Hi welcome to everyone's favorite segment mailbag. Let's get into it. Thank you very much! Angelo Research: Pvt Limited from India my Indian viewers Um, don't get many my own bags from India Not sure why where India ranks on my list of things but they killing it on YouTube are they? anyway? let's go thank you very much. I'm son sounds like a commercial David yep that's me includes a book.

it's a it's a stem star. the kid cool. we do like these and this looks like it's got its got nap. it's what nap and it's it's for kids cuz it's got cool little like animated characters or whatever.

380 plus components, 15 plus cool projects. The E Vive starter kit the perfect buddy for your made and journey into the universe of DIY I'm happy no more graphical programming in the other things enabled. Visual interface Arduino Compatible Powered by Stem Pedia Cool! Let's check it out and sure enough, Made In India Fantastic we're going on. Safari Hey Fantastic! I Won't show you the barcode because it includes like a license code for an online like course thing which we'll check out.

Best electronic prototype until all that looks in that's almost looks multimeter. II Anyway, it looks like we've got an Arduino mega with a G's looks like Scott everything it's got LCD you know a whole bunch of stuff I've got a joystick and they're got lids and buttons and ZigBee and young makers guide through the peninsula or peninsula. if do it yourself in at Unleash the innovator in us useful or gateway of electronics Oh geez this looks this, looks professionally produced. doesn't it can do Our mobile robot anyway this looks very perfect touch.

Bass piano with the banana and the Apple and the yep fantastic. Um this looks pretty professional. Look at the hardware. there's our base for our it's got the the peel off your thing on the back still and there's all our cutouts that we can use to create our Wow Do this, Learn Build debug.

That's what we want to do. Yes Lauren Build Fail debug should put the fail in there. Oh geez, good enough switches in there. Terrific alligator clips, a couple of caps, no worries.

and oh motor. Terrific servo motor. Another servo motor Wow can do some cool stuff with that drive that's a wheel drive motor. Photo resistors I mean how many photo resistors do you need? They're not disposable.

We got bluetooth module. so here's all our little modules: SEM IR Sensor you Well it turns out that this thing's actually a Kickstarter which is not released yet. So I don't have any details on the date or the price or anything like that. but if you sign up on the website which is Eve I've dot CC they'll notify you of the Kickstarter internal battery should be charged and we're in.

So we've got messages: Warhorses, friends, uh, who's online I Have zero friends at the moment Someone please friend me Electronics Program in Robotics Free courses Arduino Stem Safari courses Ok so these are like the comprehensive ones and these are the ones you can do for free. Are they your one of the smart folks? You've booked a spot on the Stem Safari Getting started the Museum of Electronic Signal City Actuator Auditorium since the studio I like this is really comprehensive Wow It's very formal, but there's nothing wrong with that. You know that's cool, like it's good for like schools and stuff like that. The magic of electronics here we go.

Now we're talking Od why do you know that? sorry this kidney. How do you members welcome back? As promised I'll show you the cool tree I was talking about Oh lights up. How did you do that? Without it a power supply was it? Behold a Great Secrets reuse OD It's a big check spooky. Electronics is a field of science where we study motion of electric current in a circuit and how we can control what are you doing.

You don't want to study right? I Think you get the idea. Bye bye Neo and sorry I don't know your name. So yeah, that's very similar to that mailbag thing that we have. The previous mailbag kept the the the pie.

the crow pie. was it a kit like? the videos in that were yeah, a similar sort of thing. Obviously they've got. they're appealing to an Indian audience.

it's all in English Of course not in Hindi No, haven't seen Neo there. he is and that we didn't need a ditch there yo. I'm not sure what age group really targeting you I'll tell you how they make that equivalent, of course to the battery in the light bulb. It takes more than real morning.

it's gone around. that's that's pretty good. Yeah I Hope that character is not all the way through all these What is an LED Ohm's law? Lotta effort on the graphics and stuff. Yep, Neo is back.

You know he's lifting weights, pumpin cello waivers. what's up? Oh Ignore him. He's all fuel workout video and was fascinated by it, right? No. I think I I Don't think they're on a winner with the Neo character and all that.

Just get somebody excited. who you know, articulates well and just presents the material and has fun and stuff like that. You don't need a a Neo character, whatever it is I don't That just adds to the distraction I think so I'm not sure what age based this is going for, but I I Don't know if that's going to work, let me know what your opinion is, but they've gone to a lot of effort. This is a ridiculous amount of effort for this thing, so hats off.

And of course, you can mark it as complete you go through. So can we mark that as complete now? Analog signals? What is the potentiometer? Wow They've got videos for everything. It's very highly produced. Phenomenal amount of works gone into it.

I I Really? I Just don't know if you needed to go to this much effort. Yep, there's back. Looks like Neo is gonna be all the way through like a and eight-year-old or something to sit through and do the whole thing to see if they're engaging with it and stuff like that. So baby they do.

I don't know the boss and her right-hand man men. what? Here you go look I Don't think you have to log in to get any of this stuff so you might be able do I check it out on your own I'm presuming you need the vive how to install. Okay, that's that's pretty comprehensive. Wow that's how to install, you might We know that's that's pretty good.

I Like that and factually going to projects here they've got a whole bunch of ones I Don't think yet. You don't have to be signed in to get these so you can take a look at them. Home automation using smartphone and do-it-yourself goggles. Let's have a look 30 35 seconds.

Oh okay, all right, it's just a background music that doesn't, not instructional at all. that's useless. Why even have that? So yeah, the couple of videos that I checked out there are all the same thing. just cheesy background music and just showing off the project.

But the actual art, look, the components in building, and the assembly instructions here. They don't have them in video, but they certainly have them in text form and that's it's hard to see which one goes into what. Yeah, it's there. Text instructions are actually very comprehensive.

Suffer: Go to the website. Oh look, we can choose. Do we want to work with Arduino code or Pictou blocks? Scratch? Well, we'll do the Pictou blocks, shall we? Oh yes. Oh I found the menu.

You got to press the button. You got to press the joystick button. Don't we got it working? Look, that little escape isn't that great. There we go.

I'm just adjusting the variable voltage down here which comes out on the side here and we connect that to our oscilloscope. Sure, it shows you over here which ones to hook it up to, but it's not sort of like it doesn't identify in them as positive and negative on there. Here's a little mini oscilloscope that's great I Like that, but unfortunately that's basically it. Apart from hooking up a resistor and a switch and using your oscilloscope, this is supposed to be the best electronic prototyping tool.

But the very next page? the conclusion right? We've summarized basic electric searches and prepare you for further chapters. I'm voltage, current resistance relationship through Ohm's law, but the next page is jumping into programming I Don't want to jump into programming yet I Don't want to become a programmer I want to learn electronics and unfortunately it's just jumped into that. You know if you want to do a programming course, but what is it? There's an electronics kit or is it a Arduino a programming kit? Either way, it's It's pretty cool, but I'm not sure it understands what it's supposed to be. Hello World Yeah.

Beautiful. We can change that to Eevblog, do whatever. Okay, so let's actually upload that Here it is. Upload code and building.

building, building building building and do we have it? Hello World There it is. Sweet! So there you go. That's the stem. Padilla Eve I've electronics learning kit and unfortunately there wasn't much electronics there.

You know they said like 300 components or something. Does that include all the individual screws and things like that? those the LD ours and had all sorts of other stuff. Cool that we could have play with it, but that and the book is very comprehensive, but unfortunately it just like goes and this is very impressive. The hub is very impressive too, but unfortunately it's just like one page of hooking a a pot up to a in an oscilloscope and that's your electronics jump straight into code.

Thank you very much So I'm kind of disappointed from that. From an electronics aspect, there's a lot of spit-and-polish that's gone into this a few little, but nothing nothing serious at all. So this is they've put a great amount of effort into it. But as I said, these videos that they've got like I'm not a fan I think they've missed the mark on the videos.

Please let me know your comments down below. But apart from that like a coarse thing, how you have to go through and you get points. look: I've already got my achievement. I've already earned 20 points for installing me I've registered I've registered I score 20 points.

It's like crack for kids If you go to the website. launch it on Kickstarter soon so you can actually sign up for the Kickstarter you'll probably get 40% off or whatever I don't know how much it's going to cost, but it's very polished so how could a Brian but what if Brian have to say the brain brain brain bench off Brian brain bench off. It's just a huge amount of works gone into that. So yeah I'm good on yeah once again the videos they just they try and overdo sees things try too hard and I think it misses the mark the video.

but Jesus yeah the books pretty good I Just wish there was an electronics gateway of electronics, the land of codes and nuts. so we didn't get much electronics before he jumped into the code and the robots. But yes, it's the kitties like these days right? that are muck around little transistors and resistors. and yeah, thank you very much Cody Tied up from power filament in let's check it out.

we got that was easy how film might give you a clue of what way. Looking at here today we've got tiny little Lipo battery little modulae got an interface II do Daddy module II and ah don't they look sweet. Nice little thin flexible solar cells. Oh cool Bernards Let's check them out.

So what we've got is little low light solar power like solar energy harvesting development kits with these flexible film solar cells and these are made in the United States of America Fantastic and becoming two different shapes here. but they appear to be sort of like identical technology though just different configurations. And we've got a little love like battery charging board and we've also got a a Bluetooth our development board as well with these little lithium polymer batteries and these use T.i chipsets and processor as well so we'll hook that up and get that working in a minute. They've got an Android thing and these actually are kind of like open-source you.

They come with the like, the board, files and stuff like that so if you want to play around for your own and there's the Bluetooth since a development kit are, they even claim it works in less than 200 Lux and it's got the Eagle CAD files and whatnot. And if we have a look on the back tonight, here's our response curves. Terrific! So this is the two cell panel here. This is the characteristic curve for it at the various current outputs and there's the voltage.

Cursey could work out the maximum power point. If you like, go for it A little exercise for those playing along at home. But as of course with all these are you know, low light solar cell technology. The power we're talking about is is not much.

You know, it's enough to run a calculator or something like that. You know we're talking in the order of like 1 milli watt or less and let's actually operate it right under its. you know it's sort of like recommended spec limit there and you know, around about 70 Lux something like that. I Got my overhead studio lights turned off so just getting residual light from the other side of the room and we're getting about two point three volts.

Although we're gonna get an F all current there we go about. you know, 6070 micro amps something like that, but that's what you expect. but you know it's good enough for like a real ultra-low power energy harvesting. so this actually works in quite down to really quite some low.

Lux I mean we're talking 40 down there I Know this is not going to be precisely equivalent. sort of put my hand over it, but still, you know, getting 38 micro volts? this is the short circuit current of course. So let's install the Les 100 data monitor and thankfully it doesn't want my firstborn child so just access to files and Bluetooth No worries, let's go. So do you think they're teamed up with Ti Maybe.

And we found the board? Cool! Bananas! Got the solar panel hooked up here and our little Lipo battery and we can connect. Hopefully discovering nine services total of 31 characteristics. Cool. like a bought one battery level.

There you go. So we instantly get our battery level. 15 millivolts of course. three point Nine volts.

It's it's charging. Is it? Know if I put my hand over the solar panel? not zippity-doo-dah Oh, we've got our lights in so let me put my hand over that. Yep, works. A treat.

That's pretty cool. We can control our latency time, our connection interval, all that sort of just. it's just sitting there. but it's blue to the taste bugger.

all. so really, you know it's all being powered from this. It's actually disconnect the battery nuts, not going to do diddly squat I think we might have had to us and capacitance on the board keeping it going because it's not going to reconnect. It's not gonna work with just the solar panel.

Even if we shine a twenty thousand Lux torch on there, it's not gonna do it. So oK We've got ourselves a Bluetooth connectivity kit with a TI bluetooth micro that we can program of course. very cool that came came with the USB stick with the development tools and stuff like that I won't go into them, it's just a regular, you know, a TI development the system. It just happens to be used for this little lower bluetooth process that we can change sort of stuff.

but like we can't get anything on the actual solar panel like nothing. What's the, you know, what's the voltage coming out of it? What's the charge rate? stuff like that. all we've gots the battery voltage and I'm sitting here and I don't see this thing really charging at all. It's just sort of the wiggle-wiggle-wiggle year.

and like so unfortunately, we just can't really get much. The whole point of this is supposed to be evaluating the solar cells in every energy harvesting application and doesn't seem to do much at all, but it looks as though we actually have an option to get rid of the battery and store the charge in a super cap. You can see they've got the charge curves here of time versus are the amount of storage capacitance. Of course the greater these storage capacitance, the greater storage capacity you have in your capacity of batteries so to speak.

But the longer it's going to take to charge up before your circuit starts up, whatever application you've got to do anything useful. But then you know if like shade comes over or something and you know your solar cell is interrupted and it's not producing anything, then it comes. Then the charge comes back out of your capacitor. And of course, if your circuit takes too much, it's never gonna charge up at all.

So you know it's all a big trade-off Hey, now we're talking. we're even overflowing. Check it out. I Got a 2200 microfarad cap but says are 1800 Mike minimum and that's charging fairly rapidly.

Turn my torch on, it's gonna charge even quicker and apparently are the Bluetooth turns on at three Point Two volts I believe it is. Take that torch away. Yeah, it's draining down. C-notes hold the charge here.

You go see if the app works. Yep, it's updating. There you go. Sweet.

So it's working just from that on the ambient light. Granted, worried about we're only about, you know, a thousand lux here on the bench. Something like that depends. It's being like, you know, shielded by my camera and all sorts of stuff.

Not exactly doing that bit. You see that it's actually working from just that. and if I kill. but you'll notice that the battery drains and that should drain faster if we pull it quicker because the processor will take more power and it should actually die.

It's supposed to die when it gets to about Three Point Two. We'll see these are not the droids you are looking for. I'm not sure what it operates down to, but I think I said it won't start up or something at three. Yeah, Yep, yep, died at about three volts there.

There you go and you see that would stop discharging because the process is not running anymore Oh Yep, it just automatically recovered itself there and once we got to it's now back up. No, it'll be negative now. all the electrons will fall out my studio lights and wear it like 40 Lux or 70 Lux was it before or something like that? It doesn't have enough to maintain that so slowly discharging. And the other kid of course just comes with an IDE looks like an identical the TI charging energy harvesting chipset.

There just doesn't have the Bluetooth II part of it. So I guess if you're going to get the kit, you might as well get the Bluetooth interface cuz then you can have a play around with that. Yeah, it comes with the code, composer, studio code, and all that sort of jazz so that seems to work fine. There is no iOS app, so if you got one of those silly Apple things out, you're screwed.

Well, you screwed anyway for buying Apple in the first place. But anyway. well hey, look at all the flame comments down below already. Ah, so thank you very much Power Film Solo for sending in these and they are really are quite jazzy.

I'm not sure the exact you know performance compared to other competing flexible thin film ones on the market, but these are made in Yankee land and they appear pretty good. They're like use them for military applications and also its commercial applications and they even develop ones for your custom application. And stuff like that and Power Film do actually have a whole bunch of off-the-shelf products they've got. You know, those portable USB battery packs.

you know, solar charging, battery packs and all that sort of stuff, the ones that you roll out and things like that. So, but yeah, this doesn't seem to be on the website. it couldn't find it at first go. Maybe it's a new development tool anyway.

I'll try and link it in down below. Thank you very much Power Field that's very cool I like that. now that's a knife. thank you very much Joe Lobeck I'm from Santa Clara California I'm dick Lots of stuff from Santa Clara cos you know the place to be apparently so let's have a look and apparently spoils match exactly Know precisely what it is that I know the category to Dave from Joel Merry Christmas thank you very much.

Hasn't been sitting here that long this big one. Shirley oh but no I wasn't Well I was away for a bit I was away just after Christmas so thank you At first glance I thought they were like diodes but they're not I think they're little like bows on presents little 3d printed present thing I Made my first PCB since the 80s while watching your blog. I Wrote a letter about it but ran out of ink that I know is shipping it to arrive before. Christmas I'll email you that letter, comments your or comments or ideas.

Welcome thank you very much. Sure that is E's first. PCB with capacitive touch Nate Merry Christmas Ah sweet. All right, let's check it out.

Tada Oh look at that. Pretty lights, lovely touch sensitive on/off Peace. What does the start? Does it start? No the Stars not a touchpad. Joy Love And you can change the brightness.

Nice. Whoa. Can leave your finger on there. nah-ah what? It went off my battery pack turn off.

Yeah. I guess it. it might have dropped under the trip current like it the the detection current or something like that. I think that's what's going on there that just uses the TLC 5947 and what's that puppy down there? That's got to be our micro and got a regulator.

How much else happen in there? Diode, reverse tire protection on the input and Bob's your uncle so that's kind of a cute layout. I would have added a hole to the t'like aid hanging hole or whatever to the top, but or I guess maybe you know some other sort of either. Maybe something. you don't want to hang it upside down like that.

but I don't know. It may be like a cutout in there so that you could hang it at like over a branch or something like that perhaps and it'd be an upgrade. Merry Christmas 2018 Love always. Thank you very much you signed it or is that yeah, it's signed.

There's that part of the silkscreen now Joe's actually done this as a square panel. You can tell by the little mouse bites out of there so this is probably like a square panel you can see there and there as well. And of course that's so useful if you're going to get it pick in place because if you send this to that ironically it's an arrow goes through the pick-and-place machine like that. For example it like it goes along the conveyor belt and if it's not square if it doesn't have the tooling poles and has the strips at the top and bottom then the little sprockets that move little automatically along can't new grip it and everything else.

So in that case if you just had a board this shape then the manufacturer would make a custom holder for it. They just machine out or you know, out of wood or whatever it is a customer holder then it can go along the conveyor belt like that. But of course if you're doing like a low production run or your hand soldering or whatever there's there's absolutely no reason to make this into a panel. You can just send your board like this to your PCB manufacturer and they'll just fully route it to that shape and it'll just pop out of the panel and they'll supply you with nice smooth edges or nicely rounded edges all the way around.

So that's it. You know it depends on what your requirements are, whether or not you penalize something like this, and of course if you put them in different directions like that. If you're penalizing, then you would maybe put one in the opposite direction so that you would utilize more of your square panel. You might be able to get two of these per panel for example, and that might be a bit more cost-effective for you.

And the other thing with this is is that I would have actually probably tried to use a reverse mount LEDs because you can see all the parts and you can see the touch buttons and maybe you want that look I mean it does look sort of Christmassy decorator II thing. but if you just wanted, say, for example, you wanted to put some nice artwork on the back here. you could do that on silkscreen. You don't have to have text, you can have any sort of you know picture or artwork that you want and because the manufacturer doesn't care, they either do like a photo image of all masks or they've just got a raster inkjet printer that does that so you can print anything you want.

You can even get multiple colors, but that's more expensive because it's a multi color process so you can get as many colors as the manufacturer has, but they just have to do each color as a separate layer or whatever. But if you had reverse mount lids and you put a hole in the board, you may still mount them on this side, But they actually emit out of the bottom. They're called bottom emitter lead. so if you want to, you know search digi-key or mouse' for our bottom emitter.

Let's you can actually see those certain come out on that side so it just depends on what effect that you're actually after. But this kind of looks jazzy. You know, these kind of look like little Christmas balls I guess that was the idea. you know, randoms got a little stocking and star and stuff like that so it's kind of huge.

but anyway, that's and the snowflakes on the top. but yeah, it just yeah. there's just more than one way you can nice skin this cat. Schrodinger's cat.

open source hardware. Don't try and link it in down below. but unfortunately, what's your size of your font when you're actually doing boards because the manufacturer can only do you know readable fonts. That's such a size and it varies depending on the manufacturer and the process they're using as well.

In this particular case, it's really borderline. Anyway, it's on Github. thank you very much Joe That's cool. There's some details from Joe I'll let you read that, but there's some.

He added some like a SD protection stuff I'm usually like once you solder stuff in the circuit like in the circuit, they usually fairly robust. These days they got ESD protection on the pins and stuff like that. It is still possible to I kill the chippies, but you know it requires a fair bit of effort. so he's got technical references for engineers down below.

I'll add the link. Check it out. Thank you very much person and no one who has ascends into mailbag. if you ever seen something in put mail bag on it.

Peer box 7 9 4 9 Baucom Hills New South Wales 2 1 5 3 Australia not Austria Thank you very much for someone from Queens Rocks In WI Western Australia um it doesn't have a name so I don't know what the deal is. look wonder it got through the post Oh check it out! Cassia Water-resistant digital watch like it's just a four banger thing. my name is Jean Dray pronouncing that one incorrectly and I've been enjoying our videos for years Recently I bought myself a Casio calculator watch I Love love to watch but sadly it went for a swim in the other day and I forgot it's on. Long story short I was ready to bend it till I thought want us in today for a teardown? Well it actually works.

It's working, there's time on it so it yep the cap. it's working so it's obviously just dried out in the time it's been sitting here and shipping. So yeah. quick 2 minute 10m.

Absolute classic. Check it out! although personally I never really liked this design. it just I I it was only a four banger and because I prefer the scientific ones of course, much more useful. And and you know, I didn't particularly like the plastic look at these ones, but you know these were the staple of the 1980s.

It's the CA 53w for those playing along at home Now of course this is supposed to be water-resistant in quote marks, but of course water resistance means not much. It'll stop, likely splashes and stuff. but if you go swimming with it, it might have an o-ring but it's all the surfaces and everything else won't be designed for. Yep, tiny little o-ring and the surface.

You can see that and but it won't be designed to. Oh, here we go is some of the some of the gunk. so yep, it's definitely had penetration. but it's uh oh yeah.

you can see see around the it's just like it's all over the shop in it. Yeah, that's that's been immersed. That's an interesting-looking backing plate there, rather like that gold-plated Oh no, this is one sick puppy and our battery. I'm surprised that still works.

Check it out, look at that. Wow it still works. The treat. Haven't encountered one like this before.

It seems that seems like permanently embedded in there. I Can't get that. Usually you get like it's got a clip on one side and another clip on the other and you put one like a one side like has a locking thing and the other just sort of like clips over. but this one seems different.

It's really annoying. can't get that out. Alright, let's take the whole assembly out and there's your good. All the crud around the inside there.

Wow. It looked perfect from the outside, but of course the battery's corroded and everything else. And there's a little membrane keypad on the front so you know you push the push the keys in and they just make contact. It's just a matrix pad and you can see the zebra strip contacts along there.

Ah, all the crud, just not. the crud just fell out. Look at that and that mates up with the tiny little zebra strip along there. You can see the corrosion around there.

You could actually clean this up and put it back together. You know it's it's not a complete loss. Get the isopropyl out and well, there's our PCB and that's just our black blob. So that's all she wrote.

Yet there's not much in these. it's all just a custom Casio ASIC and standard. Pretty much watch. sort of like the insert and modular construction like that.

Pretty standard from like the early 80s late 70s. You know they they pioneered this sort of construction and they're still the same today. Thank you very much. SMD Brewster Nothing in their little baby be the SMD Priester Itty Bitty PCB There's no you beat me with the three cent microcontroller from China I Wanted to do this after I finished the 40 cent ARM chip.

Judea Vide whole stock is gone. sorry the Dave affect the Eevblog effect. link through the arm chip here I Sent you a breakdown I did Cities of the Lime chip It conveniently has a couple of buttons unless you get you started. cool SMD April First, it's not pristy.

its prett sir NL cool I'll link to it down below. quick check. So let's check out the sin wit s WM o 50 dev board. There we go.

A tiny little breakout and programming board so that you can use these tiny little T sub 8 micro is available from um LCSC and I guess other places but I've done a video on LCS C and this is the sin wit SW m o5 Oh I Won't go to the effort to up you know, install the tool chains and try and do something with it. That's a whole video in its own right. but check out SMT Fruits fruits up I'll link it in down below if you, um, want to get into these ultra cheap micros. it can be programmed by the Blackmagic pro but don't know about they won't have to check it out I using art firm link of the J link debugger so check it out I'll link it in you.