Voltlog #263 – InTheMail

Welcome to a new InTheMail, the series that will touch both your passion for electronics and your bank account at the same time. We’re going to start with this big jar of flux paste. This is commonly referred to as “yellow paste”, the branding I believe is NT but if you search for yellow paste you will find it in various sizes. Banggood sells it in 150 gram jar and it has a good price of $4 with free shipping. I’ve seen other people use this stuff with good results so I decided to give it a try. I’m not sure if there are any fakes to this particular brand, but the ones from banggood seem to be the genuine stuff.

The consistency is that of a paste so I don’t think it would be easy to put this inside a syringe and use it that way. This works better if you pick it up with a toothpick or some tweezers. This is not rosin based or so they advertise, and it’s supposed to be a neutral PH,with low corrosion to your pcb and components. You will probably see me use this in a future video, until then, there will be a link in the description so you can order one.

Voltlog #248 – Atorch Q7 USB Meter/Load With QI Wireless Charging

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.

Voltlog #247 – InTheMail

Welcome to a new InTheMail, the series that will touch both your passion for electronics and your bank account at the same time. We’re going to start with this small module, at first when I ordered it I didn’t fully understood what it does but now after doing a bit of research for this mailbag it seems this is an immobiliser emulator for the VAG group. So am immobiliser is a security component of your car that will not let the ECU start the engine unless a certain key or token is present. And there might be valid reasons why you might need this emulator, for example if the immobiliser is broken, you can supposably cancel it and start the engine with this emulator or if you exchange the motor/ecu combo once again it might not be possible to use the old immobiliser and so an emulator will help.

It talks over a K-line interface which is something specific to the automotive domain but it’s basically a form of serial interface. At first I thought this was going to emulate some kind of can bus and I was planning to play with it by scanning the bus but now I realize this is useless for me.

Voltlog #93 – Bluetooth Receiver Weekend Update

This week I build a DIY bluetooth 4.0 audio receiver. I used the CSR8635 bluetooth module, a recycled lithium battery cell that I got out of an old laptop, a TP4056 battery charging & protection IC and a DIY PCB I made myself.

Here are links to these items if you plan to build one yourself:

Or you can just buy a ready-made bluetooth receiver.

 

Voltlog #78 – 2x25W Bluetooth 4.1 Stereo Amplifier TDA7492P

In this episode we are going to build a bluetooth speaker amplifier based on the TDA7492P class D audio amplifier coupled with a Bluetooth 4 module. We are not actually going to build the amplifier module because we can get that from China, very affordable, it only costs around $12 shipped which is way less that it would cost us to buy the bluetooth module and the TDA7492P individually not to mention the cost of fabricating a PCB of this size.

So we are actually going to use this module and build the final product with a nice enclosure and a suitable external power supply

Here are some links for the parts used to build this project:

Wiring diagram below:

Voltlog #50 – InTheMail

A new InTheMail video because mail items have been constantly coming in. I hope you’ll find it interesting and if that’s the case, hit that like button so I know you like this kind of video.

Here is a list of items shown in this video:

  • DC-DC Adjustable Step-Down Module with LCD
  • OLED Panel Meter 0-33V 0-3A
  • PWM DC Motor Speed Control
  • BQ24650 MPPT Solar Panel Lithium Lead Acid Battery Charge Controller 5A
  • Battery BMS Protection Board For 3S 18650 Lithium Battery
  • Battery BMS Protection Board For 3-4S 18650 Lithium Battery
  • Mini DC-DC converter Module
  • RS232 Bluetooth Serial Adapter
  • HC-05 Bluetooth Module
  • MP3 Format U Disk TF Card decoder board module amplifier player
  • Digispark Attiny85 Micro USB Development Board
  • RFID T5577 125KHz EM4100 ID Card Copier Duplicator
  • HC-SR505 Mini Infrared PIR Motion Sensor
  • NCP1203D60 PWM Controller IC
  • Energy Meter Electricity Monitor

You can find links for all of these items in the video description.

Voltlog #37 – InTheMail

Hi and welcome to a new InTheMail, this time we have allot of items to look at and some of them were ordered 2 or even 3 months ago but due to the postal service madness that happens every year during holidays they arrived a bit late.

The video is split across two parts to avoid making it too long so make sure you watch both parts.

Voltlog #31 – InTheMail

Usually when I order stuff from China mainland to Romania it takes about 3-4 weeks to arrive while stuff from Hong Kong takes about 5 weeks to arrive. However every year orders placed starting from about 15th of November up to 31st of December take very long to arrive sometimes even arriving after 8-9 weeks. So right now about a third of my orders are late or missing because there is also a good chance they will never arrive once they go past the 8 weeks mark.

A list with links for all the items shown is in the video description so do check them out.

Voltlog #13 – InTheMail AD9850 CC2541 CSR8615 OVC3860 Mifare

In this InTheMail episode I receive the following items:

  • AD9850 DDS Signal Generator Module 0-40MHz.
  • Bluetooth CC2541 4.0 BLE UART Transceiver Serial Module (Texas Instruments).
  • SPK-8615-A Bluetooth 4.0 Mono Audio Module with CSR8615.
  • XS-3868 Stereo Bluetooth Module with Omnivision OVC3860.
  • 1Hz-50MHz Frequency Meter Kit (7 segment LED display).
  • LED POV Rotating Electronic Kit.
  • Macro 58mm Filter Close Up Lens Set For Nikon D3000 D3100.
  • 0.36 Inch Digital Voltmeter 0 – 200V 7-segment LED.
  • SMA male to BNC male coaxial pigtail RG58.
  • BR-2/3A Panasonic Lithium Battery.