Tag: voltlog

Designing A C5W Cree LED Bulb With Constant Current Driver | Voltlog #333

In a previous video I showed how I designed and assembled my own T10 style LED bulbs for the purpose of installing them in my car for the interior lighting. I was sick of these cheap bulbs I was getting from Aliexpress which didn’t last very long due to poor thermal performance and also they had this nasty blue tint color for the LEDs. The video I’m talking about is Voltlog #319, those bulbs have been installed in my car for the past couple of months, they are great. I love them and I’m pretty sure I will never have to replace those again.

Unfortunately T10 is not the only style of bulb that my VW uses on the interior lights, it also uses this style of bulb which is called C5W festoon for the lights on the sunvisor area. This comes in a few different lengths, I need mine to be 37.5 mm. So you can probably guess what I did next, I took the circuit I used previously and adapted the layout to fit the C5W outline.

Testing Kafuter Adhesives For Electronics | Voltlog #331

Welcome to a new Voltlog, in this video we’ll take a closer look at the various adhesive products that I could find and order on Aliexpress from this brand which has a hard to pronounce name, I would call this Kafuter but I don’t know, doesn’t sound right.

Since we deal with electronics on this channel, I’m particularly interested in how these adhesives would cope with use on electronics. As you may know in a typical product you may find different types of adhesives used: you might have some for securing wires/connectors, you might have a different type of glue used for securing big capacitors to stop them from flapping in the breeze, a different type of product for creating a seal against moisture, a different glue for securing trim pots in their final position.

And all of these products need to do their specific job while at the same time ensuring that they do not break down or become corrosive or conductive over time. I’m not gonna be able to give you any guarantees to that as my testing methods are not exactly industry standard so I’ll mostly be giving you like an overview of these cheap products that we can find on aliexpress and I will mainly recommend them for hobby use but if you have any experience with this company or it’s products, please do share in the comments below.

Micsig CP2100A Best Affordable Current Probe | Voltlog #330

So this is the Micsig CP2100 series current probe, it’s my first piece of equipment from Micsig but I’ve been hearing good things about them so I kinda have high expectations for this product.

What I have here is the CP2100A variant which is rated for 800KHz bandwidth, there is also a B variant which is rated for up to 2MHz in the latest revision, that one is a bit more expensive and I would only recommend getting it if you really need that bandwidth, otherwise there shouldn’t be any other difference between the two models. I don’t know if I mentioned this already but obviously it can measure AC and DC, it has two ranges, 10A and 100A. There is a zero function on the module for automatic zero adjustment and you can also do manual offset adjustments with these arrow keys.

Micsig specs this as 3% ±50mA accuracy for the 10A range and 4% ±50mA for the 100A range but from what I’ve been reading on the forums, this is actually better than the spec, you can pretty much measure down to 50mA without having to worry about that ±50mA but we’ll put that to a test later. Included below you see a set of images from the teardown.

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.

Fix Microscope Ring Light Reflections With These Projector Lamps | Voltlog #327

You’ve no doubt seen this before on the channel, it’s the trinocular microscope that I have reviewed in Voltlog #282 and I’ve also done a bunch of follow-up videos since then on how to improve the camera system. This comes equipped with an LED ring lamp to illuminate the working surface if you’ve used a setup like this for soldering you’ve no doubt experienced the reflections you get from shiny surface likes the PCB material, especially when you start adding flux into the mix. I’ll overlay some images so you can get a sense of what I’m talking about but basically, since the ring light is shining light right from where the barlow lens is, there are these annoying reflections.

Today I want to show you an alternative lighting system that will help go around that problem. This is a system with individual gooseneck LED lamps. Having this flexible gooseneck tube allows you to position the lamps at an angle that would avoid those nasty reflections.

Making Kelvin Test Leads For My LCR Meter | Voltlog #326

A common mistake when building kelvin 4 wire test leads is to use standard alligator clips because in a standard clip the top and bottom jaw are electrically connected at the hinge point. This kinda defeats the purpose of having separate sense lines if they are getting shorted at some point with the current carrying trace. For a true kelvin connection you would need a special type of alligator clip, like the ones shown in this video, these have a plastic hinge and the top and bottom jaws are not electrically connected. These can be quite expensive if they are made by a good manufacturer but I got mine from aliexpress for cheap, they do not excel in quality but good enough for the type of instruments I am going to be using them with and with the amount of work volume they are going to see on my bench they will last a while.

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.

Gopher NPS1601 Open Source Control Panel | Voltlog #322

A while ago I decided to start this project of re-designing the front panel for this power supply to give it more functionality, make it an awesome power supply cause as it is, it’s a good power supply but I think we can make it an awesome power supply. I made an announcement on the channel a while ago so several people joined the project, this is a team effort and right now it’s time to show you the first hardware prototypes and to discuss the choices we’ve made in terms of hardware.