I tried finding Hidden Gems on AliExpress AGAIN! (Part 9)

Yeah; this is one strange motor that I of course found on AliExpress which is an online seller that offers the newest, most bizarre but also interesting electronics and non electronics products. But since you never exactly know whether a product is really a hidden gem or simply garbage; I created this video series. And today I got 6 more intriguing looking products to check out in order to ultimately tell you whether you should give them a try or stay far away from them. Let's get started! This video is sponsored by JLCPCB who offers free via-in-pad for their multilayer PCBs. Using via-in-pad often means higher additional costs, but in JLCPCB, you can enjoy this service for free. Via-in-pad allows vias to be placed directly on the copper pads, This gives a lot of extra flexibility in routing, especially under BGA components. Additionally JLCPCB is currently running a promotion for 6-layer boards. So Click the link below to claim a $10 coupon  and be amazed by their PCB quality and fast shipping. Let's start off with this crazy motor I showed off at the beginning. This one was actually a suggestion from my discord server and I was a bit confused while having a look at the product page for the first time. The reason is that I can apparently get a 310V motor for around 9€ or a 7.4V to 12.6V one for double the price. But after reading through the description, I realized what they offer here. You see, they can either send you an original 310V high speed BLDC motor from a hair dryer or you can get a modified version that works with a lower voltage so that you can power it with batteries. The modifying process by the way consists of removing the motor windings and replacing them with new ones, like I also did in a previous video. And that is why the low voltage version is more expensive and that is also the one I went with. And to properly drive the motor I firstly grabbed myself a suitable electronic speed controller that can not only handle the max voltage, but also the current mentioned in the description. My ESC also already has an Arduino hooked up, that creates the mandatory RC drive signal to control the motor speed and thus after connecting the motor to the ESC and giving it all power, everything seems to work perfectly fine and it seems like this motor is truly a high speed one. Now such an EDF ake Electric Ducted Fan usually get used for RC aircraft models since they produce a lot of thrust. But since this one comes with an aluminium shell and thus is pretty heavy, it is not recommended for this application. Instead you can however use it to very effectively dust off surfaces or blow fast air into hard to reach spots which is definitely a decent alternative to big and expensive air compressors or such compressed air cans. And since the seller even offers free 3D printed models for such an application and my 2 minute full power test didn't heat up the motor to a critical value, I would recommend this product and I am actually planning to use it in my garage quite often from now on. And as you might have noticed; I used a 3S LiPo battery to power the motor which I of course now have to charge up again with my old school battery charger here. Now don't worry this charger still works perfectly fine; but how about a modern update with this ISDT Q6 Nano Charger that you can get for around 34€. After unboxing it, I got to say that its design and shape looks very nice and high quality. And best off; it is quite a lot smaller than my old charger while featuring around the same maximum input and output values. So after powering it up with my lab bench power supply; I had a look at all its settings and what it can do. And of course it can do all the popular battery chemistries, just like my old charger. But then there is also the addition of High Voltage Li-ion that for example your phones battery uses. There you can even precisely set a charging voltage, very nice. And then you also got additional features like depleting batteries completely or using the charger as a DC power supply which in my test worked wonderfully, came with a great efficiency and decent max output ripple. But what I love most is that you can check the voltage of each individual cell of a battery pack as well as their internal resistance and needless to say this modern display with a modern UI is definitely more pleasing than my old school solution. So yeah, all in all I really like this charger which of course does its main job of charging batteries up just fine. Its utilized hardware also all looks very well made and should hopefully last for a long time to come meaning that this thing will be my new standard battery charger from now on. Ok; next we come to a product from the category: „Why does this exist?“ and it is this wireless HDMI extender kit that you can get for around 42€. Now when going back 20 years ago then I fondly remember these wireless AV kits because you usually only had one cable output in your house and extending that to another room would be a hassle and thus you would use such a wireless AV kit. But now with HDMI devices, you can pretty easily unplug them and just move them next to the screen where you want to use them, so why does this kit exist? Well, according to the pictures in the product description, I can kind of see where they are coming from. So let's simply test it out by plugging in the dongles, connecting 5V power and there we go. Now I got to say that at close range the lag between input and screen output was pretty low, you could play like this. But keep in mind that the resolution can only be 1080p and for me it felt like the feed had very minor stutters. And when it comes to image quality then I think there is not much of a difference between wireless and wired HDMI. So next I measured how much power each dongle requires which was under 10mA for the transmitter and around 200mA for the receiver, not bad. And when it comes to the range, then the description claims 50m without any walls in between which I firstly tested out with my crude setup here and for me the video feed suddenly froze at a distance of around 30m. But the best news I think, is that the connection was surprisingly super stable pretty much everywhere I moved in my house. So yeah all in all I got to admit that this kit does its job just fine and if you have a need for a product like this, then I can recommend it. Next let's have a look at this small product here that claims to solve a common problem with laptops. You see when on the go, you always have to carry their big and bulky power supplies around to obviously charge them up. But with this adapter, that you can get for around 5€ and in lots of different variations for all kinds of laptop brands, you can apparently charge your laptop with a 100W USB-C power supply. Now granted though, my test setup was not ideal because my power supply delivers 180W which is more than the 100W maximum which the manufacturer does not recommend. And also, the MSI brand was not an option on the product page and thus I simply went with the dimensions of the barrel which resulted in this HP compatible adapter. But you know maybe even with all these setbacks, it still might work. So I firstly tried it out while the laptop was running and that didn't really work. As you can see, the blue LED on the adapter was on, the input power kept going up and down and the charging symbol only came on every couple of seconds. And after waiting 20 minutes like this, the battery charging state also didn't go up. But on the positive side when my laptop is turned off, this thing seems to work just fine and charges with around 60W which yes; this time charged the battery in such a way that the laptop noticed it. So all in all, I like the overall idea and the hardware quality of this USB C PD trigger board is also pretty nice. And because many people wrote that this adapter worked for them, I do have to give it the thumbs up even though it is not ideal for my laptop. So moving on to this intriguing looking aluminium box that houses a PCB inside which all in all costs around 28€. Now you might recognize this PCB because I used its older brother in a previous project video to build a DIY 100W powerbank. And this new PCB is basically the updated version that now supports PD3.1 and thus can output 140W aka 5A at 28V. And since more power is always better, I had to give it a try and thus set its input to a 4S battery pack and connected the pack I created for my old powerbank to it. Only problem now was that I could not activate the 28V output since my PD trigger board as well as my USB C cable does not support PD3.1 But thankfully I found a new trigger board on AliExpress as well and in combination with a new USB-C cable, I finally got my 28V. And drawing 5A seems to work just fine even though the voltage did drop quite a bit. But the ripple on the output was looking pretty good as well as the heat created by the power handling components. Meaning I was pretty happy with the board during my test rides and thus I would certainly recommend it if you are planning to build a DIY powerbank. And that brings us to the last product which is this rather tiny laser tape measure that you can get for around 17€. Now I do have in fact a similar product lying around that I very often use to measure distances in all kinds of different situations and let me tell you this thing is really useful. Besides simply measuring distances, you can also calculate areas, volumes or even use it as a digital spirit level. The only problem I have with it, is that it is quite pricey. So this 5 times cheaper option definitely has the price advantage here and what I also like about it, is that it has an internal battery while my expensive one uses AAA batteries. Other than that, it seems to measure distances just fine as well and can also calculate areas and volumes. However in direct comparison and at the same conditions, the expensive one seems to be spot on all the time, while the cheap version comes with a tiny bit of wiggle room. And when it comes to long distances they both seem quite accurate and very close to one another meaning that if you don't need a digital spirit level, I would certainly recommend the cheap version because for that price you certainly get a lot of value. And with that being said we successfully had a closer look at 6 more products and I think for the first time ever, I only gave thumbs ups, amazing. Of course there is still more to discover in future episode so stay tuned for that. Until then consider supporting this show on Patreon and as always don't forget to like, share, subscribe and hit the notification bell. Stay creative and I will see you next time.

Channel: GreatScott!

Views: 927,978

Keywords: aliexpress, hidden, gem, tried, find, treasure, ali, express, china, electronics, gadgets, ic, new, useful, bizzare, awesome, cheap, budget, compare, comparison, motor, edf, high, speed, bldc, dust, off, airplance, rc, esc, fast, battery, charger, isdt, q6, nano, lithium, lipo, liion, hardware, charge, discharge, power, supply, test, measure, efficiency, maximum, current, voltage, wireless, hdmi, kit, screen, transmit, receive, ps5, range, quality, pd, 3.1, pd 3.1, delivery, powerbank, 240W, 28V, usbc, usb-c, laptop, laser, tape, distance, greatscott, greatscott!

Id: gE_FuQuaKc0

Length: 15min 0sec (900 seconds)

Published: Sun May 19 2024