Tag: voltlog

Best T245 JBC Clone Handle Teardown | Votlog #387

Welcome to this short Voltlog where I plan to take a look inside this JBC clone soldering iron handle. This is the handle that came with the Best-933B JBC clone station, I reviewed this in Voltlog #340 a year ago and I’ve been using this station as my main soldering tool for the past year. I plan to do a future video where I tell you my opinion about this station after 1 year of usage but the short story is obvious due to the fact that it’s my main soldering tool, I like using it.

The soldering handle that I received with this station had a problem since day one, first use, when I inserted the soldering tip into the handle I could kind of feel like there was something wrong, there wasn’t a clear stop when pushing it in and after powering on the station the screen was flickering, it couldn’t read the temperature and this cable got hot which is a good sign that something is shorted inside the handle.

I’m not sure if I am to blame because I might have pushed the tip too hard into the handle the first time. It’s also possible that it had a factory defect inside the handle.. Other users of this station don’t have this problem but long story short ever since I got it, I had to be really careful when switching tips because I needed to seat the tip very accurately in a certain position, otherwise it would short circuit causing the station to go crazy.

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.

DytSpectrumOwl PCB Inspection Thermal Camera | Voltlog 384

Welcome to another Voltlog product review and in this video we are taking a look at the DytSpectrumOwl PCB thermal camera and let me tell you from the start that if you do a lot of PCB repairs or if you do any kind of product thermal characterization, your life would be so much better if you’ve had a tool like this and I’ll show you why in a few minutes.

The company that makes this product is DianYang Technology and I guess the name of the product is DyTSpectrumOwl model number CA-10, this is a 260×200 pixel resolution IR camera sensor with a 25 fps refresh rate and manual adjustable focus lens which allows it to focus from 20mm up to 2m, that 20mm close range focus and the 25hz refresh rate are very interesting features and I’ll talk more about that in a second.

I received the unit very well packed in a double cardboard box and  all I have to do is to fix the vertical stand to the base and attach the camera. While doing this I couldn’t help to notice the very good construction quality, they’ve used anodized aluminium and metal parts everywhere, everything is nicely machined, rounded corners, really nice attention to detail, like for example , the work surface has an insulating rubber coating which would prevent shorting something on the PCB you are testing and on the bottom side they have nice rubber bumpers to prevent it from sliding around. Inside the box they include a small screwdriver that you use for attaching the vertical stand to the base, a couple of spare screws and a USB type-C to USB Type-A data cable.

Camera has a USB Type-C interface, looks like the shell is made from plastic and painted the same metal gray color and you get a single on/off button with a status LED on the top. On the sensor side you get this big focus adjustment wheel and we’ll play with that later on when we get to look at a PCB but since we are talking about PCBs let me introduce the sponsor of this video

Raised to its maximum setting, you get about 15cm of clearance between the work surface and the camera and that’s plenty if you ask me and you also get the option of moving the stand to the left of the work surface by using these mounting points. There are a few adjustments on the standm you can raise or lower the camera by sliding on the vertical rod but you can also do fine adjustment with this thumbwheel at the top. Then you can move back and forward from this adjustment and you can also adjust the angle of the camera so you can pretty much get this into every angle you want but I would probably use this looking straight down at a PCB.

Tasmota ESP32 Floor Heating Valve Controller | Voltlog 383

Welcome to a new project video, today I’m gonna be presenting this 10 channel valve actuator controller which I built with the purpose of individually controlling the water circuits on my floor heating system. The best part is that this is based on an ESP32, it’s TASMOTA compatible so it should be very easy for me to integrate this into my HomeAssistant smart home system.

So like I mentioned, the need for such a valve actuator circuit started when I installed floor heating into my apartment and if you ask why i didn’t use one of the commercially available options: I don’t like them, they’re expensive and they typically only work with their closed source ecosystem, I wanted something that runs open-source so I can control and customize various aspects.

I have a total of 9 circuits and these circuits have different lengths and the rooms have different sizes so putting the same volume of water through all circuits is going to result in uneven heating. This issue can be mitigated by tuning the individual flow valves on the intake of each circuit but that setting seems to vary with the pressure it gets from the pump and doesn’t allow a fine granular control over the temperature of that room which is what I want to achieve.

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 

A Rant on Bad Datasheets | Voltlog 381

Welcome to this short video where I’m gonna rant about the quality of Chinese electronic component datasheets because for me it’s already the second time I’ve had trouble because of missing or incorrectly presented information.

Owon HDS242S Oscilloscope AWG Multimeter 3in1 Review & Teardown | Voltlog 380

Welcome to a new Voltlog, In this video we’re taking a look at the OWON HDS242S which is a dual channel 40MHz portable oscilloscope coupled with a 20000 count true RMS digital multimeter and an arbitrary waveform generator capable of 25Mhz sine and 5MHz square wave, all in this portable format with a 3.5inch color TFT display. As part of their line-up you can also get the HDS272S which bumps the oscilloscope up to 70Mhz.  You can also get these without the function generator option and those would not have the ending S in their model number.

I failed AGAIN at designing this FT232H circuit | Voltlog 379

This is my first attempt at designing with the FT232H and if you’re wondering how the FT232H is different from the standard FT232 or other typical usb serial converters, well it’s different because it has a thing called MPSSE which stands for Multi-Protocol Synchronous Serial Engine. This allows it to emulate a variety of serial protocols like: JTAG, I2C, SPI or general purpose bit-bang. So a couple of years ago I designed this breakout board and almost everything was right except for the fact that I got the usb data lines mixed, which prevented the chip from enumerating correctly on the USB bus.

So this year because I got a couple of FPGA boards I thought why not redesign that board to fix the data line issue and add a couple new features that would make it a very useful tool to have in the lab. And so I started designing this new board which I called VOLTAG and there a couple of things that I absolutely wanted to have: the first one was USB type C, I decided to only use USB Type-C sometime at the end of last year so every new board needs to be on USB type C, if it has a USB connection at all and the second thing I wanted to have was  the ability to level shift the JTAG signals.

I built the ultimate electronics workbench using just a screwdriver | Voltlog 377

In this video I’m gonna show you how I built this awesome electronics workbench using just a screwdriver, yup, you’ve heard that right, you don’t need any other tools, just a screwdriver. In my opinion this is the ultimate electronics workbench, it has just the right height for me, it uses the available space as efficient as possible, it’s very strong and best of all it’s modular and upgradeable: meaning you will be able to grab this project and customize the size of the workbench to fit your available space or your particular needs. Oh and did I mention that it costs less than those commercially available off the shelf workbenches with similar specs? Stick with me in this video and I’ll share the full details on how I built mine.

You Need This Instrument Right Now | Voltlog 376

Inside the box we are greeted with the instrument and I must say I expected a compact unit but this blows my minds, it’s actually smaller when you get to see it in real life and it feels kinda strange because it has all the visual cues of a professional instrument with the exception of size, it’s something new but I expect to see more of these miniaturized instruments in the next couple of years. You also get a power adapter and one that apparently has all of the safety certifications and it comes with these exchangeable socket adapters, you get the USB power lead which is just an adapter from USB to barrel jack and you also get two coaxial cables, that’s pretty much all you need to get started.

I have the ETG962E 60MHz model here but right from the start you shouldn’t set your expectations too high just because you see the 60MHz bandwidth mentioned because take a look at the sample rate, it’s 200MSamples/sec so at the max output of 60MHz you’re only getting roughly 3 samples per second which isn’t enough to describe a clear simple waveform, not to mention some more complicated waveforms. I mean it might do ok with a sine wave just because it can specify the top and bottom points and with a slower rise time it will automatically turn it into a sine wave but that’s pretty much all you’re going to get at the max output of 60MHz. So they’re kind of pushing the max spec of this unit for marketing purposes by specifying it at 60MHz when in fact it can do that for anything other than a sine wave.

It’s pretty obvious that you need to cut some corners to be able to offer such an instrument in the $150 range shipping included but as long as you are aware of these limitations, it’s still a pretty good offer, actually it’s the best offer on the market just because there isn’t anything like this available with similar specs in a similar price range and with the same quality.