Month: August 2020

Unexpected InTheMail | Voltlog #325

Welcome to this impromptu video, as you can tell I am not in the lab, I’m actually taking a hike in the beautiful Carpathian mountains in a remote area which is actually bear territory so I need to be careful but here is what I found in my path  this looks like an esd bag which two lcd panels inside. 

As you may know, due to travel restrictions this spring I was not able to do the electronics components harvest in the outdoors which is a bummer, but finding stuff like this certainly makes me happy, this could make our friend Marco Reps jealous as he usually finds just capacitors in the German fields.

So these look like a couple of 2.0 inch panels let’s see what we got here, they are based on the ST7789V driver, 240*320 resolution, IPS panel with a 12 pin, solderable type FPC connection. I mentioned this before, I am working on a replacement open source control panel for the Gophert NPS1601 and this is one of the options I was considering a few months ago when I ordered these. 

InTheMail | Voltlog #324

Welcome to a new InTheMail, the series that will touch both your passion for electronics and your bank account at the same time. We have a selection of different items received in this mailbag, I’m gonna start with this set of replacement cassette tapes for my label printer. You’ve seen me order these before but now I got some different variations which I thought would be interesting to try: I have Black on clear which would be nice for sticking on a white surface and have only the black text visible. I have some standard black on white cause I use that everywhere, this is white on clear tape which would be good for sticking on a black surface to have just the white text visible, white on black which could be general purpose or for sticking on dark surfaces and one that seemed very interesting security tape black on white so I’m guessing this could be used like a seal?

InTheMail | Voltlog #323

Welcome to a new InTheMail, the series that will touch both your passion for electronics and your bank account at the same time. This one will be focused on 3D Printing because as you know I recently got a new 3d printer, the creality ender 3 PRO and that means new upgrades because why would you get a 3d printer other than constantly work on it and upgrade it. That 3d printing that everyone is talking about is like secondary stuff, you will primarily work on the printer itself once you get it.

Let’s start with the most important upgrade, this is the SKR Mini E3 V2.0 which is the latest version of this 32 bit motherboard that is a plug & play upgrade for the Ender 3. It comes loaded with features like Trinamic silent stepper drivers, it supports dual Z axis and enough memory and processing power to support every feature you would want to enable from Marlin. As far as I know this even comes loaded with the right firmware, it’s a relatively new release of marlin so it’s truly a plug & play solution.

Gopher NPS1601 Open Source Control Panel | Voltlog #322

A while ago I decided to start this project of re-designing the front panel for this power supply to give it more functionality, make it an awesome power supply cause as it is, it’s a good power supply but I think we can make it an awesome power supply. I made an announcement on the channel a while ago so several people joined the project, this is a team effort and right now it’s time to show you the first hardware prototypes and to discuss the choices we’ve made in terms of hardware. 

InTheMail | Voltlog #321

Welcome to a new InTheMail, the series that will touch both your passion for electronics and your bank account at the same time. We have a selection of different items received in this mailbag, I’m gonna start with this GPS module, the model number for this is ZX612 and it’s part of the Chinese gps trackers family, I think it uses a similar protocol to the relay gps tracker that I showed in a previous video and possibly connect to the same Chinese web server for data collection which poses the usual privacy risks but as I’ve shown in Voltlog #274, using a raspberry pi you can setup your own gps tracking server.

3D Printer Monitoring With An ESP32 Smartwatch And Octoprint API | Voltlog #320

Welcome to a new Voltlog, in this video I’m gonna show you how I built this project where an ESP32 based smart wristband allows me to track the progress of my 3D printer in real time. So I thought about how I could solve this problem and I came up with a project where I’m using a LILYGO T-Wristband which is basically an ESP32 development platform built into this smart bracelet form factor. The bracelet connects via Wifi to the local network where Octoprint runs and manages the 3d printer.