EEVblog 1391 - Mailbag

hi welcome to everyone's favorite segment mailbag yes it's back yes we've got to build up on the bench so let's get to it so if you want to send something in send it to mayo it's got a mailbag on it po box 7949 northwest new south wales 215 through there 2153 australia not austria so thank you very much elon gendel from israel hi to all my israeli viewers do i have quite a few from israel actually so this is the biggest one so i i lost count of chronological order they just get mixed up on the mailbag so let's crack into this one how do i aha that's actually the bottom i've got to get into the back tongue at the right angle matters oh it's oh it's got a handle oh something after my own heart no it's not test gear hang on whoa this is heavy oh we got a bonus attachment ah look at this bad boy that's it there's no weight in that there's no it can't be any good there's no weight in it but it's the panasonic super vhs now that regular vhs rubbish and camcorder wow it's a dp200 for those playing along at home hands up if you used one of these bad boys back in the day yeah i was going to say why is it like that it's because it's got to swing out like that and yeah get your eye up there and yeah none of that lcd screen rubbish thank you very much fantastic it's got xlr oh it's a pro hi dave love your channel two items for your consideration panasonic super vhs dp 200. now that vhs already said that i'm am i that predictable really what's used in uh for community channel fuel reporting in the early 1990s sort of works but needs new belts belts remember those five minute tear down yeah it's going to have to be a separate video this is a it's not five minute mail bag tear down sorry and oh look at this a casio g-shock mud master wow i don't like big watches like this here we go check it out look at that bad boy look at that wow the mud master i mean that's a serious bit of kit um yeah for my mud runs and stuff i got my mud run t-shirt i forgot to change my t-shirt i got my tough mudder t-shirt on um yeah should have changed that dog but ah nice that's a nice tear down the second hand occasionally becomes stuck oh it's just misalignment or something is it and alan's got his own website linking down below it's uh microvax2.org geez i wonder what that's about [Music] okay we'll just take a brief look at this bad boy because well we don't have time to tear it down it's the dp 200 super vhs not that regular vhs rubbish if you don't know you might be able to see it there it is 625 wow that's yeah 625 pixels across but because it's super vhs instead of regular vhs has a whopping 420 lines of resolution as opposed to 240 on regular vhs and it super vhs also increases the luminance bandwidth so technically you get like a better quality picture and stuff but anyway um it says push um i don't know it must be powered open or something i'm not sure what the deal is and as i said xlr input down here i assume that's for an external mic and there's just like a dodgy unlabeled um knob down here so is that like some like aftermarket hack or something like that maybe it's made in japan all this stuff's made in japan absolutely fantastic it's got a character generator which is really uh interesting that's like you know pro level stuff so that you can insert characters over like you know text over the image that would have been really state of the art back in the day but anyway name plate for those playing along at home and we've got a thread mount and everything and these are designed like really quite ergonomically this is designed to sit on your uh shoulder of course and then you've got the uh viewfinder here which is not that lcd rubbish that's got a uh crt in there it's got a tally light as well on the front which allows uh your subject to see that there you know person being interviewed whatever to see that the tape is a roll in and uh yeah it's got an eyepiece and there'll be a crt in here we've torn these uh down uh before they're really quite cool these little micro uh crts they're very nice geez that's a bit dusty so yeah the whole idea is that you have to put your eye right up to there so you've got one eye on the shot one eye on the uh viewfinder if anyone used to be like use these uh cameras uh back in there like they still do like you still get the shoulder mount run and gun uh cameras i've done a video on that on the second channel but anyway and then your hand of course goes in here like this and this is ergonomically designed there's your start stop and there's your electronic zoom there they've also got a slider on here as well so presumably that's motor driven and you should be able to see can you see the lens inside there change yeah there we go look at that beautiful don't know what all the gunk is though no idea anyway that's got a 12 times optical zoom now that digital zoom rubbish but it's a pretty feature packed i mean it's got low light um the focus you can open close the iris you can white balance adjust you can switch between iris and shutter control and you can have auto or manual or portrait modes for those and you can fade in you can get on-screen display so you can put the date time overlay and stuff like that which is of course very common back in the days geez nobody has that any cameras don't do cameras even still have a date time overlay feature i don't know anyway we can do some sort of uh search capability and stuff like that and on the top here it had some sort of like a warning sticker i guess our removal you know don't dig around with this because this is where you set the date time and the counter and stuff like that so you can switch that off or on um and there's our power button on the top then we've got a cold shoe mount of course now that hot shoe rubbish and oh the mic has got wide tele and zoom select as well and it's got rubber baby buggy bumper on there um so that'll take out some of the vibration but none of that image stabilization rubbish in this but if that microphone's not good enough external mic no worries so like i assume that the xlr i don't know i haven't read the manual soon the xlr down there is for the mic but all that's unlabeled and then on the back if you want to use it as a vcr you want to play it back there's your controls no workers and there's your battery eject your battery goes down in there it's got a big spring down in there and a couple of contacts uh your tape eject button then we've got composite video out and also an rf uh like dc output that presumably powers an external like um rf interface oh it goes in there okay so it's like a little physical attachment that goes on the back and these are two pins that provide power through the rf modulator and then you can plug it directly into a tv anyway audio out and we've got higher quality s video out as well and edit presumably there's some sort of edit uh box facility or something like that internal speaker you can have hi-fi or normal and a weird-ass dc jack the amorphous pro head sounds impressive so anyway leave it in the comments down below if you used one of these bad boys and uh what did you use it for so i yeah thanks for sending that in obviously has to be a separate tear down video because there's ton there's an hour's worth of uh tear down material inside this thing so ah fascinating i've also got like another big camcorder like this um to tear down that came in like that big uh plastic carry case and everything like that still got that there's someone sitting in the mailbag so you know keep pestering me if you want to see the teardown thanks that's brilliant look at it just completely wet the way of the dodo unbelievable and today's home lab comes from andrew tayman thank you very much doesn't say where he's from it's just here it is um it's your basic regular looking lab we've just got a like you know a fairly long bench looks like at least two of them could extend out further one big length of esd mat that's probably is that it's they're usually even like 600 or 900 mil deep unless it's like a custom uh depth or something like that but they they're your typical like a short one will be like 600 mil a long one like i've got 900 mil something like that so i've got ourselves a fluke down here we've got ourselves one of those um inspection uh microscopes that's one of those um i can't remember their brand they keep sending me i've got like five of them i haven't reviewed or something these guys these keep piling on multiple sucks of the salve anyway yeah we've got our uh precision screwdriver set nice um jbc is that a yeah that looks like i haven't seen that particular model before but there you go got the obligatory mug um i don't know what that is i can't see maybe it's a special purpose bit of measurement kit it's like ah could be some sort of like you know power custom power measurement um do that or something anyway we've got the rodent shorts rtb uh 2000 by the looks of it a lot of people picked up that bargain when they uh released that we've got uh yeah two high-end um six and a half seven half digit meters here the keithley and uh the keysight got another keithley bitter kit over here what is that one uh that's a that's our it's a power supply that looks like one of those uh precision power supplies they often use those in uh like really like um like providing power for like mobile phones under production tests and stuff like that and they can provide like really fast pulse loads and they can you know simulate all sorts of like battery uh stuff and things like that those things aren't cheap um they're very specialized bits of kit so if you can get one score one of those on ebay you're doing well but they hold their prices um looks like we've got uh the rhigo electronic uh load over here um and we've got the ryegol uh 832 power supply isn't it and uh cheap ass hot air uh gun here we've got another there's that that's a solder sucker by the looks of it yeah solder gun solder sucker we've got uh looks like the components up here in little um bok tray box things micro controllers um resistors and all sorts of stuff idc connectors leds headers blah blah blah all sorts of stuff uh everything nicely um on the pegboards in the background beautiful what else we got uh yeah there's the jbc down there so it's interesting now getting the iron up off the onto the top up there and only you're having your iron down here so you can free up your bench space uh that's a good idea and then we've got the open top trays here i've i've done a video building open top a trays i really like them because you can just pull them out and the stuff's just there you don't have to take lids off and things like that which is really annoying so i'm trying to partially transition over to those and got more stuff up here uh looks like reels of stuff and things like that yeah smd reels and you know stuff like that because often you know you do a short production run you got some you know reels and stuff left over and yeah you want to keep them so there you go that is a very nice basic layer well it's not basic because there's some high-end and specialized bits of kit here uh for various things that he works on so there you go i don't know what's being worked on down there but um yeah it's obviously you know it's like it's your basic lab and then you equip it with some like specialized stuff and you know usually like a basic lab's not going to have two six or seven half digit meters in here you know so once you sort of step up to that sort of level like you need a reason uh to do that and it looks like um yeah a precision power supply or uh some such and uh something else over here if you know what that is leave it in the comments down below but neat and here is the g-shock mud master look at this beast that is just insanely thick wow that's incredible and look at all the protrusions for the buttons and everything else shock resist i mean this would be like yeah this would survive anything incredible so it looks like it's got an altimeter that's the button that switches that on this button on this on the front here you might think this is some sort of sensor nope um it seems to match these these seem to be the big buttons that's the light button so it doesn't seem to do anything it's now flashing charge charge charge but anyway barometric pressure sensor and temperature so is that barometric pressure sensor there and that's your temperature sensor there perhaps and of course it's got the really uh old-school like different uh time zones london paris and all that around that side yeah does anyone have those anymore like do you find it like you know if you're traveling and stuff like that like i just think it's messy on an analog watch not really a fan of the combination digital analog watches but anyway if you want to see what i'm wearing at the moment i've got a citizen eco drive so you can see the size difference there this is a ridiculously large case and this is quite small and thin and if you look at the look at the differences in those i mean that's just nuts anyway this thing on my wrist would look insane there it is on my wrist because i don't have a big wrist so i uh suit the uh like the slimmer form factor watches and stuff like that so yeah that's just oh man no way like there's no way i'm gonna wear that that's just crazy it'll just get in the way i mean if you're doing like a mud obstacle uh course or you're doing any sort of like mountaineering or i'm going canyon or something like that's just like no no no no no okay let's have a look inside this thing um it looks like some sort of uh resin case something like that so we've got our self tappers into resin which is kind of par for the course but lifted off we'll expect to see an o-ring of course nothing's waterproof without an o-ring and there it is and nothing's waterproof without an o-ring and grease so there's no point having an o-ring if you don't grease it up anyway uh piezo transducer on the back not sure what what that is oh that's that just like a little that's a pressure plate yeah i think that's just a little pressure thing to put pressure onto the battery to keep it in there perhaps but anyway um there's some tiny little contacts down in there for our battery and i like that i like the red rubber sheet usually they use like a mylar uh type sheet or something like that but that's uh red rubber baby buggy bumpers and in typical digital watch construction it all seems to that's going to all pop out in a module anyway as far as the g-shock technology which makes it all shock-proof and everything else that's got to be these little red yep they feel like rubber yep those little rubber inserts that actually keep the internal module in there from you know banging against the sides of the case like this so the case can take a physical impact on here and then that's going to be attenuated by the red little compliant mounts like that and the buttons are somehow like physically isolated i'm not exactly sure that one's a bit how you're doing um and as i said that that one doesn't light one doesn't seem to push some of the others do yeah the buttons are really how you're doing on this i don't like them at all i can't really press them properly but um yeah it looks like there's probably another mount on the uh on the face side as well because they're obviously this is why they're using rubber here because that gives it some uh compliant mount from the back case like this and then uh it would yeah it would almost certainly you wouldn't go to that sort of effort doing it on the edges plus the back and then not do it on the front so if we can get that module out which is probably going to be tricky there is probably an art to it but yeah i reckon we'll find another compliant mount on the top i managed to get the retainer plate out i'll split spare you the gory details of that anyway we have our battery holder like this and there you go that's its own little uh sew up little springs in there so that's its own little uh assembly like that which then makes contact down onto the main pcb down in here so there you go you can see a few inductors down there and you know that's your typical digital watch there's not a huge amount in it it's going to have a blob somewhere on the other side and the buttons in there do seem to have the same uh castellated edge on the pcb like that and then making uh like and then the pin that comes through because i've physically pushed that one out and you can see it come in and make contact there i really really don't like those buttons at all well there you go i got it out and that's all the one assembly like that which is really nice and that's typically what you'll get inside uh any modern digital uh watch or sort of you know and even though this is a combo digital analog watch you'll get the completed assembly light that allows them to uh design and test those notice all the test points on the back therefore all the better nails are production uh testing stuff and then it goes within um an outer case like that and then it usually has some sort of battle battery assembly and then sort of some complex uh retainer mechanism to hold it all in place to make sure it doesn't fall out but as i said um i expected to see a compliant mount on that side um but there's not that gray one down there that's plastic so that's not uh it's not the red rubber that we saw on the other side so i guess they couldn't do that that's one of the rubber inserts that was inside there so that's interesting but anyway there's our temperature sensor by the looks of it that's a little flat flex connector there and that yeah yeah there we go just pulled out from the connector in there so so that would be a bugger to get together wouldn't it i wouldn't like to be working at the uh g-shock factory that's for sure anyway these buttons you might be able to see there's an additional contact there of course that one button is not enough to make electrical contact so they have another one up there which then combined it then it forms a uh switch on the side with the castellated edges but look at the thickness or lack thereof of that pcb wow what's that anyway for those who wanted to know the total watch thickness there you go that is a thick ass watch as opposed to my nice little slimline eco drive here look at that oh a width of a paper over nine and the thing is with the pcb at that at this sort of uh thickness every pcb becomes a flex pcb and i've actually used that um aspect in uh designs before we've actually um i specified uh which is not actually finished pcb but a pcb pre pre-preg i specified them to use really thin pre-preg material like you know 0.1 millimeters and you can get boards like that sort of thickness and they're just like they act as flex pcbs it's incredible 0.3 yeah about point three millimeter pcb so these really aren't designed to be repaired i've already broken something off there what is that oh there you go there's a crystal that's a it's a crystal in a little uh plastic holder yeah usually they just have their solder on the back of the board but this actually there you go it's just embedded down in there that's neat but anyway you got to remember this is a mechanical watch as well so it's got to have all this stuff inside there and uh yeah that's that's pretty impressive but it looks like it might have heat stakes or something holding it in place there you go managed to get it apart there's our pcb there and uh yeah it makes uh press fit contacts down here to their little tiny itty bitty springs in there which uh go down to our coils for our uh mechanical mechanism which is all in there then of course we've got our what looks like our oled uh what looked like on the front to be an oled uh display and there's all our contacts down on the main pcb of course that'll be a custom blob there it is there's the main chippy down there it's got a protective film slice that off yeah there we go there we go there's our bare die or getting closer to it anyway so anyway that is fascinating thank you very much aylon for uh sending in the camcorder and this uh g-shock watch i always wanted to take a look inside one of these and yeah it's rather fascinating and it's just not the mechanical and uh packaging design of something like this which is like absolutely critical like you can't just have an a couple of electronics designers designing a watch like this you've got to have like a a really advanced team of you know to try and get all of this manufactured manufactured at a low enough cost manufactured with reliability manufacturer in to meet all of the in this case the physical uh shock and other performance requirements and and stuff like that and also you know just thermal design just isolating the uh temperature i presume that's the temperature sensor is that barometric that one you know that sensor over there but anyway like i've actually designed watches and putting i've put a temperature sensor in a watch and it's not easy to actually isolate from the heat of your wrist so you know that's something that is you really have to take into account and it is rather annoying so in that case maybe that over there is our temperature sensor perhaps there you go i just took off the outer plate for that one and yep i reckon that is our barometric pressure sensor actually there you go check out that took the plate off it's got lots of gunk in there wow that's terrible muriel ah it's just this is filled with crud wow okay what we're actually looking at there is a re-enterable silicon gel that allows the pressure to come through but no moisture so there you go so all the all the particles someone's had far too much fun with this watch and uh it's just all collected in there but it still would have worked still to work to treat so yep and our temperature sensor looks like it just screws out oh look at that neat wow didn't expect that so i can't get that apart any further so i'm going to assume that uh at the end of that is a uh thermocouple and they've just like isolated that from the case basically using that method to isolate it uh no from the case and also um you know any uh radiation coming uh directly off your skin as well so that's an interesting way to do it i don't know does anyone did anyone has got one of these and they've had how good is the uh temperature sensor in it uh when you're actually wearing the thing so yeah it's an impressive amount of uh technology that uh goes into all this not to mention like you know low power asic design for getting yeah i don't know how much how long the battery life in this thing is if you do leave it in the comments but you know it's got to be pretty decent and uh these things aren't uh cheap they do sell these for you know many hundreds of dollars i believe they're you know worth a pretty penny so they're not your uh traditional you know five or ten dollar uh throw away watch but um yeah impressive amount of tech that goes into just a mud master watch thanks for sending that one in brilliant should at least have my own merch on yes you can still get this at my teespring store linkedin down below anyway hi to all my viewers in germany thank you very much uh aka module bus computer gee i wonder what's inside here may not be a module bus computer but all right we have a note we have another note or is that instructions oh look at this oh we've got some oldie stuff oh look at that that is a homemade decade resistance box isn't that sweet as wow it's um it's not your usual um sorry lc lcr lcr box all i saw was the resistance knob i was going to say geez that's not many decades but uh it's an lcr box wow homemade jobby um so i assume like it's a kit or something like that sweet bonus here's something you don't see every day it's a development board a breadboard development board that supports tubes and yes they are tube sockets on the top and we got some that's great for all your hey if you want to develop with tubes this would be very handy now i've done a video on building your own decade resistance box before and it's something you should have in your lab um this goes one further as well as you can get decay capacitance boxes and boxes decade inductance boxes but this one is an uh rlc box it tries to do all three in one as well as having fixed value resistors here like this so you know if you don't have like a major range but you know it's good enough for just experimenting and stuff like that but you also have verniers up here 10 turn verniers very nice and you can actually put r and c in like you can isolate the resistance like that you can put r's and c's in parallel and r's and c's in series as well so that's very handy the capacitance um is rather than a decade type thing it's got all your common values but two separate inner and outer ranges high and low like that so high would be the larger values would it but with this inner ring goes from 15 puffs around to 6.8 puffs so it's like so the inner ring goes like low to like really high but anyway it's obvious high obviously means the higher value of that and you can put the inductors and capacitors in parallel as well anyway um it's open source hardware so you can download the eagle files for it so you can make your own this one's 269 euros so it's pretty pricey if you want to build uh buy the build-up kit it's obviously designed for educational you know labs and things like that you know students experimenting with things hence why series and parallel and you know stuff like that really quite nice i really like the uh binding uh posts on it that's really quite neat and uh the box is a bit how you're doing though like there i yeah it's just a bit too big for its own its own good there um i think anyway let's pop it open oh well hello isn't that beautiful wow i really like that look at the beautiful wafer switches they've got down here and i love how they've like manufactured the board to then just dump solder directly in there and they've got the individual little this is a really nice elegant design i really like it so the pcb like they've extended the routing out there with the contact so what you do you might think well how do you get the board in there well you shove it between the pins like this and then right so you lower it between the pins like this all these little protrusions and then you rotate it just like that until it's in the middle of the pins and then you solder it on there that's just like that's really oh actually you could put it from the other side yeah no i stand corrected you could actually just do it from the front side there's no need to put it through there and actually rotate it i was getting all fancy pants in here that's just no need to do that um but there you go they've obviously got room for like surface mount um parts around the edge here so obviously yeah they got them on the other side under there like that so i don't know why they got top and bottom this is the deluxe version there is a standard version not sure of the difference but anyway so there are all our resistors they're just like standard uh like a 1206 one percent uh tolerances nothing you know particularly uh fancy there's the vernier for those playing along at home made in mexico hi to all my mexican viewers um and the little and the capacitor board isn't that very nice there's going to be some surface mount ones on the bottom absolute node yet yet there's actually two layers of boards down in there like that like and there's your surface mount inductors down there there's a lot of work that goes into building this so you know but as i said like you can actually build this yourself you can download all of uh the files and things like that so it'd be nice if i you could engineer this to be like smaller like my first thought when i got this is geez this is a really big box um you know why does it have to be so deep well you know that's why there's a lot of depth in there for the caps and the inductors and other uh stuff later but the switches as well you know so if it could be engineered in like a lower um form factor solution uh that'd be very nice but geez isn't that like that's really that's really nice that's one of the nicest implementations of an rlc box just from a physical construction point of view that i've seen i really like that approach anyway it turns out roger leafert thank you very much has he started uh kanka labs anyway it's got a youtube channel so i will uh link that in down below so uh yes it's in the mailbag everything that's sent in makes it under the mailbag yes they do sell worldwide and there's the online shop linkedin uh down below as well and uh we've got the vacuum tube kit here oh by the way he's up to ten thousand subs absolutely fantastic so uh yeah give him a uh subscribe i'll link the youtube channel down below but anyway um yeah we've not only got that but we've also got this um this is the rt 100 um you know valve experimenters uh kit model module bus modal bus i'm not sure how you actually pronounce that but this is really nice we've got the screw terminals over here we've got various side jacks because of course one of the things you want to do with valves is you want to design like audio uh stuff and things like that so you want uh you want your power and you want your audio in and out and um yeah it looks like we've got a big pot over here and then we've got a couple of other pots over here and all of this all the pins for the valve sockets here various different types i don't know my particular valve socket types it's not my thing but anyway um yeah and then you've got a basic uh breadboard to have a play around with it and all come to uh standard headers that you can just use standard solid jumper wire to transfer over to the breadboard and it comes with a kit this is a 106 euros kit and it comes with various um valves tubes and various parts you can have an experiment with so that's quite neat anyway thanks for sending those in i'll link them in down below if you're interested they're a nice bit of kit not sure if this one's a mail bag because it doesn't have mail bag on it anyway it was sent to my old address one set to my po box it was sent directly to the office here i guess we'll find out if it's something i've ordered or not or whether or not it's something a company has sent in no it's a yeah they've sent this in it's another mini ware product it's a it's a preheater geez when they say when they say mini they really mean mini that is tiny that is tiny look at it that's the tiniest preheater i've ever seen that's fantastic oh oh oh it just came out oh that's rather nice actually but that's all you know like it's not designed for a whole board unless your board happens unless you're designing a watch pcb or something like that um then you wouldn't really need a preheater because there's no thermal mass in something like that and this is like for getting under bgas and stuff like that so yeah that's like it's all practically exactly what you want just for like single like you know isolated component heating because you don't want to heat up your whole board just to get one part off you only want to heat up just under the component you're trying to get off in this case you know square form factor it's obviously designed for like bgas and stuff okay this is uh designed by e-design mini where you'll know those um from of course the famous ts-100 and ts80 soldering irons which i've done videos on this is the mhp 30 and it's got a little uh temperature display it's a preheater you can stick your board under anyway i'm really quite nice it's like a retar get it on aliexpress for about 85 yankee bucks rubber off the top there there you go it's like a a ceramic plate on top and that actually pops off that's really quite nice i like the interconnect system there that's really neat so is that to light it up i think that's a is that a lead is it and then there's a light pot yeah i think it's got a wanky light to light it up and a little uh display there we go so it comes supplied with the really nice uh lightweight flexible uh silicone usbc cable that is supplied with the ts80 uh so it looks like the same one supplied with the tx80 soldering iron and we get a dodgy adapter here let's have a look um yeah it's the usb power delivery uh one i think we did we get that with the ts80 but anyway weird ass plug on it um and it's get like completely not labeled like there's nothing on it um i i've actually never i don't think i've ever seen a plug pack that like like has absolutely no labeling like usually there's some bogus markings or something but geez i don't know anyway yeah that is usb power delivery and you get a little manual this appliance can be used by children aged from eight years and above okay yeah my preheater needs a firmware update great specifications 100 to 350 degrees celsius it's got various uh preset temperatures 60 watts output power max and uh yeah it's of course it uses the us 20 volt usb power delivery heating part i love that well it's accurate stainless steel heat insulation bracket controller oled screen and bob's your uncle so you know it's like like it's really incredibly simple but i like the way that they've engineered that that is just that you know it's perfect doesn't take up any space on your bench at all you could store that anywhere of course you know like the plug pack's bloody bigger than the thing but um yeah that is quite nice and does exactly what you want of course like the hard part is often um like getting your board but you've got to have like a stand to get your board uh you know one of those helping hand things or some other frame type system to get your board on top and then once you've got your board raised up um you can just sit this under there like that you know a little minimum distance away um from the board that you're high trying to uh heat up and um it should work a treat and just as a reference or the pcb oh that's a coincidence that's a coincidence isn't it the pcb aight although um this is the new one um i think i've got another one which is uh slightly higher than that but that looks bang on no no it's slightly under so you would have to yeah the board yep so if you use your uh pcbi i'm sticking to it i'm sticking to it i'm not going to call it pc bite it's pcbite um and yeah so you might have to uh just raise these up a little bit more and yep there's my older one that one's higher so i'd use that that'd work a treat but then you'd have to raise this up a little bit to get to your board but that's easier than trying to raise all four of those okay i've powered it up and uh yeah you might recognize the interface so yeah the buttons are on the back so there we go here's our temperature scent uh temperature let's just go for 220 shall we it's got a sleep timer anyway so let's give that a bow up oh it started oh i must have accidentally touched it i was gonna say there we go it's heating up it's heating up you don't expect it to be quick this is not you know doesn't need to be soldering iron quick so however long it takes it takes no wuckers i like how it's got a little timer on there for how long it's been on that's kind of nice can you like set it'd be nice if i had like a you could like set a timer um when you're like just put it under and started but i guess you know like usually you just put this under your board and then you turn it on so it's the amount of time but you know ultimately you want to know i guess the amount of time it stays at that temperature so it's hard to tell unless you've got a temperature monitor on your actual pcb so of course so even if you've got this uh directly touching the bottom of your board then you don't know what the board's actually at because the thermal coupling is going to be meh anyway let me get the uh whole thermal camera out and see if we can measure it there we go it did uh it is set to 220 it did like it's overshot a little bit no walkers and it's going back down kind of yeah slowly and there you have it 225. that's good enough for australia no worries so yeah that seems to regulate fairly well and yeah i look i won't um experiment in this mailbag video with doing a pre-heater uh stuff you've seen me use preheaters before and they work they're unknown technology and it's all in the art of for what particular device that you're using what particular board density and material and the amount of cop embedded copper in there and there's all sorts of what type of solder you're using all sorts of uh stuff which goes into the complexities of uh like desoldering bgas and things like that but this is just really cute and handy i i really like it i think it's very well worth having in your kit um like because i've got like a giant preheater which you've seen me use to do all sorts of stuff and it's absolutely enormous takes up so much room it's great for heating up an entire board but usually that's not what you want you just want to heat up like one part and that's it and something like this absolutely tiny uh does that and that's not getting really it's getting a little bit warm but nothing uh hot to the touch and that that works really well and i like the way that they've implemented the contacts and everything else and it's probably like i can't imagine you're needing anything really bigger than that like there are uh bgas that are i've used bgas that are physically bigger than this but not by a lot um and it'd still work as a uh pre-heater so yeah i like it it's really cute check it out hi to all my viewers from deutschland again um thank you very much thomas mayer butchering that one but anyway this one sounds intriguing it uh did spoiler alert historic electronic components not just vintage but historic so i didn't want to be like i don't know was it used on like the apollo moon landings or something the snappista a new way to trim your circuits classic the snappiest stuff you snap it off i presume what you get your plot is it like serrated and your pliers or you tr trim it because you've got a snap like if it's a snappy start you have to snap it so what i don't see any score marks on there oh wow in original packaging fantastic yeah you trim the sections by breaking them off with the supplied pliers this is not going to end well the snappiest this is just fantastic thank you thomas um he said he tried to snap these off and it wasn't really that reliable wonder how many you get in your kit you want to get a decent amount in your kit jeez so we don't have anything else on there let's have a look to see what you get in the snappiest kit um like who actually does this i'm not entirely sure hang on there's still nothing that indicates who manufactures this at all hang on oh geez oh this is all wow look at this look at this wow finland hi to all my finnish viewers trimming a snappista helsinki can anyone date this please leave or if you've used these please leave it in the comments down below snap history is trimmed by snapping pieces off the substrate some comments on snapping and handling my i've used notch pliers like those in the kit to ensure one piece is snapped off at a time ordinary pliers will also do but you can improve them by grinding a transverse notch across one of the jaws oh wow that dates it doesn't it look at those gigantic axial resistors and yep and yours your snap is stuck just mount it vertically and then just snap it off the value you need to trim your circuit oh it's just this is gold oh this is how to modify your pliers do we get do we actually get the modified pliers yes look at that we actually get the modified pliers the special snappy suppliers oh this is just this is gold proper grip of the pliers before snapping pliers vertically properly placed on the other side of the snapista what off to one side like that oh really you don't put it on top and you don't hold it gentle squeeze the pliers oh we'll break this right along the scrib line okay so we'll have a look um final resistor trim to see you trim one at a time until you've got the value that you want it's a new and different trimmer component before starting your experiments with it we suggest you read some essential facts the snapista is a thick film resistant network on a ceramic substrate prescribed lines on the backside of the stratum straight divided into ten parts these parts can easily be snapped off one by one each snap is increasing the resistance of the snappister by 20 right so they've got them all in parallel and well you can see that you can see them physically all in parallel and snapping off one at the top and of course the length means that they got different uh values and snapping off the one at the top it looks like increasing the resistance by 20 giving a five-fold increase in resistance when all nine parts are broken off best use when the cost of summit trimmers is too high yeah these pesky sermon trimmers are expensive does it actually give you a temp co of these bad boys um uh initial value tcr 100 ppm there you go not exactly going to set the world on fire is it um for a ceramic substrate hmm reliability with thick film technology you can set the gain of a transistor i love it um the designer snappistickit initial resistant right so we've got like the hole so you get the whole kit so anyway this is this is groovy i love this groovy baby so check this out look at this oh there we go there's one that uh tom has uh snapped off brilliant so yeah it looks like we have a whole kit of these like 10k to 52k oh no yeah they're all 10 yet they're all 10k to 52k we've got 1k to 5k 2. and we've got oh they're they're why why are those ones green they've got like a a um a mask on them um that's a hundred ohms so they're actually a different physical type than all the rest of them 47k to 240k neat that's terrific isn't it there is the snappista oh this is just this is fantastic ah why didn't this catch on and there's the other one with the uh solder mask there so oh yeah you can see you really see the score lines on the back of that you can't really see it on the other side i reckon there's green one oh no okay oh if you hold it maybe at the right angle you might be able to see get the light at the right end you might be able to see some score lines but yeah i think they've improved the design in this model here right so here we go i'm going to try and snap this side it shows to one side doesn't it oh oh that that that came off really nicely actually wow that's actually that's really groovy do it again yeah uh thomas said he had problems i i had no problems whatsoever snapping those no worries all right so let's just measure this one before 105 ohms there you go let's get in there with our special pliers and once again uh to the side a bit yeah yeah that that snaps off beautifully like a ball one what does it measure now 125. nice thank you thomas for sending that in that is absolute classic um hands up if you knew about these things did you use them back in the day when did they first come out how long did they last um did they ever make it out of finland was it i don't know the snappist beautiful oh oh it's from aliexpress um it has come in the black wrapped plastic like this um yeah so straight from the shenzhen market oh god oh no oh well no no it wasn't quite it wasn't all right yeah no we had one of these oh geez didn't we i i'm sure we had one of these just a little bit ago we had like is it almost identical one yeah i don't think it's the same one though so oh oh that's oh that's crusty oh that's just skin crawl terrible muriel but okay quick yeah one minute tear down do i have to this is just like oh really oh god that's the worst case clip i've ever seen oh it's just no no no no no no no i just hate everything about this anyway some people are fans of the form factor of these uh kind of meters but this one does actually have non-contact voltage detection wow fancy pantsy and then you open it up and it's actually not too bad at all i guess they've got a ceramic fuse in here they've got a ptc uh it doesn't look like there's a mob unless it's on the other side but anyway nice attention like the battery compartments integral with the uh case like this they've attention to detail with the silicon down there don't necessarily like the um no the or the lack of uh strain relief on that well there's some kind of sum going around the bend there but you know not terrific but it might do an okay job anyway um there's your non-contact uh detector over there on that side um but you know we've been blobbed but and it's got metal threaded inserts so up like as far as the form factor it goes these are this actually almost seems okay anyway it is very interesting that it's a single triple a um like yeah it's a there's your it's got to have a boost uh converter to um get this thing working but there you go there's our ef detection and it's got the milliamps beeps rotational not you cannot or you can get it to a point where it doesn't work at all because the ground is in between there so you know not the best but it does a visual as well as audible and it's beeping at me just picking up um and just touching the probes and doing stuff yeah okay so i'm going to push our function button there continuity tester yeah no yeah that's it oh visual visual as well oh you know look oh god i'm not gonna review this thing but yeah i don't know i might have to get a grudging pass on this for its um form factor like if you're you know really set on these form factors the non-contact tester might come in uh handy or something but you know like i've done a review on pocket multimeters and i like yeah i there's better ones out there so germany again what is that third sucker the sev hi dave i got a digitized digital test something it's from an in-circuit test system thank you from aaaa that's all they got their name as um so let's have a squeeze oh okay it's a looks like ah ah that's interesting ceramic hybrid jobby there it is a ceramic uh hybrid and i used to work at uh gc marconi at meadowbank here in sydney and they actually had their own ceramic uh hybrid manufacturing uh facility and anyway like it's torn down it's like the whole place has gone now it's some bloody it's just some stupid residential uh complex now anyway i do they do have like i think there's a lane called faraday lane or something and that's like the only thing left of it anyway um that was quite sad but yet the reason you use uh ceramic hybrids is so that you can mix uh like you know ceramic hybrid technology including like resistors and capacitors and and stuff onto the ceramic substrate and there's various advantages uh to that which you know at the real uh high end that's why they use a ceramic hybrid resistor divider uh networks uh for example in like your real high-end seven and a half eight and a half digit uh meters and stuff like that well actually not just the high-end meters my new uh bm786 a multimeter it's got a ceramic hybrid resistor divider in it just gives better temperature coefficient more even you know everything else you can match them better but yeah and typically the only reason you do it is and you wouldn't just solder regular components onto a ceramic substrate board like this there's almost practically no real advantage uh to doing that over like you know fiberglass board but where it comes in as you can see looks like they have combined some little itty bitty teeny weeny um ceramic and they resistor networks but it almost seems like you wouldn't go to the trouble why would you not just use your regular off the shelf parts and a fiberglass board so i don't know maybe there's some sort of like thermal uh performance reason for it but anyway you can see down below there have they done some uh trimmy trims it's almost seems like a waste but anyway if anyone has any idea what this uh puppy's doing it's a um yeah just a mix of hybrid uh technology you know there's maybe some thermal performance reasons they're doing it something like that what it is i don't know is that a h bridge if you get right in there you can actually see the laser trim marks on those components so if we got some caps and some resistors in there and there they just laser trim those out you can see the ernie bernie marks in there on them so yeah they've trimmed them out but uh you know i don't see like any big massive arrays or anything like that okay they've they've individually trimmed them and maybe that's like probably the reason that they've gone to uh ceramic hybrid technology to be able to like trim these circuits it's probably a critical aspect of it and they decided laser trimming on a ceramic hybrid is better than select on test parts or sort of laser trimming parts in some other way after the fact so there's a reason behind it but yep let us know in the comments down below if you uh know exactly what's going on with this bad boy i'm sure you could get some part numbers and maybe do some sort of reverse engineering on that i know all my viewers in new zealand i won't do the sound effect this is from magic dac geez i wonder what it is magicdak.com can't possibly guess what this could be not that i have any idea what a magic deck is but you know usually the name's a giveaway multiple thing we have a um acrylic cut things or you know all the rage these days all the kitties are doing it geez that's a fairly hefty feeling usb called good old pin header thermocouple is we have extensive documentation by the look of it it's thick as bro it's the magic dac there it is got some proper relays on there now that solid state rubbish hang on that's just the interface that is your magic dac and i don't mind these plug packs you've seen them like it saves like inventory and stuff like that when you're manufacturing around the world you just supply the required adapter i hate it when companies like supply all the adapters even though they're only going for the one market and you just snap it in like that and you got yourself your plug pack suitable for your intended market rather like them so sean is the ceo at magic deck hi dave i found i was wasting a lot of time constructing custom test fixtures for development and end of line test purposes yeah been there done that uh so i created a generic test module that contains all the commonly used features i also developed super easy to use python api for a 14 bit usb dac to pair with the module there you go so you know api you can do all sorts of uh scripting and interfacing it's got a test module plus minus five amps low current measurement into the micro switching relays and stuff like that that's the board and main board that we saw static power output variable power output voltages um you know to power sensors and whatnot uh voltage measurements uh plus minus 10 volts input digital i o analog output pwm and sine wave pulse counter and there you go for battery life testing yes you could certainly use it for that um battery charge discharge and all that uh sort of stuff but of course you know you've got to write your own scripts i don't know what ones he actually uh provides but basically end-of-line test fixtures yeah i built test fixtures that look pretty much like that custom built for holding down boards and probing them and and uh testing them and automating them and stuff like that so sean at magic deck he is offering a discounts so for eev blog fans so go check it out along with educational discounts so here's the board that we're actually looking at 1.1 i like the logo with the magic hat with the traces coming out of it that's pretty groovy so yeah i can see i'm having one of these um handy to do production tests yep could have used this over the years for sure okay so the current uh sensing is designed for uh various uh resistor current shunts they even give you the part numbers fantastic so yeah you just hook those uh to your circuit under test and then you can use the magic dac to measure it low current measurement plus minus 100 microamps 25 nano amps resolution by the looks of it yep yep yep yep it's all just you know basic current shut stuff and things like that geez this is all pretty comprehensive documentation i'm liking this measurement resolution all sorts of stuff anyway yeah we won't go to town provides the mechanical interface as well which is very nice and then you've got the usb adapter thing itself which we'll take a look at benchtop automation uh testing has it got uh i assume like you can do well you know it's got trigger capability and stuff like that but it looks like it's all i don't think there's like a just a like a general purpose off the shelf app the idea is that you know it's like you can't just use this off the shelf you've got to use the api and it looks like uh compatible with magic deck off the shelf test jig is that that thing we saw a physical one we saw before but so yeah it doesn't say anything about a general purpose app it's just uh python api type stuff i have to check out the website but anyway there you go that's a groovy little case um i like this it comes with a adapter that plugs that in there so that's rather nice oh that's a din rail mount is it looks like it so yeah there you go the din rail mount just screws in there like that i like that that's neat there you go got that apart there's inside the magic deck and there's not much else to it there's an arm uh yeah stm32 micro and uh bob's your uncle doesn't look like this usb isolation though so yeah it's all electrically connected just be aware of that uh if you've got any uh grounding issues how not to blow up your oscilloscope video and all that uh sort of stuff so yeah it's an stm micro with a uh there you go there's our adc interface i can't actually read that from here i'm sure you can on the screen hang on i just realized it claims to be an isolated usb dac um sorry but i'm not seeing any isolation electrical isolation from the usb there at all that looks like it probably goes straight in does it not i'm not seeing it anyway that's 185 a yankee bucks for the magic dac plus uh extra for the additional board if you want that although you know you don't need and necessarily need that you can just interface your own stuff and things like that and uh yeah i don't still don't understand the um isolation aspect of it but uh anyway the website looks uh quite comprehensive with the api interface and also uh they will just develop uh like have services to develop custom test jigs and stuff for you and things like that so they'll work with you so you know it's kind of like a full service uh kind of thing so it does seem quite professional so yeah i won't have a play around with it in this video but if that's up your alley then certainly check out magic dac down below and of course like 185 bucks is nothing burger cost when you're setting up custom test jigs and stuff like that so yeah to have like all the api interface stuff done for you yeah i could have used that over the years you

Channel: EEVblog

Views: 79,895

Keywords: eevblog, video

Id: Ns8FWobISNA

Length: 60min 23sec (3623 seconds)

Published: Sun May 09 2021