The real limitation for this small module to output the claimed 24W for longer periods of time is temperature. There is not enough thermal dissipation happening with this small pcb. Having a bigger pcb with more copper layers would help and it would probably allow this module to output continuously and prevent the TI controller chip from going into thermal overload. Even so I was impressed that running it into thermal protection several times did not do any damage the chip recovered on it’s own each time and no magic smoke escaped during these tests.
So all of this considered, this is probably one of the best dc-dc boost converter modules I got from China so far and I would recommend getting one of these if the specs meet your needs.
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.
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 this kit of silicone hook-up wire, I was running out of thin silicone wire so I thought it would be a good idea to try one of these kits. The one I got is 26AWG, 6 different colors, each about 9m in length.
The only thing that seemed interesting when I first saw this was the price which was $0.90 delivered. I could not believe that you can get a wrist watch for 90 cents delivered from China and yet it’s true and there are still models that sell for under $1 dollar.
Welcome to a new Voltlog, in this video I’m gonna show you how I designed and built this board which functions as an esp32 based, battery powered PIR motion sensor. So I started by designing the circuit, I used some common building blocks, I added the ESP32 with it’s bypass caps, some test points and the programming circuit with auto-reset, I then added some connection points for the PIR sensor, an RGB LED because why not have a nice way to signal this is one of those very small digital RGB leds, it’s just 20x20mm, it’s connected to 3.3V even though it’s only rated for 5V so I’m hoping this is going to work even on 3.3, it’s also worth having a temperature/humidity sensor to also sense that in whichever room the node will be placed and finally the power supply circuit which is a simple low dropout regulator with an 18650 battery as the input.
I did not include a battery charger circuit on this module, because I wanted to keep things simple, I’ll have a battery socket so I can just remove the 18650 cell and charge it separately plus the whole circuit should run in sleep for extended periods of time giving me a long operating time so i wouldn’t have to charge the battery too often.
Once the schematic was finished I did the board layout in a hurry so it’s not exactly pretty or optimized
but I tried to move the esp32 antenna to the side, to place the PIR sensor in the top side as the module will probably sit vertically, I tried to place the temperature sensor in the bottom side to keep it away from any components that might get hot and also placed some isolation slots for the same reason.
You should check-out revB of this board, I made some improvements present in the video below.
As shown in the previous video I had to trick the printer to accept this type of cartridge by masking some of the micro switches it uses to detect the type of cartridge but that solved one problem and created another one. The text was now mirrored because that works out for regular label tape which gets printed on the inside of a transparent film. However for heatshrink where the label gets printed directly on the tube, it will end up reversed.
I’ve only tried one combination with the 3 micro-switches but some people suggested in the comments that I should try other switch combination and boy were they right because I did find another switch combination which causes the printer to accept the cartridge and mirror the text as well. So this is the right combination to use with my type of printer and this type of cartridge. The two bottom holes need to be opened, and only the single top hole needs to be covered. You can use a small piece of kapton tape like I did here.
Welcome to a new Voltlog, today we’ll have just a short video talking about label printers, I’m gonna show you this heat shrink type of label that you can get and it’s pretty useful to label wiring and how the manufacturers of these prevent you from using certain types of label cassettes in lower end printers.
In my case I am using a Brother PT-H107, this is a bottom of the range label printer, it was practically the cheapest I could find around here.
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.