EEVblog #1351 - Mailbag

hi welcome to everyone's favorite segment mailbag we're back we're back in the lab the original lab the one and only and let me know i'm always changing up this mailbag thing oh settle on something eventually anyway the moment i'm using my uh 10 to 18 millimeter wide angle lens not quite at 10 millimeters but it's really close i can i can actually touch the camera which is really cool and i'm using the internal mic tried to use my little uh i i've got a cheap comic a while i've got better mics but they plug into xlr and i'm using my sony next vg30 anyway for those who care about the details mailbag let's get into it um we will get to the uh lab of the day i've got two labs of the day so stick around for that but let's get straight into the mailbag show me anyway leave your comments down below about how this one looks you can't actually see um because it's closer now i can actually see the racks i probably need to light those up a bit let me know if you think i should light those up do have my studio lights anyway too many details mailbag let's go this one is if you're on the eev blog forum you almost certainly know um halcyon um or however you want to pronounce it i think it's halcyon anyway um fellow aussie anyway um my studio light just went out bloody hell because it's gotta have a permanent setup because i was running that from battery and the batteries don't last long because they're so yeah let me go plug it in anyway let's get to it if you want to send something into the mailbag there it is po box 7949 it's not balkan hills anymore technically it's norwest now because they formed a new suburb so you've got to send it to noise you can send it to that crazy aussie bloke not many people send it to that crazy anymore h-a-l-c-y-o-n i think it's halcyon although it could be house scion anyway um thank you very much how so let's have a squeeze do we got what do we got a super what's a what's a track stick a track stick don't know what a track stick is i think we got a two minute tent oh is this like a gps tracker or something i think this is like one of those it's got a yeah it's got magnets yeah it's a gps tracker it's a you know you stick it on the bottom of a car and it and it tracks so you know you can track your uh track your spouse or whatever there's probably one on the uh new eev blog mobile from mrs e blog see where i go anyway thank you very much hal let's read the note found this little doodad while clearing out some old junk at work yes i know what how it does for a living um it's uh yeah really quite interesting um basically this device that records gps coordinates altitude temperature speed etc at regular intervals and when the device detects movement okay that's nice because you don't want to piss away your battery life by you know i like doing it all the time so it detects movement and then well you know the gps like the problem is you stick it to the bottom of the car how are you going to get good gps reception on the bottom of the car so you know i do anyway the idea is you attach the device to your intended target whether it be a vehicle or object and retrieve the device at a later time for downloading i'd love that it comes by the way on the original like dot matrix um thing and it looks like it is printed on a top matrix printer as well winner winner chicken dinner we evaluated this product a long time ago but in didn't end up using them we've just designed our own gadgets in-house these days using off-the-shelf components i won't tell you what we use them for i can guess um but i'm sure we can make some educated yes we can make educated guesses i can make more educated guesses because i know it how it does for a living seems fairly well constructed but i'm not sure how great the performance is i gave it a test on the drive home with the devices just sitting on the passenger seat didn't seem to get gps fixed until about an hour into the journey yeah that's what like it's only going to have like a little piddly oh no it might not have a patch antenna actually it may actually have a helical um in fact you know you'd want it to because it's a plastic uh yeah that's uh yeah plastic case there's probably like a helical antenna inside but you know if you stick it on the bottom of the car it's it's not going to do anything really so i you know oh okay so he put it in the post to get to me there you go so unless the batteries have died it should still be i should still be functioning and that's all right how knows where my lab is anyway the software isn't too bad even allows you to export data from its own proprietary form and it's something useful cool oh it's made in the united states of america two minute tear down no that's not dot matrix i think that's inkjet oh the super track stick install what software first um no bugger that will tear it down first shall we it's actually a rather nice design i like it and the clip just like physically clips onto the thing it's got a power button there and you just pull this off ah there you go you can insert it right up the clacker and it's got two aaa's there do we just what does it say it just says pull out does it pull out yep there we go oh oh oh uh houston we have a battery leak as you've no doubts already seen because i did two separate uh videos on this uh before i just interrupted my mailbag here and uh with these leaking batteries so rather than actually tear this down which looks like it might be a destructive uh process we might actually have a controlled experiment here because we've got these absolutely identical brand new max plus batteries and we've got a known device that made the exact same brand and type battery uh leak and like almost rolled off the same production line really the same expiry date and like only like one week or one month different in the manufacturing so i'm going to actually uh whack the i've actually cleaned it all up so rather than sorry if you wanted to see the tear down there it is green lead fleshy flashy made well it did something so i don't know how it's supposed to work oh it's just flashed red so anyway i'm going to whack that back together and i'm going to leave that running for a couple of months and see if these bad boys leak again stay tuned all right it's lab time thank you very much chuck kumar for sending this one in and chucks from the united states of america and you should be able to find him because he call signs up here w7 clk winning call sign love it and it's an rf lab uh you might be able to tell got some spec ends here um got so yeah that looks like a really old school uh sig gen is it um it can't really make it out because it's not that high resolution if you are going to send in photos send them in as the higher resolution as possible and i have to crop these to 16 9 aspect ratio to fit on the screen so yeah it's all rfe goodness i've got all the component racks up here there's one big strip light above and the interesting thing about this is the configuration i really like these ones the bench is actually triangular in the corner as you can see like that and i did crop out a bit more of the bench here and the bench actually like it's the one chair that swings around from the bench and it swings around to two different computers here there's like two keyboards and monitors and stuff um so two separate stations so he just has to sit there and swing around absolutely brilliant notice the power strips along the bottom those weird-ass yankee ones but anyway yeah that's nice like how many one two three four five six seven eight nine no it's probably ten in there power strips along the front wow that's really handy and i love the organization of all your hand tools and things like that i've got something similar i need to set up here i've got little uh i use coffee mugs because i don't drink coffee so what i use them for is for putting hand tools and stuff like that in that's nice got the spools of wire that looks like enamel uh wire looks like all enamel wire probably different gauges and stuff for winding his own coils things like that neat and tidy that's a really spunky looking lab i like that got the leads over here in the classic hanging configuration i've gone away from the hanging configuration i've done a video on my new pullout lab shells i'm putting all of my cables in these little pull out tubs in these custom shelves i did might have to link in that video if you haven't seen it um anyway that's a nice little rf lab probably got some like attenuators and you know other you know rfe goodness um stuff here got an old school weller here and uh it looks like is that a pace yet that's a pace uh classic through-hole uh de-solderer there so and a nice anti-static uh bender you'd have to have to cut that to the triangular size but i like that it's a really efficient use of space lab awesome work chuck so yes if you want to send in your own bench i've already got like another 20 of them thank you i don't sorry i don't acknowledge everyone who sends them in but they automatically go into a folder where i just uh pick uh like or not quite random but you know they've got to be decent quality they've got to be framed well and all that uh sort of stuff and they've got to be reasonably interesting and this is a really good example of a nice lab but easy anyway i'll put the email address down below where you got to send it to hi to all my german viewers in particular uh i think it's j-a-h-n i think it is uh thank you very much so from germany you always you know we usually get one from germany germany's my second or third biggest uh if you don't know it's uh the yanks the seppos at about uh 20 something like that of my uh youtube audience then it's uk at like 12 percent uh and australia uh canada and germany at all around like 10 each or something like that so that's the breakdown of my youtube uh subscribers so no the yanks aren't like half of my audience only like 20 so settle down oh [Laughter] wow hey cho hey joe gage i've got a ho gage point wow i haven't seen one of these since i was a kid i had a 16 b8 layout right that's 16 foot by 8 foot none of that metric rubbish um hey cho layout and uh yeah i i don't know if i had this exact one what brand is that ah that's a oh it's made in germany oh it's german oh i didn't i don't think i had german and oh that's a yum that's a three why oh that's a that's a jewel jobbie oh wow oh thing of beauty joy forever excellent i still got my n scale here in the lab i found room for it sagan said i got to keep it as i saw in your indiana jones model railway in your latest debunking video i thought you'd send you this switch how do you call it in australia um these would be points these would be electronic points um you know i haven't been in the game for a long time maybe the lingo has changed but you know these were points and these would be electronic points because you could switch them via you know usually old-school like levers you'd have the old uh you know hornby triangle levers on there and you'd you know you have them on the edge of your bench and you you know do it that way but now it's all like software automated crap oh it's marklin yes yes i didn't have markland stuff so yeah it says the prices are quite high for the um electronics and stuff you know the dcc uh controllers which is the digital control uh systems forum and things like that he designed his first boarding key card didn't get it anyway this is uh from rolf thank you very much um so he designed his own but we all we got is the point would have been nice to see the board ah now here's where the switch comes into play he designed his own board question is well complaint really how do you detect the direction of the switch yeah that's interesting without switching i admit i because you can manually switch them like that can't you so yeah how do you actually detect the location of it without actually switching it to know the actual location you'd have to switch it one way or you'd have to actually switch the things so that you know and then presume that it's switched and there's nothing wrong with your you know because there's no feedback mechanism you just send the pulse to the coil and it switches it over anyway measure the coils of different brands and types anyway let's have a look at the note and uh we might do a little mini teardown of the coil inside this puppy so let's have a look here at this point or turnout and well it does have some little manual override switches here and you can see that track i think that one's just flapping around in the breeze so i think that might be busted but you can see that that bit there pulls in and out as you either do it manually or you do it via the uh coil in here which just then just dries that little lever coming out there which then um flicks it out so you know it can go like that or if you go out like that it goes it chooses this path here then it can either choose around here or straight through like that now one of the first things i thought is that if you have a look at the one that actually moves here there's actually a little hole in that so my first thought would be that you could actually use some sort of uh optical switch because when it's in when it's in that position like that if you had like a photo or something on the other side of your board like like actually in your board on the other side of the track like that perhaps you could actually detect when that actually goes in this position or something like that so you could do some sort of like you know mechanical optical uh solution like that to detect whether or not they've uh switched because like you can't really do it from the uh you know by measuring anything back from the coil at all really i guess um so you know i don't think that mechanical position there is going to make a difference to what the coil actually uh reads you know even if you were able to like measure the inductance or something like that so yeah i do like does like a dcc solution exist for this thing does anyone know please leave it in the comments down below i do know there's lots of uh model railway hobbyists in uh my viewership so you know maybe they'll know but of course you can't actually a lot of people say oh just detect uh whether or not you know power is getting through to this track or whatever well you can't really do that because um it's on a dcc system they're all wired up everything's wired up so you know um and then it's just digital control so yeah i i don't necessarily think you can do it that way you know you can like try and i i think there might be i've got a vague recollection there might be some systems that i can actually tell the location of the micros by like local current drawer and you know stuff like that and like going over certain points and things like that uh maybe but that's only after the fact that like a train's gone through on the wrong track and whoops you know it's gonna smash into your other uh try and you know some of these engines they can cost serious money in your rolling stock geez um anyway so yeah i suspect um i yeah i don't know leave it in the comments down below i'd i'd say some sort of optical position sensing system i mean you know you go ridiculous and go well i'm going to have a camera above it then i'm going to use visual id to see if the track is switched like you know there's more than one way to skin this cat i'm sure no rolf actually says the inductance of both coils differs a little bit so i won't re-measure it according to the position of the iron core so yeah like maybe but i yeah i don't know if i'd rely on a solution like that you might be able to get it to work you know you measure the inductance like you drive it and then when you're not driving it you uh like measure the inductance of it by feeding a low level signal through which is of course not going to make it uh switch but um yeah you continuously measure the inductance perhaps or only when you need to you know it only scans it periodically or whatever um to see if it's switched so maybe i don't know i wouldn't put my faith in a solution like that it seems to be lots of around you'd have to calibrate it and it's a bit messy there's got to be an easier solution than that so let's see if we can operate these uh 12 volts one amp uh current limit i've got set that should be plenty black is going to be the common here and brown and yellow are going to be you have to alternate between them um to go in a certain direction oh that's already done but if i hook that up there you go point eight yeah 850 milliamps something like that so you definitely don't want to leave that on there geez that's going to heat up pretty quick you know it's like 10 watts give me a break anyway there you go cool huh so it's actually you know it sounds like there's a fair bit of well it's physically moving it that's how much force is in those things but you only need that brief current to switch it over and then the other one here i never had electronic points as a kid couldn't afford it oh did that i heard it go nut no it doesn't like that at all wow there you go there we go just gummed up a bit so there you go that goes straight through and that will go around it that way sweet um yeah i don't know leave it in the comments down below if you've got any good ideas to help out how to actually detect the position of these things when they're not being you know driven because otherwise yeah you've just got to assume that as you saw like it just got stuck there it just got gummed up it wouldn't work and you know there's a lot of maintenance required on a good model railway layout in terms of you know keeping the tracks uh clean and you know keeping your points operational and stuff like that so yeah so that is a genuine problem i'm surprised if there's not a solution out there already come on leave it in the comments anyway that's cool thanks and here you go this is how it does it you can see that there's going to be a iron core inside there and it's just going you've got two separate coils here and you've got this lever arm you can see there and pull that across and that just goes backwards like that nope nope nope just skipped there you go so it's got to stay flat down like that and it just moves that's all there is to it pretty simplistic and let me know about this i actually thought about moving the tv away because it is actually on casters so technically i could wheel it out of the way but and maybe i can hang some like posters in the background or something like that and then you can see more of the shelving i don't know let me know in the comments down below what you think about that idea but anyway i couldn't be too lazy at the moment because things still aren't cleaned up properly yet anyway thank you very much uh the person unknown from parts unknown well alexandria um so which is here in sydney by the way um so i don't know what this is um i've got a gvdi ac voltage detect stick i think this is commercial merch i think this is commercial i'm not sure if they clued me oh yeah yeah i think they clued me up on this i didn't know it would come from sender in alexandria um i thought it was like a chinese company or whatever um anyway it's a multimeter we haven't had um somebody sending a multimeter for a while it's a gvda smart digital multimeter um it looks wow the lcd is like they've like done the range so let's open it up oh nice little padded case tommo lee from gvda technology limited we are they're an aliexpress seller from china uh yep anyway they've got this their new smart multimeter so put in the aliexpress link down below if you want to check it out it's a little pockety kind of thing um thank you very much so obviously there'll be a two minute tear down and there it is there it is gvda so it's in a thing is it's in a case right this straight if you want to leave it in the case i reckon that strap is going to obscure the lcd am i wrong will it turn on it won't turn on they do have real clicky switches i guess i have to install the batteries oh but um yeah like okay so they've got they're not oh quite a few batteries i don't know if you get that many with it or whether or not that's a special um it does oh this is interesting they look like standard probes but they're not they are not standard four millimeter look look at that look they're like like the classic two millimeter pins on the old school multimeters but i've never seen like i'm i'm gonna call these like two millimeter shrouded um banana plugs i i don't think i've ever seen the two millimeter shrouded ones certainly not in multimeter leads that's that's kind of weird wow anyway um yeah it's kind of like in a moment it's designed to be mobile phone look and feel i mean you know that's a bit wanky but anyway gigantic lcd screen on they've done away with the switches so yeah let's crack her open and oh it's a rugby but rub a baby buggy bumper there you go rubber baby buggy bumper holster oh it's got a light on the back as well it's got a led light okay let's have a quick squeeze at these see if they're any good gvda haven't heard of them before this is the 118b i don't know the difference between the 118b and the 118a anyway um yeah it comes in a little case which i don't you know you keep your leads out well it's yeah you keep your leads in one side that's pretty that's all right except for the fact that you can't actually use it in the case because you have to take it out to plug your probes in so anyway peel that off come on there we go oh look at that it's like a bought one now well i actually don't mind it that much part that it looks like a mobile phone the tacky qc plastic oh god it's it's not much qc on the qc not much glue on the qc pass sticker so yeah you need a qc pass sticker for the qc pass sticker anyway um um ncv cool non-contact uh voltage detector very nice um that's handy that you want for a portable meter so it feels rugged enough there's a little bit of twist in that but you know it feels like it would take the knocks and the screen's going to be big so i've got a 600 milliamp 250 volt fuse in there so you know it's not a 600 volts or a thousand volt jobby a lot of people forget about the voltage rating diffusers they go oh it's got a hrc fuse in it but they don't realize that oh it's only a 250 volt rated hrc fuse which is not as good as say a 600 volt rated one you know like a good one will be like a thousand volt rated hrc fuse so anyway um let's crack it open so it looks like compartment which hopefully will be the fuse as well that looks like self tapper it is metal into metal insert so that's the first plus oh there you go at night a fuse is inside so you know yeah it is what it is like the new uh bryman meter the 786 fuses are inside so just like the fluke uh you know 70 series and that and the 80s there you know fuses are inside so and we've got self tappers here but they actually are very similar threat they are like proper plastic self-tappers like the uh fluke and brimen are using in their ones but you know smaller of course but they do give off the same vibe so it's all about the vibe so let's let's crack this open and we're in like flynn there we go oh that's neat enough there you go there's our fuse up there it is a ceramic job so that's all right um it's kind of like bodged in there i don't know like it doesn't have a proper holder it's just like got these contacts just soldered under the side of the board but yeah it's adequate for the job um what what is this don't that looks like a real is that like a relay oh that's how they're doing it of course because this doesn't have a rotary switch so they must be doing um some switching there ptc here we've got some diode protection up here we've got uh there's your high voltage input resistor uh string there it's you know it it's okay for a pocket meter um it's you know it's like how much does this thing cost anyway um there's our led uh and and it's just a two chipset ah so is one lcd driver and one is the multimeter chipset i can't say i've heard of an sdic sd7581 is it well that's interesting turns out that that is a uh risk micro a little eight bit risk uh micro data sheet i i only found it's in uh mandarin so but it's got a uh 24 bit delta sigma adc in it and an lcd driver so yeah that's interesting um what's this puppy down here that's a tm 1622 once again another uh asian brand i've never heard of but that's uh just an lcd uh controller so yeah basically um it's just going to be like it's going to be multi-channel thing and it's just going to be measuring and it's just going to be switching some stuff in here and bob's your uncle not much to it there's your non contact detector up there and let's do a flippity doo dar on that i've taken it out a few screws little plastic clips uh there's the sockets by the way they're just a split oh no the end one's a split socket up there so it's obviously doing some uh sensing and uh yeah the others are just a little uh two millimeter tube there i haven't measured it but i presume it's two millimeters and plastic just slides over that so i haven't looked on the bottom yet let's have a squares oh there's our big gigantic backlight and yep there's our relay there you go it's you know i don't think that's a japanese jobby um and uh yeah buzzer and well four tactile switches that's all she wrote so that's actually um quite fit for purpose i'd say really um i haven't checked the price of this but i'm sure it's you know it's uh quite a cheap got our zebra strip in there and with all our contacts along there like that and heavily multiplexed of course because this thing's going to have a ton of segments on it so let's work that back in there and yeah there you go so yeah it's not you know a ul listed front end or whatever but yeah it's like good enough for like a glove box multimedia little you know pocket filled multimeter and if the uh non-contact uh test is any good you know it might be useful for that as well so yeah i do actually quite like the form factor all right the test with the plastic self-tapper screws but first a pro tip putting these back in actually counter rotate it like that until you feel a where it's jumped into the existing thread you should be up yep yep should be able to feel a point and yep that then screws much easily into the existing thread i actually haven't got the right size screwdriver here but ah bugger it should be right good enough for australia yeah so rotate that back a little bit and then you should be able to feel that cell tap it's not as good as the flukies but uh it's still okay so if you do that first you'll get a much longer life on your threads yeah you can just feel the point where the existing thread was neat all right so let's plug these leads in it's a shame that they've got to stick up they're actually oh tigers and nuns nasty in there so they're not going to come out on you that's for sure so yeah i am not going to write home to my mum about these probes they're not gold-plated they look good the angle looks wonky yeah those ones came straight out of the one low factory anyway here's the display it shows the current uh temperature that's a little bit out because it's supposed to be 22 in here i do have my air con on maybe you can actually see it but anyway or at the moment it's going between volts ac dc ohms and continuity so it's in smart mode in quote marks or we can switch to millivolts there you go hurts capacitance down to one puff oh yeah like yeah it's measuring yeah it's down single puff resolution there so that that seems all right no worries and yet lead detection we saw that before and the non-contact tester i'll just test that hang on nope uh hello oh jesus it has to be really close or is it oh no it goes on top on the end of there oh yeah yeah i guess i don't know more experience required with that it's not very loud the beeper in it's not very loud but i like how it's got the uh different color led up there that's nice so yeah it's functional gets you out of trouble you know it's supposedly like 600 volt cat three it's like me um you can actually use the probe with that actually i'm able to make that happen with just the whoop yeah i don't know about that um because i'm nowhere near like it's picking up the mains from me uh no i don't like that if you're gonna do it and say probably keep the keep the leads out but then again it's better to get a false positive than a false negative so let's put in auto mode here and oh that's really slow wow that's one of the slowest continuity testers i've ever used wow that's a good half a second at least i don't time it it's yeah i like that it's got visual up here as well but yeah if you're after a good continuity tester and nah nah it's a loser for that and the other thing is it doesn't really have like a dedicated um ohms or volts range you know you can only looks like you can only do the smart i mean a millivolts is on its own but uh you you can't like choose just ohms on its own so you're going to have you know if you're measuring low ohm resistors you're always going to get the continuity coming on i mean that's kind of annoying but not the lid on the yeah there it is yeah whoopty do it like it's not much no i can't even like select between that ah hang on no h h yes ah like what no no that's like no it's holding the knight that's just holding the value no it's that's not actually holding the range that's tricky that fooled me into thinking it was actually holding the range anyway hold that down there's your back light that's actually that's going to be reasonable anyway instructions they're all in english looks adequate and uh spec specs basic dc accuracy yeah it's exactly what you expect half a percent plus three accounts one percent for ac supposed to be true rms uh yeah only goes to one kilohertz so yeah and dc current uh six thousand microamps up to six hundred milliamps uh yeah of course there's no uh 10 amp range ac current will do the same at one and a half percent that's at 1.2 diode 2 volts open circuit voltage so not terrific 1 for ohms it's all you know it's it's fairly typical four percent for capacitance um you know it's not great you're not going to write home to your mum about uh that sort of accuracy and i could actually use my decay resistance box as a reference here because it's uh you know 0.1 percent this is actually quite an expensive uh resistance calibration uh you know decade box it's actually you know i've done a video on this way back it's it's from iet labs a very reputable one and it said you know it's in the order of like point one percent so it's pretty good and for you know it's going to be better than that um of course so it's supposed to be uh six thousand counts so actually let's go down five five twenty and we'll see where it switches 600 oh yeah yep 600 to 610 560 yep hang on 1k 10k 100k one meg 10 meg no why'd the beep there shouldn't have beeped 100 ohms 10 of course you're gonna get the uh continuity buzzer okay you know it's going to work like i have no doubt it's going to meet a spec oh i just actually noticed it had a bar graph there let's actually try that again yet the bar graph is no faster it's gimmicky bar graph not only is it tiny it's uh no faster than the actual reading so it's just converting the reading it's not doing any like sampling any quicker whatsoever all right let's feed mains up it's clacka don't try this at home kitties there we go up the 310 displayed 244 yeah it's near enough does have a dual display which is quite quite nice 50 hertz because we're in australia um no worries so yeah that's going to work all right uh like is it going to blow its uh snot if i uh put it in millivolt range perhaps i don't know uh will this 20 meter handle it so we go no it's just going to flash the um the uh my negative there so did it survive yep there you go no workers and here is the ridiculousness of having uh just this auto function only okay i've got my uh reference box here i'm generating zero volts okay and it thinks it's like zero ohms continuity which well technically it is like the output impedance is going to be low but if i go up to 0.1 volts aren't my knobs a bit dodgy there so don't worry about that um i just need to readjust the thing on there anyway um it's showing 1.2 k not 0.1 volts dc like and if i go up to 0.2 volts 0.3 volts it still thinks it's a resistor thinks it's a 10 meg resistor with 0.3 volts on it right and well okay well granted we should have used the millivolt range for this but there you go you have to get to like half a volt before it will actually start detecting that as voltage and actually display that so yeah that's just it's just ridiculous so anyway um yeah like it's near enough it's going to be with inspect nearer towards full scale 10.0 oh that's a bit out that's a bit how you're doing yeah i'm definitely all zeros there um that's yeah i don't think my box has gone dodgy um yeah nah there you go 5.005 and 5.014 what's that in percentage yeah that's only like point two eight percent high so it's with inspect yeah so yeah well yeah look i'm not going to go to town on this if you're really if anyone really desperately wants a like a full review of this thing i don't know like it's like a 43 buck meter yankee bucks but it's like looks like it's currently on sale for 20 bucks so it's 20 u.s like that includes delivery so yeah crazy i mean i've done a full um shootout a pocket multimeter shootout i wouldn't classify this as a pocket although this could fit in your pocket i wouldn't classify it as a pocket meter because it does have uh the you know the removable leads and really the case is probably like that's bigger than a pocket meter i mean you know i mean you know by far the best pocket meter on the market was this one that i used to sell i don't sell it anymore because it like a lot of people didn't want to pay the premium for this uh samurai pm uh 300 but san juan make other ones and like you know it's look it's much much bigger than that right it's just like you know there's a huge difference so that's why i wouldn't class this as a pocket meter but you know it comes with a nice case and it's 20 bucks delivered and you know it's worth you know just throwing in your glove box or whatever no worries whatsoever um you know as just a second meter i wouldn't use it as like a main meter all the time it's like there's nothing stand out about it the continuity test is horrible there just for kicks we'll measure my reference capacitor here which is from 1967 if you can read that thank you very much it's a bobby dazzler ah tell you what oh yeah that's pretty close to bang on not too shabby but anyway yeah like there's nothing remarkable stand out about this i'm not going to go wow you know it's not like it's not it's not an aiming killer or anything like that but you know if you like the form factor it might have you know if it's got a non-contact tester and you might have the light you know you might have need for something like this then you know by all means um yeah check it you know 20 bucks you know like you get it if you don't like it then you know you haven't wasted much so yeah i'll leave the link to the aliexpress store down below for the gvda and they got a voltage detector stick does that have an lcd on it wow that's interesting um anyway you know that's my you know fluke sticks and oh gee that's kind of big and chunky it just feels big and i don't know um it's just yeah it's not sleek it does look and feel a bit cheap i don't know if that's coming across on camera but yeah it's you know thousand volt uh cat three of course it's non-contact um you can actually see the tip in there that's interesting how they got like the transparent tip but uh i guess the batteries are in there are they no so what do we got here aaa 1.5 volts yep oh there's triple a's in there um hello they're a piss cell it's heavy duty none of that alkaline rubbish um a piss cell okay somebody's taking the piss oh they installed them backwards so that they wouldn't drain that's telling um does that mean that uh it's got a high standby i might have to measure that there we go there we go we're in all right oh it's got a backlight on it look at that that's kind of nice you know i've never seen one with the screen before works there we go it actually discriminates okay against the uh pins there does earth but that's all right and it's higher there oh there we go boop boop so you can actually see where probably the bulk of the pin is right down there that's actually got pretty good discrimination don't mind that look yeah we can rotate it there you go so there you go you can rotate it like that that's got excellent discrimination does it change yep looks like it's got two ranges there so that's not detecting anything at all and it's just detecting okay that that actually seems pretty good i don't mind the discrimination in that and it's got a light isn't that cute there you go that's all right does the job well i suspect this is going to be a destructive teardown oh why the hell not well yep that was destructive all right uh that's not going back in there and oh we've been blobbed all we've got is a lousy blob and that's it um so yeah sorry are they a couple of or die yes i think they are they're cues aren't they um and yeah a couple more down there and well that's all she wrote the back light under there a little lcd with naf all that'd be multiplexed of course um it's got uh four pin only four pins and that's it so operating current uh 5.7 milliamps uh yeah you'd expect that because it's got a backlight and stuff like that and let's switch it off oop there we go you know that 30 35 milliamps wow it's pretty loud um and it's pretty bright as well and no not microamp good enough for australia um so yeah no reason to install those batteries back to front like that yeah it's actually bang on a micro amp anyway that's the gvda ac voltage detection stick i actually don't mind it the uh functionality of it's uh quite what it seems to work quite well i just like i think it's just looks and feels a bit cheap that's all um doesn't inspire you know the vibe's not there doesn't inspire a lot of confidence but uh yeah it seems to work reasonably well so anyway probably cost like 10 bucks delivered does it i was wrong it's only nine bucks delivered so yeah that sort of price just throw one in the glove box no worries not sure how many sucks the sav seed studio have had but it's a lot so yeah thank you very much seed studio um it's pretty light don't know what it is no idea i don't think they clicked maybe they did clue me up but uh like it's been a couple of months since i've done mailbags so all this stuff is you know at least several months old sorry i haven't gotten around to it earlier anyway um oh e-design oh yes they sent in a new um what oh would it come from okay they ordered it directly from seed the studio because they're the uh they're the distributors of this um they sent a replacement one sorry there's nothing to see nothing to see here it's just the replacement lcr meter um because i totally destroyed the last one so they wanted to know if i oh there we go it's boots up uh they wanted to know if i could if i wanted a working one because i do have other lcr uh pocket like the tweezer lcr meters and i thought i would do a um like a shootout kind of thing so there you go i might do a uh let me know in the comments down below how desperately you would like to see a pocket lcr tweezer shoot out because i've got i think i've got a global specialties one and i've got the what's that canadian one um and we've got this one and i think that's it are there others let me know hi to all my viewers in thailand don't get many from thailand um i can't make out the first word because it's covered with a cassand cool sorry um anyway thailand there you go um we haven't seen a thailand uh thing although it's not a stamp there's the thailand thing that's how many uh i don't know what's what's the time and the thailand currency i i don't oh anyway it's got b on it there you go um oh okay we have solder seal for our protection why do we have solder there's sent solder into the mailbag i guess they sell this solder i guess it's solder wire in case you needed to know um there you go it's green so does that mean it's lead free usually if it's green like spool or label or something like that it's lead free that looks like you know one one millimeter job so shenzhen ju thing solder wire okay got one millimeter lead-free solder might give it a go as it turns out this is super special stuff this is ultra low uh temperature melting point uh tin and bismuth with uh one percent silver um solder this is real you know not many companies actually manufacture this and i went to the du fang website shenzhen jufing website and they said yeah we're one of the few that actually manufacture this low melting point solder and uh i've done it oh video donkeys years ago with uh the quick chip solder this is basically the same thing i believe quick chip is exactly uh the same i don't know if the quick chip one has the silver in it but anyway the biggest quick chip is uh designed for like a d soldering but uh this one's got 42 10 and 50 percent 57 bismuth and 1 silver now i believe hp were the first ones to add uh 1 silver and that actually makes it uh work more as you know it's not for desoldering parts it's actually for soldering uh you know heat sensitive critical parts and stuff like that but the interesting thing about the tin bismuth mix is that when you combine it with lead i.e in regular lead solder joints when you're doing desoldering it lowers the melting point from this one's regularly 138 degrees celsius we won't talk in fahrenheit rubbish here on the eev blog uh drops it from 138 uh c down to like you know 90s or something like that which is where the chick quick chip um stuff is so basically yeah i was when i first got this i thought oh geez they haven't given me much i wonder why and then the penny dropped and i looked at it ah bismuth um yeah so cool let's check it out so this stuff is great for you know like if you've got like some you know critical leads or something or other like real thermally sensitive components you might actually um solder these with a low melting point solder like tin bismuth mix we've got a massive 20 grams worth of it let's give it a go now unfortunately the lowest ah my pace will go down to as 180 and the lowest my jbc will go down to is 200 so um yeah well let's start out with 180. let's start out with some well not quite 60 40. this is tin lead with a little bit of copper it's a sav bit job anyway melting point of 183 degrees of course nobody ever solders at 183 because yeah it'll melt at 183 but when you apply your uh tip onto the joint it's just going to suck the heat away and it's not going to be 183 anymore um a bit so technically like let's see if i i've got it currently set to 180 let's see if we can get that to do it technically it shouldn't unless there's some error in the temperature there's not let's whack it up to 190 here we go 190 should just do it yep yep there you go you can melt solder at 190 degrees but you put that on a joint and you've got absolutely no chance whatsoever now this tin bismuth stuff oh she'll melt all right you betcha look at that oh bobby dazzler all right i'm going to see if this works like the uh chip quick stuff it should because it's pretty much uh identical all right so what i'm going to do is i'm going to actually set my uh iron to 370 celsius which is a typical uh soldering temperature you might have and of course this stuff will melt like this no tomorrow right but what i'm going to do is just get a little ball this is just a scrap board but ah come on get off there right now i just want to show you how long this stays i just want to see how long this stays molten for if i actually heat that up and look see how it's still still molten like that or that didn't last as long as the chip quick so maybe chip quick have something slightly different i can't remember exactly but the idea is that with this low temperature solder one of the things you can actually do with it but this isn't what this is uh designed for is that you can actually go around and when it combines with lead like this it'll melt at a much lower temperature so let me just basically apply it all the way around this chip like this and this chip should uh probably need a bit more than that do i heat up all the sides and they should maybe i haven't got enough on there should stay molten long enough on all sides for this chip to just come off that's the plan there we go there we go gotcha yeah it's messy right but it does actually work look check it out and then you can just clean up your pads with your uh solder wick no worries so there you go it's very well it's messy but it is was certainly very useful to have some of this in your kit for desoldering and this stuff works a treat because i believe it's identical to the chip quick could be much cheaper as well um from shenzhen due things solder coast so that's really cool it's actually probably melting as i said we combine it with lead actually um that'll have some lead in it now so let's actually just heat that up right so this has got some lead in it and let's see how long this stays molten for right look still molten still molten ah no no i just died well probably because i'm using metal oh there we go but anyway very cool stuff you can see that we actually removed it looks messy but that's all just the flux residue we can just clean all that up no worries um and we didn't lift any pads or anything uh you know you could maybe do some damage around you know components around the outside so you got to have a fair bit of space to do something like this but anyway that was a bit messy a bit rusty at doing that but it worked beautiful low temperature solder so there you go i'm not sure how much uh this costs but it works the same as the quick chip uh stuff so i'll link in uh due things website down below so thanks for sending that in um of course you know this is like it's not cheap stuff this is expensive and difficult stuff to manufacture apparently um but it's you know look this one has like this is a 20 gram reel right so that's it's not much at all but you know you use it sparingly for desolder or very occasionally you might need to do like ultra low temperature application or something like that but you know most people should keep some of this for uh some desoldering it's pretty neat stuff anyway that's it for the mailbag i did have another item on here but it's a bit of avionics uh kit and well it looks interesting so i haven't torn it down yet but i think that'll be a second teardown video because this mailbag is already like 40-50 minutes or something anyway if you liked it please give it a big thumbs up and as always discuss down below and on the forum and my other platforms you know the deal catch you next time you

Channel: EEVblog

Views: 59,186

Rating: 4.8835444 out of 5

Keywords: eevblog, video, mailbag, Low Temperature, low temp solder, low temperature solder, chipquik, solder, desoldering, jufeng, Bismuth Solder, rework, pcb rework, pcb desoldering, gvda multimeter, gvda gd118b, multimeter review, ac voltage detection stick

Id: J7kBzYX1NvA

Length: 54min 27sec (3267 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 30 2020