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 #243 – TS80 VS KSGER T12 Soldering Iron Comparison

Welcome to a new Voltlog, yet another soldering iron comparison video and today it’s between the TS80 and the KSGER T12 station. Everyone knows the TS80, is quite a popular portable soldering iron, works with USB type C input, it needs a quick charge compatible adapter to reach full power and it’s quite a capable soldering iron. The drawback is the cost of the tips, it uses this proprietary type of tip and the cost is about $20 a piece.

On the other hand we have the KSGER soldering station which I reviewed in Voltlog #232. This station has a built in power supply and uses the well known T12 tips which are widely available on aliexpress, for example you can get KSGER T12 branded tips for about $3 a piece. I think that’s important, because I have 2-3 different tip shapes that I use regularly and maybe another 2 or 3 that I use occasionally for odd jobs. You can’t just rely on a single tip shape and purchasing the same number of tips for the TS80, is not going to be cheap.

Voltlog #234 – The Problems I Found With The KSGER T12 Soldering Station

In a previous Voltlog I reviewed this KSGER T12 soldering station, it was the first station I got my hands on from this manufacturer, it’s version 2.1S and I was pleasantly surprised by the features it has. If you haven’t seen that video I will link it on screen right now. Since then I’ve been using it as my main soldering station and I’ve been pretty happy with how it works but some of my viewers who have been using these for longer have pointed out a few things I missed in the video so this will be a quick update video to show the things I’ve missed previously.

Voltlog #219 – 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 gonna start with a set of 3 prying tools from Best which is kinda of known in the mobile phone repair business, it’s a Chinese brand that sells this kind of tools. I like these because they have a nice rubber handle which provides a good grip for when you’re trying to pry open an enclosure.

Voltlog #154 – Making My Own Trezor Crypto Hardware Wallet

In this video I’m gonna show you how I build my own Trezor hardware wallet. If you would like to support the voltlog channel checkout the donations page where you will find my paypal address or different crypto wallet addresses.

If you encounter this error while trying to compile trezor firmware:

Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "nem_mosaics.py", line 6, in <module>
 from google.protobuf import json_format
ImportError: cannot import name json_format
Makefile:121: recipe for target 'nem_mosaics.h' failed
make: *** [nem_mosaics.h] Error 1

It can be fixed by installing googleapis-common-protos package like this:

sudo pip install googleapis-common-protos

This fix was posted in the comments section by a viewer, I verified and it works.

Voltlog #147 – InTheMail

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 a list with all the items shown in the video and links to where you can get them:

 

Voltlog #85 – STM32 OLED T12 Soldering Station

Today we are taking a look at this soldering station which I got from Taobao (Chinese Ebay). This unit is fully contained, power supply is built-in, it works with T12 Hakko tips and it has a nice 1.3 inch OLED display. It’s powered by the STM32 microcontroller which should make it easy to hack if anyone is interested.

Here are links to the items shown in the video:

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 #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.