Wiistar 1080p 60fps HDMI USB Capture Card Review & Teardown | Voltlog #306

Ever since I got the new microscope and HDMI camera setup I was thinking of ways to capture video on my computer from the microscope camera. This particular camera is the Hayear 34MP model which I reviewed in Voltlog #292, it outputs 1080P at 60fps over HDMI and it does have on-board micro-sd card recording, so I could record images or videos to an sd-card but if you want to live-stream the camera feed, a capture card is needed on your computer. There are countless options in terms of capture cards but as usual I tried to find the cheapest solution that does the job well enough.

This particular unit came up in my searches, it’s relatively inexpensive when compared to other options that advertise similar specs 1080p at 60fps, it has two hdmi ports, one is an input for capture the other one should be a pass-through so you can connect a monitor at the same time of capturing video but we’ll see if that function works as advertised in a few minutes.

We have a USB Type-C connector for the computer side and an audio output 3.5mm jack. It is mentioned in the product page that it’s supposed to have a delay between audio and video so I’m guessing it’s related to this audio output port. The enclosure is aluminium which should help with heat dissipation and this particular unit is branded Wiistar but I believe you will find this under other names as well. Inside the box you get a USB A to Type-C cable about 1m long, a small usb A to type C adapter, a disk and a user manual.

Hantek TO11 1832C LCR Meter Review & Teardown | Voltlog #303

I never really had any professional LCR meter in my lab so far, I’ve only done measurements using this transistor tester which also features a rudimentary LCR function but that’s about to change because today we’ll be taking a close look at the Hantek TO11 handheld LCR meter.

There are two models for this LCR meter TO11 and TO22 and as far as I can tell the only advantages the more expensive TO22 model has are the extended test frequency range up to 100KHz and a second option for test voltage at 0.3V.

Next let’s mention the naming confusion, there is something going on with the naming of this instrument and I can’t quite figure it out. On hantek’s website you can find this LCR meter listed as model number 1832C and 1833C while I suspect all newer units are marked TO11 and TO22 respectively. I’ve emailed Hantek and asked them to clarify this and confirm whether or not there are any differences and why the two names and they replied saying the two are basically the same, the TO11 being an ODM version.

Here are some images captured during the teardown, click on the thumbnails to get a high resolution image of the LCR Meter internal PCBs.

Best Affordable Electronic Load – Kunkin KP184 Teardown | Voltlog #300

In the previous video I reviewed the KP184 electronic load, I showed you all the features it has, I tested the accuracy of the front panel meter but the video was getting quite long and I skipped the teardown for a future video. Well, this is it, it looks like we have a bunch of screws that have to be removed to slide the folded metal cover off.

As you may remember from the previous video I discovered something related to wiring & safety, the earth wire was connected to the bottom part of the enclosure but it wasn’t connected to this blue cover which is also metallic. Now we can see why, this has a thick coat of paint so we can fix this by either scraping the paint away in the area where this makes contact with the bottom part or we could add a separate earth wire which would probably be a more reliable way to fix this.

The first thing I’m noticing is the silkscreen, this board is version 04 and has a date code of November 2019. And there are a bunch of other nicely placed labels for various signals throughout the board. Soldering looks to be nice and clean with the exception of these thick wires coming from the bottom board, which in this particular joint looks like it hasn’t flowed sufficiently, I will have to fix that later. Wires are nicely secured with adhesive to their end connectors and apart from these thick wires coming from the bottom board everything has connectors which makes it easy to disassemble and service.

Checkout the teardown pictures of the Kunkin KP184 electronic load below

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 #284 – Riden RD6006 Power Supply Review

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.

Voltlog #281 – SuperOBD2 ChipTuning Box Yet Another Scam

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.

Voltlog #272 – Car Relay GPS Tracker Setup CJ720

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.

Voltlog #268 – RaspberryPi 10 Inch IPS HDMI Monitor 2560×1600 2K

Welcome to a new Voltlog, it’s product review time again, this time we’re taking a closer look at a 10 inch monitor with hdmi input. This is the box it comes in, the monitor has a resolution of 2560×1600, that’s about 2K resolution in the scheme of things, 300 pixels per inch density, 16:10 aspect ratio which I’m a fan of. My desktop monitor is also 16:10 and it works so much better for everyday activities but especially if you are doing any CAD design work. It’s an IPS panel so we should have good brightness, contrast and colors, it’s rated at 400 candela per sq meter. We also get built-in speakers and the HDMI supports video & audio so you should be able to get video and sound through the HDMI cable and that’s useful because we have built-in speakers on the monitor itself.

Voltlog #256 – Best BST-863 Hot Air Rework Station (Alternative to Quick 861DW)

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:

Voltlog #255 – Gophert NPS-1601 Review (possibly the best power supply in this price range)

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: