Welcome to a new Voltlog, this will be a rather short video cause I will only be addressing one short subject regarding the Riden RD6006 ripple noise. In my review of this power supply in Voltlog #284 I did measure the output ripple but that was measured while using a transformer to power the unit.
That transformer has very little output noise so the results we obtain can be considered best case scenarios but this may vary in practice, especially if you are using the recommended switch mode power supply. The output of that power supply may not be as clean as the one from the transformer so in this video I’m going to measure the output noise with the switch mode power supply installed.
I’m using the recommended NVVV 400W 60V 6.6A rated power supply, this is what RuiDeng officially recommends to use with their power supply kit. In Voltlog 284 part 3 I took a look inside this power supply so I will link that video on screen if you want to check it out.
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.
Welcome to a new Voltlog, if you’ve been watching the channel for a while you might know I’m a fan of the gopher power supply units, I think they are great value for money, they’re simple and they have good specs, in fact I reviewed their latest revision in Voltlog #255 and it had very low noise at the output, even though it is a switch mode power supply. They’re pretty compact, they don’t take up much space on the bench so what’s there not to like about these?
But in recent years there’s been another company which has slowly built-up a name among hobbyists due to their really low priced power supply modules, the name of the company is RuiDeng and they’ve been selling these compact switch mode power supply modules for $20 to $30 for years. They were not great specs, the quality was not great, you needed an external power supply unit but they had a bunch of functionality built into that color TFT display and they were cheap so everyone gave them a try
Now RuiDeng has developed and released a new model RD6006 which resembles a real bench power supply. It has a bigger front panel and it comes with a separate enclosure and power supply unit which are optional.
A while back in Voltlog #231 I took a look at a device called nitro obd2, it was this $2 OBD2 port dongle, which supposedly when plugged into your cars OBD2 port will enhance the performance by tuning the ECU. This was of-course a scam as I proved in the video by doing a teardown, the dongle did nothing but flash some LEDs. But there were still people who left some comments saying they we’re seeing performance improvements after using the $2 tuning gadget. Those are ofcourse false claims, maybe those people just don’t have a clue what’s going on, or maybe they’re the actual sellers offering these on ebay and aliexpress.
In this video we’ll take a look at the CJ720 car relay gps tracker, I’ll show you how to setup the tracker and how to get position information. I will show you what kind of commands this tracker accepts and I will also do a teardown towards the end.
For information on how to setup your own GPS Tracking server, running on a raspberry pi, using open source software, checkout Voltlog #274.
Inside the box of the BST-863 we have the station, a really nice and heavy stand for the tool piece, a total of 3 nozzles, a grounding strap and a power cord. The first thing I notice is the hose which pretty thick, certainly thicker than what I had on my old Gordak station but seems to be softer material. The way it’s designed with the tool standing vertically in the stand makes the air hose forms this loop which depending on your bench setup might or might not bother you but it’s something to consider. But I like the quality of the stand, it’s heavy and feels very sturdy, you get this accessory here which allows you to remove the nozzles while hot and the station has a sensor to detect when the handle is in the stand.
Adjustment of temperature and air level is made through this touch screen control. I’m a bit anti touch screen control on test gear so I would’ve preferred some switches on the front panel but don’t get me wrong, the touch screen works well on this unit, it has nice big touch keys and after setting up your presets you are likely not going to need to adjust the temperature you will just be using the presets like leaded, lead free and another one for heatshrink maybe.
Is this cheaper station a good alternative to the Quick 861DW? This video review should provide you with enough info to decide which one to buy.
Here are some high resolution images from the teardown:
Welcome to a new Voltlog, those who have been with me since the beginning of this channel, may know the first video I ever released, Voltlog #1 was a review of a switch mode bench power supply from Gopher Technology. It was the CPS-3205C and it was a great little unit, it has served me well over the years and I still have it.
At that time I complained about the fact that the unit has the output jacks on the back which is not really convenient for bench use. There were also other issues mentioned while measuring the performance of the power supply, I will link that video on screen if you want to watch it but the video, audio and editing quality are lower than what you’re seeing today.
Gophert made some improvements to the original design and have now released a newer version of that power supply, it has a new model number it’s NPS-1601 but it’s the same range of 0-32V and 0-5A. There are other models with different ranges but this is what would correspond to the CPS3205 I reviewed years ago.
They have made a bunch of changes on the front panel, the most important one is they moved the output jacks to the front panel so now it’s easier to connect the output of this power supply but they are still not standard spacing so you can’t connect one of these adapters with banana jacks. They have also redesigned the front panel completely, they are still using 7 segment displays but now they also have a wattage display which can be switched on temporarily in place of the amps display, you press the watts button and it will show watts measurement for about 3 seconds before reverting to amps display.
The switch for A/V adjustment is now tactile instead of a sliding switch but the rest has stayed the same. I like this redesigned front panel I just wished they used a lighter color for the text, because for example there are some markings which are barely visible next to the LEDs.
Here is a set of pictures I captured during the teardown:
Welcome to a new Voltlog, today it’s a multimeter review because we haven’t done one in a while and here I have the Smart Digital Multimeter which sounds like a generic name, no obvious branding on the box but granted it is featuring the multimeter on the box, it’s a color image which is not often seen on these cheap meters. On the back, the meter is shown in full black holster and we get a model number sticker, AN-V01 so this probably indicates the Aneng brand.
We’ve looked at Aneng multimeters in the past in Voltlog #114 and others and I’m gonna say this again, Aneng does not make multimeters, Aneng is just a company that rebrands existing multimeters made by other companies.
So this load is built with 3 active pcb’s as well as a fourth passive one as a front panel. They are joined with these brass standoffs and I think the standoffs act as circuit paths as well because I see no wires between the different levels. In order to get the alignment right during assembly the designer of these pcbs, made these corners rounded while these ones are diagonally cut and you can see these features along an entire side. This is a neat solution overall because it saves cost and as long as the screws are tight these should provide adequate connection.
The only thing that seemed interesting when I first saw this was the price which was $0.90 delivered. I could not believe that you can get a wrist watch for 90 cents delivered from China and yet it’s true and there are still models that sell for under $1 dollar.
