The SCAM of Wireless ESD Straps - Feat. ElectroBOOM

ow it is never fun to be on the business end of an unexpected shock from a door handle ah light switch or masochistic electrical engineer as many of you know this is called electrostatic discharge or ESD and it can happen when two differently charged objects are brought close enough together to overcome the insulating properties of the air between them it takes a discharge of at least 2 000 Volts for us to feel a zap but as little as a hundred volts could potentially damage sensitive Electronics that's where these come in anti-static wristbands are designed to prevent this buildup of static on your body but if you've seen more than a handful of our videos you'll know that we're pretty lacks about actually using them because being tethered is kind of annoying there's a solution for that this actually bees Wireless anti-static wristbands are supposed to keep you grounded without connecting to the ground it sounds too good to be true which is why we asked Medi from electroboom to help us find out if these really work I'm here to help Linus yeah last time I'm here to test lines I mean not test him test with him whatever he wants to test a little this is the roll the clip okay don't worry I won't feel a thing and you won't feel a thing with this gentle segue to our sponsor Asphalt 9 Legends get behind the wheel of your favorite cars and race across 185 tracks in 13 Real World locations Asphalt 9 is giving a free Lamborghini revuelto on Android and iOS for a limited time so download Asphalt 9 today with the link in the video description [Music] you might already know this but the way these conventional anti-static wristbands work is pretty simple the inside of the cuff has conductive threads woven into the elastic which are physically connected through the Buckle to the snap on the outside with the cord snapped on and attached to ground there's a direct path to discharge any static charge that would normally build upon my body and a resistor in the cord protects you in case you accidentally come in contact with up to 240 volts by limiting the current to 0.5 milliamps but how do we know they actually work how can we test them before we get to our wireless options Let's test the traditional wired bands and make sure that we know what we're looking for there are a couple of things you're going to need a multimeter and an electro boom intuitively I would think a device that's designed to discharge static electricity would just be a wire essentially but when we do a continuity test on this there isn't meaning that no current is passing is my understanding Uh current is passing but it's so little the continuity doesn't show it continuity is made to test short circuit pretty much right or very low resistances but right this guy has around one Mega ohmm of resistance in it which we can probably check with that to see if it's there I see okay well can we verify that yeah I guess we press and check the ohm and yeah let's see oh one Mega ohm exactly wow good job I fix it to two decimal places your resistor is exactly what you say it is we briefly touched on why the resistor is there it's to protect you from high voltage but why on Earth would I ever encounter high voltage when I'm wearing an ESD strap well the thing is that if we are working on electronics and accidentally touch live wires for example you don't want your body to be shorter to ground otherwise there will be a ton of current going through you and the one Mega ohm resistance in there is there to limit the current through your body got it so this is just in case I screw up not in case the laptop that I'm repairing something happens yeah well at the same time the electrostatic on your body is so small that one Mega ohm although it sounds too big it is enough to quickly dissipate the electrostatic hold on a second what you're saying then to quote There's Something About Mary is there's a chance out back to our conventional one for a second though we've already measured that the strap works but how do we know that the contact with me is good can we measure that well actually from what I understand even this strap even this band has a little bit of conductivity I mean everything is conductive for high voltage anyways so there is some stuff in there that even when I touch that my body loses charge how do we test it though oh we test it by charging you up with this thing which yes puts enough charge on your body and we can see if the charge goes away with that okay all right theoretically I am protected from your Contraption right now right do that well that was a long Arc that was nice but we don't want to use this do we you want to use this one fine one thing is that stuff I make are not made for production so hopefully it won't fail if it does fail I hope it at least fails in an entertaining manner that I can count on with you yeah okay it's alive it's really antsy now you can bring the back of your hand close to this thing and feel the charge whoa you get it good yeah okay so it's working then the the pantyhose is working there you go okay all right but how do we build up a charge on me then so should I be oh God should I be touching that because we're trying to demo that the ESD strap makes it so that I can safely be rubbing my feet around on the carpet and work on my computer right sure yeah okay well uh don't touch the computer first how much is it gonna hurt to touch that like if I touch it constantly and when you go close to it it hurts at some point you can't you can't put your hand on it okay that's really not encouraging the way here ow so I have to do it on purpose and then hold it there right yeah why do we collab with this guy because it's fun okay how fragile is it like can I just like go in there it's not made for production I already said that you're gonna destroy it just slightly touch it okay you can do it I believe in you I'm sweating right now I'm sweating okay damn it okay ah I can feel it I can feel it from here it just aren't to me from that far away okay there you go there you are oh yes yes okay now your body is picking up charge from that right and then if you touch your computer your computer is grounded right okay there is no discharge this ESD wristband works perfectly the initial discharge was high voltage low current right yes but then now that I'm touching it you said the voltage stays very low maybe close to zero even okay but whatever it is whatever voltage it's at it's very little current right and it's going through my arm through my wrist strap through this cable and then into the ground into this doodad that we have plugged in that means this is all safe I could handle Electronics all day get me something expensive okay like this laptop this is fine what I'm doing right now right uh you better not disconnect your wristband from ground now because your laptop is not connected to the ground if you disconnect your wristband right now your body and the laptop will pick up charge when you put your laptop on the ground there will be a huge discharge killing your laptop in the process okay so take this before I take out the which means as long as the strap Works everything is good however okay you should you should stand on some plastic or so you can stand on that it's solid so that you actually pick up charge no Works let's say instead of a pantyhose running through a motor right I'm walking around on a carpet and then I'm standing still for let's give it a solid one two three four five steamboats I go and touch my computer ah and the hair stands on it my head there you go actually did your hair stand up when you were talking about it yeah I could feel it back here you probably couldn't see it but I could feel it now do you want to try the same thing with my magic wand that is more powerful I mean not really but I did so that's the way out here this looks like it does all kinds of interesting things yeah well I mean I wiped it this morning so you can use it it had some suit on it just don't put it in your mouth right burn marks and stuff so what have you done here this is a flashlight right yeah I bought a flashlight at some Home Depot yeah and I took the guts out and put my own Electronics in it pretty much and what is all of this are you stepping up the voltage or what are you doing here there's something here that makes what like eight to ten thousand volts ac and this is like a network of capacitor and diodes that yeah steps it up to over a hundred thousand volts it's it's not electrostatic discharge level even in the standards you test up to 20 kilowatts so 100 kilowatt might be an Overkill but more fun can you just explain something to me real quick here I saw you take the cells out of this earlier they're just standard 3.7 volt lithium whatever so you but you you pointed at this and said blah blah blah something AC something yes okay can you explain that or is this an inverter of some sort or it is a circuit called a zvs it's basically an oscillator and a Transformer that increases the voltage of that oscillator the oscillator makes like uh three times eight 24 volts and then that 24 volt AC is Amplified through the Transformer to let's say 10 000 volts yeah and the 10 000 volts every step goes up to it's like 15 there so it should make 150 000 volts or something so you said your story keeps changing sir you said a hundred thousand now you say 150 what are you gonna hit me with I'm gonna hit you with this well the thing is that yeah no the high voltage runs like you can turn it on don't point it at any of your devices just point it towards the ground or something and just turn it on you will hear the electricity going out of it I don't want to turn it on well don't point it to your face you'll be fine here and my face too there you go that that that's the sound of electrons jumping out of the tip of it so explain to me what's happening there because we talk about static arcing through the insulating properties of the air right yes but this just jumps into the air what is it jumping to oh yeah I mean the voltage is so high that uh it pretty much tears the charges away from the air and it just charges go like how can we I mean it's even lightning right has to go Arc to something yeah but I mean that's what's happening with the lightning the charges start going go and until they say you reach a ground they create a channel that is ionized and then the whole thing goes through yes I see so this is basically pre-lightning so like if I pointed at you at a distance you will feel the wind coming of it out of it it creates a wind when I want to feel that actually nor do I I mean as long as you are from a distance you feel anything yet well maybe you should be connected to ground ground yourself man should I yeah because that way more charges you know more charges come toward you and and maybe I touch my the ground as well do you feel anything whoa is it coming good so that's the wind I was talking about the charges are running away from it and you know it ionizes the air to the same charge that is on the tip of that and they try to get away from each other because they are the same charges and it creates a win point you stand on that thing or do you want to show that actually that what are you standing on yeah sure it's a milk crate because everyone on my crew and everyone who comes to visit likes emasculating me and hold this uh touch a ground with it basically touch the tip to a ground okay um and turn it on disconnect it from the ground and then turn it off so turn it on now yeah keep it on or you can already hear you discharging to something don't have your hand too close to that thing wait am I charged now a little bit I can hear you the charges are running away from you oh yeah you were to wow now I am charged damn it wait why am I charged well this handle is ground of this thing and that side is the output high voltage whatever is it a negative or positive I don't remember but yeah so so it it is change it's moving the charges from your body to the ground so you get charged so charge yourself so what whoa whoa holy this ground wire did you see the actually like oh do you want me do I have to hold the button I only pressed it yeah if you press it once it charges you to some extent that wire like attracted to me [Applause] yes don't let that wire get too close to your part okay okay and what are we testing now what was the point of this so now that you're charged you can let go of the ground there so just yeah now you're completely floating charged okay without a strap and now with that if you touch any Electronics you will discharge to it and here you can touch your computer now probably well I heard it there you go okay so what do I do what do I attach it to I touch it to not yourself okay so now I can put this down that's why you're already discharged far gone there's nothing okay it works yes strap wired strap Works which means that even though Maddie and I showed last time that ESD discharge onto a computer component won't necessarily kill it immediately um we know that companies like Intel AMD NASA for that matter follow these safety protocols because particularly during manufacturing these components can be more susceptible to this kind of damage and that's why the industry has standards for what these protections are supposed to look like for example this little guy right here from Desco whoops is a validation tool for making sure that your ESD strap is working without needing one of these though thank you very much whatever all you have to do is plug it into the wall then plug in your anti-static strap either directly or through an extension like this that you can then clip onto your ESD safe workspace and then all you need to do is touch this right here and it says test good that means that the resistance of your ESD strap is between 850 000 ohms and I think what was it about eight Mega ohms or something like that which is the NC standard with all of that in mind no I mean my way is more efficient quicker and it's a little cheaper for yeah it is actually cheaper this thing is shockingly expensive and not useful for testing all types of anti-static straps but with the magic wand let's talk about these if you don't have a wire coming off of it to plug into your ESD tester how can you validate if it is working correctly that's where the magic one comes in that's what I'm talking about this is this baby is good yeah that's actually the reason this collab got off the ground because we were trying to figure out how on Earth to either validate or debunk these things yeah what is our test the test is you wear that you charge yourself you charge discharge I mean you touch an electrical component or whatever and see if you survive that's the test basically no I'm making you do a test too though no I think I've suffered more than you today one of us is gonna do the bro anti-static and the other is going to do the made in Japan Live Strong bracelet which one do you want does it even matter for sure I'll go with the anime one oh this is stupid what is in this piece of plastic even it looks like there's some little metal like uh like kind of frag like dust or powder or something in there it looks more like glitter really looks like a joke bro he's on bro okay does it have to be that one what about that one that one doesn't look as threatening we learn by pain but wait wait wait hold on hold on because this is not realistic so we're not really giving this a fair Shake unless we give it a more realistic charge right well I mean yeah sure because that I mean that even managed to zap me through this thing right oh fine I'm trying to see if your hair is rising or not no not too bad are you charged at all oh yes your charge good I mean spoiler but um ah it did discharge okay hey you have The Wristband on you so you should be fine yeah damn it just do ah okay good okay you can turn it off now I can feel the hair Rising on my arm good raising excuse me now your body has theoretically this is helping I'm gonna give it like five more seconds to dissipate into the thing into this house don't come closer oh that's not a good sign ah not a single electron left your body it seems through that thing at least if you have other pointy Parts on your body you could probably run okay well let's see if yours works oh you could have started with your hand on it there you go it's done I don't have any hair to raise on my head so okay I mean that seems probably pretty good okay now we let the country of Japan do its magic I can hear him from here oh it's it's my wires see oh it's his his lav wire is grabbing the table yeah it's like it's touching those wires that's where you are hearing it thank God they have some insulation on them ready okay ready oh [Music] that was a lot even even you touching my butt didn't discharge it oh I didn't touch I just got close and it was just it was leaping across I felt something leaving me so yeah so yeah there you go the Japanese wristband Wireless wristband was is it still worth testing with this one uh sure okay oh okay let's do it all right let me move this thing away who knows maybe it'll work even better with higher voltage whoa I can feel myself powering up I held it for a couple seconds don't put it down you may discharge yourself to something oh I see selected oh did you catch that spark David I bet the editor will have it [Music] let me see if I whoa I won't touch you what if I'm close to you I need to do that why ah probably you'll feel something what are you doing what are you doing why are you doing this but we are going to both her my hair's standing up oh yeah we should have a video of your hair that is raised and as soon as you touch it drops to zero yeah just okay yeah shake your oh there you go yeah yeah yeah it went up this time yeah okay all right your turn your turn I don't have hair though team Japan no you don't have to do the hair thing I just want to see if the Japanese one works better okay fine so-called made in Japan it's still there I feel it Japan come on ready no okay so what is their claim with these things should we take it apart and see what's going on here I didn't I really like to see what is in these Japanese things with this glitter bar at the bottom okay so we'll use this one on the made in Japan thing to get it apart and then in the meantime oh yes I also have we got you one of these already right well oh yeah bunch of them actually yeah oh good good good good how do I open it without damaging the fancy yeah but it's so complicated if I open it like that we are gonna damage it and like people will say ah no it's just like the plastic yeah it's just discoloring from being stretched okay let me cut maybe more section without cutting myself maybe wait that's it it's just molded silicone it's pretty on your hand I guess what I mean uh what is it conductive maybe maybe we can use your multimeter to see if there is any conductivity inside of it at all or on the surface or whatever sure uh yeah why don't we do that first then and then we'll open this one up after okay so show me how we how do we test that say between the here and there is there any conductivity overload nothing oh okay so basically the resistance is very high then what if I get very close no there's nothing well I mean this thing is probably goes to gigahomes and it's not seeing anything and nothing inside too it does go to Giga one giga ohm yeah so this this is just glitter embedded in silicone then oh this is the package germanium titanium oh what shower okay it's okay for shop it's oh you can wear it in the bathroom well when taking a shower this guy has it around his neck we we have to connect the handle of this thing to one side and the top of this thing to the other side and see if it jumps between the whole thing or not oh I see we just need a piece of wire I guess I have some stuff okay so theoretically what happens when I press the button now well if those glitter are conductive it might jump you might see an arc or something I can see anything it's going but it's not arcing maybe you can get closer and closer at some point it may jump I think it's just jumping directly going through the air that Glitter is not titanium germanium worse than air basically it's worse than air it doesn't even bother going through the Restland yet it's worth noting in all of the discussion of BS Wireless ESD wristbands that even wired ones are not necessarily within spec this one for example is not to spec not because you won't be able to dissipate any electrostatic buildup on your body but because it is conductive inside to out meaning that in the event you were to accidentally rest your wrist against something that had a current flowing through it you could easily cause a short and yeah I mean I I just wanted to say that that's true because even with my wedding ring I accidentally touched some power lines and blew up some stuff so you definitely don't want that around you now let's take a look at the Bro the Bro may actually be the less snake oil of the two and there is a resistor connected on one side to I suppose the metal underneath and on the other side it's just floating no it is not connected to the metal underneath for God segment what was that they just oh my God pour some Electronics sprinkle it in a box and say it's electrostatic discharge protector garbage oh my God it's not it's not even adhesive-backed it is just wait oh you know what no the screw must be connected to that side oh yeah and then there's a resistor and then it just goes to a little bit a little piece of rubber what's the value of this resistor though you can see my old eyes yeah I can take a picture there you go there's a brown black and green means one Mega ohm oh okay yeah you can probably check it with your meter oh yeah let's do that I mean for all we know this could be not even a real resistor maybe they burned it first and then put it in there yeah it could be defective resistor or it's a magic resistor the value doesn't matter yeah yeah I mean not as tight tolerances that oh actions that is yeah that's pretty good it's nice okay so I guess with the person of this wristband what do you get a one Mega Ohm resistor a box you can hold your mega resistors in good components yeah yeah and it's so convenient because you can you can wear all the all the resistors that you need and they're just they're right there you just open it and soldering yeah it's it's convenient uh holder for your res components yeah and this is a convenient segue to our sponsor eight sleep trust me when I say sleep is important you don't want to be like this guy waking up in the middle of the night so try out eight sleep temperature is one of the most important factors in improving your sleep and eight sleeps products allow you to control the temperature on both sides of the bed independently it's 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everything with flying colors okay

Channel: Linus Tech Tips

Views: 3,587,914

Keywords: ESD Strap, ESD Bracelet, ElectroBOOM, Anti-Static Wristband, Static Electricity, Wireless ESD, Wireless Anti-Static, Don't get scammed by wireless ESD straps, Static Prevention, static discharge, ESD Band, Do ESD Straps work?, do I have to wear an ESD strap?

Id: 1ugJ1BJx0HE

Length: 29min 22sec (1762 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 08 2023