend Update

This week I build a DIY bluetooth 4.0 audio receiver. I used the CSR8635 bluetooth module, a recycled lithium battery cell that I got out of an old laptop, a TP4056 battery charging & protection IC and a DIY PCB I made myself.

Here are links to these items if you plan to build one yourself:

Or you can just buy a ready-made bluetooth receiver.

Voltlog #92 – InTheMail

Welcome to another Voltlog, today we’ll be taking a look at what I’ve been receiving in the mail recently. As much as you guys like watching this stuff, I also like getting all these electronic modules from China. I find it interesting every time I get my hands on a new circuit.

As always I appreciate feedback and discussions in the comments section below, please let me know what you think and don’t forget to like the video, that is always a clear indication of what kind of content you guys like seeing.

Here are links to all the items shown in this video:

Voltlog #88 – InTheMail

Hello and welcome to a new InTheMail, the series that everybody seems to enjoy, myself included.

Here is a list with links to all the items shown in this video: