Voltlog #294 – 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. 

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.

Voltlog #291 – Buying From Aliexpress Tips & Tricks

Welcome to a new Voltlog, today I’m gonna share with you some tips and tricks about buying from Aliexpress and I might follow up with another video about Ebay and Banggood. I received requests for doing such a video several times as the subject was brought up and I think I can share a few useful things with you because as you may know, some of my most popular videos are my InTheMail videos where I show you the stuff I purchase from China and I get a lot of stuff which allowed me to learn a few tricks over the years. 

Voltlog #289 – 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 must say I’m noticing delays in delivery of these packages from China, it started with orders placed mid January and I’m probably going to see some packages lost and never delivered so i recommend you keep an eye on your orders and request a refund when the protection time expires.

Voltlog #283 – 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 gonna start with an item that’s actually disappointing, this is a mini portable vacuum cleaner but I only realized this after receiving the item, because the seller of this item was advertising this as a dust blower vacuum cleaner, it’s the usual keyword stuffing that aliexpress sellers do.

Voltlog #279 – InTheMail Stats For 2019

Welcome to a new Voltlog, as you may remember last year I did a summary of all the orders placed in 2018, related to electronics items, the stuff that I show in my InTheMail segment. I did that video because I was interested in knowing the numbers and how they evolve over time but the viewers responded as well, they provided feedback with their own approximate stats so this year I’m doing it again. Same as last year, please let me know in the comments if you have any stats on your own purchases.

Voltlog #278 – 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.

Voltlog #273 – 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 reminding 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. Now let’s start with this small esp32 based development board, it has a built-in 1.14 inch color tft lcd and I think that’s a nice feature of this dev board because if you want to connect some sensors and see the readings in real time, you don’t need to wire a display externally it’s built-in.

Another cool feature is that we have built-in battery charging at 500mA and you can power this board through the provided two pin jst connector with a one cell lipo battery which will then charge when connected to power via the USB Type-C port. There is also a CP2104 for the usb to serial conversion and that makes it a pretty well balanced development board for the ESP32.

The board comes loaded with a test program from TTGO, it shows this image then cycles through red, green, blue on the LCD which is a good idea because you can verify the board is functioning ok after the long journey it takes from the market in shenzhen to your door and we all know how well these packages are protected during shipping.

Voltlog #271 – InTheMail (non-electronics)

Welcome to a new Voltlog, as the title says this will be a non-electronics mailbag, meaning I will show you what other stuff I am ordering and receiving by mail. A few days ago I created this poll on my youtube community page and asked where I should upload this kind of video, there were really two options, either upload to this channel or create a new one. I was kinda hoping for people to vote to upload them to the same channel because I don’t really want to manage a second channel and it’s also understandable if people vote for the same channel because they don’t need to perform other actions to subscribe to a second channel. And so it was decided to upload to the same channel but mark these videos as non-electronics mailbags.

Voltlog #269 – 11.11 Shopping Suggestions For Makers

Welcome to a new Voltlog, it’s November and that means the biggest shopping event happening in Asia is coming up, I’m talking about the 11th of november. There are some numbers published for last years event and it seems they registered more than 30 billion in 24 hours in sales, yes you heard right, billions. So it’s a very big event with nice discounts and opportunities for makers like us to get some new gear. That’s why I prepared this video which will be published 1-2 days before the event so you can get some ideas of stuff that you could purchase. I assembled a list, these are products that I’ve tested and used myself which I think are good value for money and a nice addition to any hobbyist lab.