Hi, welcome to everyone's favorite segment mailbag. Let's get into it. This one's enormous. Is it? uh, possibly the biggest one we've had here I don't know, but uh, it's from an anonymous person.

It's well, it's got no name on the outside anyway. so uh, let's crack it open. comes from Melbourne so local cuz it would have cost a it weighs a fair bit and it would have cost a fortune to send this it. um International So let's have a look.

Obious L wants me to pull it apart. Whoever sent this got some foam. Let's have a look. oh letter here we go.

It's from John Here's a variety of phone to pull apart or recovered from the rubbish pile. Some IP phones ISDN Pots The polycom IP phones are probably okay Nel uh. Pot's phone is interesting because it had a back channel to the DMS switch whatever that means so the switch could configure the handset I Have no idea what that really means, but cool. we have phones.

Well, that's one hell of a haul of phones, thank you very much. John These are IP phones of course or designed to go into switch. uh, you know the um, large uh telephone switching? uh systems. They aren't designed to plug into your regular uh phone Outlet that's for sure.

I've added one of my own which I actually got from uh, the dumpster here in the EV blog corporate Towers it's a Panasonic so I'll add that to the collection. I was going to do a dumpster dive tear down. of that, we've got a IP phone. look at the size of that.

LCD presumably it's a graphic. uh LCD by the looks of it, absolutely enormous. Um, that's made in Australia by the way I think it is. Hang on, no, sorry, that's made in Malaysia but uh, this Telra one here made in Australia Beautiful.

Look at it. and uh, this Nael networks uh one this is also made in Australia We're big in into making our phones here I Went for an interview once at a company I can't remember their name. It was a subcontract company who uh designed and manufactured uh phones here in Australia and uh, we got some polycom uh ones as well. they're all made in Thailand but it looks like we got three different models of those plus a little um I don't know a little status indicator or something like that.

So um, far too many to tear down on the mailbag. So I will do very shortly. A dumpster diving tear down of all these phones, it'll be. you know I won't show them, disassemble and I'll just take them apart.

Bang Here It is maybe what we can salvage. Um, if there's anything salvageable from these cuz you can't use them, you know, as phones. as I said really. although you know, maybe an IP uh phone or something like that.

it runs on 48 Vols uh DC and you know you plug it into your network and yeah, I you know I don't know. But anyway, Dumpster Diving Salvage video coming up thanks John Next we' got ourselves a letter from Her Majesty's Royal Mail it's from um it didn't actually put a name on here I don't think it's a postcard. It feels something a bit heftier than that could be though. Let's check it out.

Oh it is a post it is. postcards. There you go hi Dave I Recently went to The Shard and thought you would like some postcards is a 39 M tall making it the tallest building in Western Europe There you go. you can go up to the 70 uh second floor and see the great view of London Thanks for the video blog I've never heard of this thank you very much Gareth from uh dunable Bedford chair and it looks like a Shard look cuz it's like shardy at the top and there are the shards there you go.

who knew I don't think that was there when I was in London and a curious looking one that crazy Aussie Bloke Peer box 7949 bam Hills New Sees 2153 Australia not Austria beautiful um it looks like it comes from Norway cuz we have some Norwegian stamps by the looks of it but uh there you go. um no name but it is a name plate I like name plates I've got um of course got one from the mail bag which uh proudly sits out on my out the front of my uh lab. here. it's could take a while name plate.

Oh look at this. Yes we have laser cut wood. t David L Jones Look at that. no script, No fear, all opinion Beautiful! Thank you very much Christian Mowen from Oslo in Norway Thanks for quitting your day job and making the EV blog a full-time business.

Well you're welcome I Love you watching your blog Can't Get Enough Any respectable business owner should have a name plate on their desk I Took the liberty of making one for you. It's made out of 6 mm MDF and is fresh off the laser cutter. Hang on. Oh yeah, can just smell those C carcinogens.

Oh don't you love the smell of laser cup wood? You bet! Oh, keep the mailbag segment. it's fun! I Will thank you very much Chrisan and uh, he's got an instructable site and a YouTube channel C H RM O E Check it out, check out the thickness of that wood. It is, uh, quite quite thick indeed and uh, look, it's just woof gone straight through that um, out of curiosity how much laser power is required to get through that thing of uh, that type of wood? I Don't know. but uh, and then we've just got that uh, you know, just nicely laser etched onto the front there.

ah beautiful, look at that. Next up we have a binary eoch clock kit from Adam Hail from Manle Labs in Uh Apex in NC uh North Carolina I Believe that is. haven't been to the they haven't been to North Carolina before. Unfortunately, let's rip this sucker open.

Somebody complained last time that I need to do a wide shot. There we go when I'm ripping stuff open yeah, sorry sometimes I forget to look at the LCD and stuff. Ah, Maniacal! Labs Great name I think we've had them on the mail bag before, haven't we? Anyway, I do love clocks and I do love kits and T Chief Software geek hi Dave some friends and I recently Compling are doing no compatible clock kit that displays the time as a 32-bit binary representation of Unic Unix's Epoch time so definitely meant for the time Unix Geeks Out there, we've had a great deal of fun design in the building. even though we have some firmware that works allow it to be used as large Persistence of vision display.

It's easy to build, although we thought we share uh, save you some time pre-assembled oh thank you very much has built in RTC for accurate time alth I' love to meet whoever can actually read it at a glance and there both Ftdi and ICP headers for easy upload of new firmware. and there it is. You can, uh, check it out and presumably buy the kit from Maniacal. Labs We've got a oh, got a couple of uh, standoffs there and let's have a look.

Partially assembled, looks fully assembled to me. There it is, does it How does it there a battery in there? Oh, that's for the uh, real time clock. Okay, you've got of course you've got to hook it up to your Uh PC Du and it uses the Dallas Semiconductor Ds1307 still call them Dallas Semiconductor separate chip I've written my own driver for that chip uh, donkeys years ago and we have ourselves an 18 Mega something or other 328 and it does work. There we go.

It's counting up in binary. Woohoo! Could sit and watch this all day. Mesmerizing for those who love to count in binary, so thank you very much. Adam And yes, you could see how that could be used as a Persistence of vision display as well.

It's got a whole bunch of leads on there 32 to be precise and uh, you change the firmware on there and you swipe it like that. and uh, based on the update rate, you get it right. and uh, then you could have a Persistence of vision display. Of course, there's no accelerometer on there.

for example, to sort of kick off a predetermined uh start point or something like that, it just be a free running uh Persistence of vision display, but that could work quite nice. And speaking of kits and things, we have another two packages from Elector: Electronics I've had these ones sitting around forever. Um, because Elector have had quite a few sucks of the mailbag sav and uh, so I've left them until lucky last. but here we go, we'll finally open them.

So I think it's what does it say? book and kit or something like that? So I don't know what they've sent in here, but uh, did finally get around to them. Let's have a look T Leor it's the Eagle V6 Learning to Fly with Eagle by Mitchell Duncan good on you Mitch All right there we go. Learning to Fly with Eagle version: Six Elector don't know how much this sucker costs, but uh, there you go learning, You know? I'm not too keen on books that just tell you you know how to learn a package like that because they don't, um, really tell you anything on the well usually I don't know I don't I don't want to presume, but usually they don't sort of. you know, tell you how to lay out a board.

it's just how to use the package and we have ourselves a CD in there and uh, default ground planes and polygons? yeah I don't know fabrication of Pcbs? There we go. It's got all the preeg stuff how it's oh look, double-sided printed circuit boards, multi-layer circuit boards and but Library edited Yeah so it is a how to use Eagle type book so it's not going to teach you PCB design as such but there are uh which is the book that I wanted to write and I have well I have started writing but uh they how to set it up and things like that. But it does have some practical stuff in there. by the looks of it, there's projects anyway.

has a little bit of the uh, more generic, uh, practical manufacturing info put on your Mitch and Tada Oh, we have a kit. what does it do? obviously that comes as part of the book and it does something I have to read the book. Now it says it's an improved radiation meter. Well what sort of radiation? Um, it doesn't really.

uh say but it's got a Um LCD with a 0 Mega uh 88 on there and looks like an amplifier for this sensor. but the sensor just looks to be like a like a standard Piso transducer. So it's not like a radiation detector or anything like that. so I'm not sure.

more info required. Aha, it is a radiation detector but it uses a pin. uh, photo Dioda Bpw34 I can get it to change color just by Woohoo! moving around moving my body around there Fantastic look at that. swipe it in out halfway.

Woohoo! that's just a reflection. Anyway, um yeah, it is a radiation detector. It's just got a simple Um amplifier on the front end. and then that Piso transducer of course is to do the tick tick tick tick.

Actually, it contains about uh, 23 pages in chapter 6 here on uh, an introduction to PCB manufacturing so that's not too bad at all. And then of course you get into into the Um. they have some example projects creating the whole thing. and it's this example radiation meter.

And here's the schematic of our radiation meter. There's the Bpw34 pin photo diet we've got a Jfet there on the input and just some LM 358. And of course the microcontroller stuff which is pretty meh and this one says assembled board I Think so What sort of assembled board I Got no idea I Really hate these um outside envelope things that go across the part where you have to cut. It's just a it's ridiculous.

and if you cut too hard with your knife, sometimes you can cut through the product inside. Ah, it's just ridiculous. So we have ourselves oh man, going to town here and let's have a look. Review, copy and Companion Hardware More books Pick microcontroller programming in in 10 captivating lessons by Ver Bert Vanam Sounds tough.

Well, it's hardly an assembled board. It's a breadboard. Cool. You can always use breadboards with a little uh USB uh .1 in uh header adapter.

This is obviously a USB microcontroller. It's the 18f 4455. that's the one they obviously, uh, use in all of the yeah, there it is even on the front there. they use in the experiments and stuff like.

that's so this is 10 captivating lessons I Don't mind the uh concept of this. You know you get a nice little breadboard in a nice little kit. You get all the parts, there's a speaker in there, some switches, some pots, some leads to do all your basic stuff. and then we have 10 captivating lessons goes into uh uh initial setup J I don't know what J is Library Bert I don't know uh one of the um uh programming uh software for the pick which I have never uh used and flashing lead of course is your first one connecting switches and then we've got control procedures and functions, interrupts and tasks, ports, measurements ADC stuff all the library stuff gel in general.

There you go. I should probably find out what it is. Oh, there you go. Gel stands for just another language is a free format language.

The statements can be spread out over the lines as you please. Tab, space and new lines are all interpreted as space is no delimited between statement. In theory, you can put all statements on a single line one after the other. Yeah, great.

That would be fantastic wouldn't it? No thanks. But impa on this Freedom results in programs that are oh crap um it is only it is the only Advanced free language hand a large active International User Group There you go. Come to think of it I have heard of it I've never looked into it. Um is configurable and extensible use of libraries and combine typical jail program starts with art right? Bert Yeah, right n no You know, like here's a typical looks like here's a typical uh example of it: like why? why have just another language? why not stick with in if you're going to learn a language, stick with industry standard C I Mean you know it's it's not that far off it I Don't understand? like why would you have just another language I Don't know? Can somebody who's a fanboy of it please explain the benefits? So the book's actually, uh, not bad? I mean you know it takes you step by step, how to use the thing and then it, how to wire them up.

and uh, it's got yeah, there pictures, how to assemble the thing on the breadboard, and all sorts of stuff. and it does actually look quite good except for the fact that it's written in J and so that aspect I Can't recommend it because I You know if you're going to learn it, learn uh, you know industry standard C I Don't know why you'd learn J Please explain why you would use this I mean I You may as well use Arduino For example, at least it's real c Yeah, it's heavily uh. Library dependent, but it is real C You're actually learning and real C And then you can go on, uh, easily seamlessly to real C learning J I Don't see the point of it? Maybe Um, yeah, if you want to, uh, just get something done on your pick micro controller. Okay, it's going to work, but you got to put that effort in to learn it.

So you may as well get the long-term benefit of uh learning an industry standard language. No, no, it just no, doesn't work. No, not in today's age. And here's another one that I found lying around that unfortunately I haven't opened for a long long time.

It's embarrassing. Um, it comes from Uh. Techbox Digital Solutions I don't have a name on it? Um, so sorry for the massive delay on this one. H this one's yeah.

this one's really interesting folks from Uh Techbox: As I said, it's a Uh line impedance stabilization Network it's a device required to set up I'll explain here required to set up conducted noise measurements of DC powered devices conducted is important. There's conducted and there's radiated emissions of Uh products. in terms of uh, you know EMC So it is designed to be used for EMC pre- testing the frequency range 150k to 110 Meg It's inserted into the supply line of the device under test. Conducted noise which is present at the supply terminals of the device under test can be measured at the BNC connector using a spectrum.

this BNC connector using a spectrum analyzer or a measurement receiver. There you go Hi Dave now that you have a spectrum analyzer 5 microhenry line impedance stabilization Network may be useful too. Attached also to Uh Duts for device under test for playing around and comparing conducted noise excellent, a lowcost car USB charger and Engineering serle a sample of a lead driver. Furthermore, cables for my electronic load Awesome! Thank you very much LD he hell heel sorry if I'm pronouncing that incorrectly.

Thank you much very much LD Awesome! PS Schematics Gerbers and everything else for this download of from Techbox.sk Female Banana Jacks Like that. Fantastic. They're awesome quality, thank you very much. And here's the box.

It looks very nice indeed. uh 200 volt maximum Uh 10 amps. It's not like a Main's uh one. for example, it is Uh designed for uh DC uh use but that looks very nice.

We'll crack that open in a second. Um and we have a couple of uh this is a lead driver so we'll be able to uh do some testing of of uh conducted radi with the Spectrum analyzer and I think that is so worthy of its own video I don't want to do it here on the mailbag mailbag is probably already long enough anyway. so I will absolutely do this as a Um as a separate Uh video for uh testing for conductor line measurement. And here's the schematic: I mean you know you can build your own.

It's not hard at all. all they doing is the DC input here. they're just AC coupling that out and that goes to your B and C and then isolating uh from your power source. Over here it's got some mauve protection.

It's got a gas discharge tube there, very nice um and there a couple of Tvs's in there excellent and some filtering, so it's basically just that's all you need to tap off a signal like this. An inductor stops any of the high frequency stuff. uh, going out to the Um from to the Uh Source in the power supply Source out here. and then we're tapping it all off.

Go into our Spectrum analyzer so that allows us to measure uh, the noise coming out or conducted out of the wire of our instrument. And as I said, there are two types of noise you got to worry about when you're designing a product. Take this: USB car charger For example. There is what most people think of noise is just radiated noise.

You've got your circuitry in there and it's switching. Big square waves generating big harmonics. and that's um, the traces in there. They're acting as little antennas and bingo.

You know it's radiating out all this RF energy out from the box. I Mean, if it's a really properly shielded box, then uh, you should in theory get no, uh, radiated Um emissions from your products. But when you've got wires, So even if you had a shield, a box and you able to stop the radiated emissions, if you got power wires coming in and out. unless you have batteries in inside The Shield or box, you got to have cables coming in and out.

and when you have cables coming in and out, you have what is called conducted emissions. Which means that the noise inside piggybacks itself on these wires and escapes from your, uh, shielder box. This is only crap plastic. so this one's going to have both conducted and radiated emissions.

But even if you have a nice solid diecast case like this one, for example, you know, um, it might be within the frequency range you got your circuit in there. it's battery powered. For example, you've got no radiated emissions, but once you get that cable coming out like that, you're going to have some form of conducted radiation piggy back in its way on your cable. there.

There's ways to minimize that, of course, and I won't go into it. But when something, when you design your product and you send it for em. EMC Compliance testing. They're going to test it for both conducted and radiated emissions.

and this simple circuit. Here is, um, how well, basically how they're going to do the conductor radiator emissions, they're just going to filter it with the inductors and tap it off with the AC coupling and that's inside our box there. Very nice look at that. Nice huge big uh, hand wound inductors there.

Love those. They're beautiful big beefy resistors down in there. Huge package and a huge mauve protection. There's our gas discharge tube.

Fantastic. Very well designed. I Like that. And this manual is an excellent little Uh primer.

Really on how to do Uh EMC pre compliance or conducted EMC pre-compliance testing on your uh latest design and I'll put the download link in the video down below and you can uh download it. And of course you can buy the Box Uh directly from uh Techbox um, their link is on the Uh website or you can you know you could, uh, potentially build up one of these on your own. It's got the full bomb and everything and all the performance charts for it. Brilliant! There's the Uh measured inductance and all of the Uh pass band performance and the application of how it works.

and that's basically how I explained before. It's uh, allowing the DC to go through, but tapping off that conducted noise and of course you can use it in the other direction as well. You can actually feed noise into your device under test as well and it's all explained here and I won't go through it. But here's a basic standard setup which I'll show in a dedicated video for doing this cuz I think it's a really, um, interesting topic in its own right and worthy of its own video.

Not squirrel away in some mail bag somewhere. so you've got a big ground plane that you put everything on your device under test. They recommend 5 Cimer Styrofoam block under there just to lift it up off that and then the uh uh line impedance stabilization Network in there and then connect those to the ground plane so that's all connected to the one ground plane device and the test is connected through to there and then you tap it off your spectrum analyzer and Bingo! You can actually get not standards compliant measurements, but you know you can get a reasonable good indication before you know whether or not your product is noisy before you actually send it away for pre-compliance testing. So this can save you.

Doing this sort of test can save you many, many thousands of dollars. and uh, so it goes through the Uh setups for this and Broadband conducted Iions on power input terminals. They're based on the Uh Cisper standard there and well, yeah, won't go into it. separate video.

but uh RF Immunity Testing Here we go. That's a separate setup for the RF immunity testing where I said you feed back in the signal generator back into the network and you can test whether or not your Uh device under test can handle external signals. Um, coming in because EMC Testing electromagnetic conf deformity is not just about what your product emits, it's about what your product can handle as well. In terms of you know, still being operational when you're using a mobile phone next to it for example.

and Uh, here's measurement example with the Uh lowcost Ryo Uh 815 function generator which we've got and it tells you how to set it up and use that. Fantastic thank you very much. LD Now when I'm assembling a board like uh, this all through hole components I'm basically going to do all of the low profile stuff first. So all of the through hole resistors here, the uh diode here and then I'll because they're quite messy cuz they got the long leads like this, you got to trim them off.

you know, quite a bit of pain in the ass. you got to bend them to hold them in there sometimes and you know it can get a bit messy. But anyway, do all those low profile Parts first. then I would probably do the Uh sockets second because then you can push those in and then it can just sit flat when you flip it over.

Um, you don't have to bend the legs if you hold it or you can just bend one leg in each Corner flip it over and uh, do the sockets. then I'd probably go for the Uh capacitors for example. um, slightly higher component again and just sort of work my way up that opponent leads like this. your uh side Cutters Like this, you want your flat part down like that of course, but don't push it too far, just sort of down and then maybe slightly up a bit.

Just leave a little bit of height on that pin you don't want to cut into the solder fillet itself. Oops. I missed a solder joint always happens. Yeah, so you want to get in there flat and then I Just usually like, just tilt it up a bit and usually you know with practice you can, uh, really get a feel for, you know, not cutting into the solder joint like that.

So that's the way to do it. Just get a little bit of an angle on there and Bobs your uncle can I show this before to, uh, get a board like this out of the breakout. uh, tabs like this or Mouse bites or whatever you want to call it. you get your flat part of your uh side Cutters like that and just get it.

Get it in there like that against the board and then just boom. Probably usually don't want to use your good ones. usually you have, you know, a cheap ass pair of uh side Cutters lying around for mechanical type stuff like this. but uh, what you want to do is just break it off like that and oh, make sure you get in there decently and bingo that just falls out and then you got to clean up the fiberglass dust.

Now here's a problem with this board. This LCD is designed to be mounted on the back and it does line up with these standoff holes here. but I don't think I got the uh any standoffs with it. wasn't in the plastic bag here so I'm going to have to.

So well going to solder it directly on the pins. just freestanding. But if you push it down against the board like that, the metal tabs metal conductive of course. this one here in particular touches that solder joint there.

It's almost precisely on top of it. you can't see down in there, but trust me, it's contacting that thing almost like it's uh, designed to short out. Not that great. So I've got to, uh, solder that sort of.

you know, um, sort of with a bit of standoff there. or find some standof El to put on here. but I couldn't be bothered. I mean there's no stress on this thing I'll just uh solder that sort of halfway up.

But yeah, that's not great design. they should have thought about that when they uh designed that. Oh well. so the way you do that is just sold a one pin and then just pull it back out to the height you want and then go sold to the other end and then that's it.

You've automatically got the height you need and also just make sure you can actually solder it at an angle like that, which you don't want. So once you've done that, just make sure you sort of re heat that joint and sort of just destress it a bit. sorry. I can't show that, but sort of.

yeah, just dstress that so that it's not curving inwards so that it's straight like you want it. and yes, I mounted the switch on the wrong side, didn't I Well, they had the silk screen on the other side and it seemed like the right thing to do when I was assembling the board before. I figured out that the CD goes on this side and the button should be here. that uh, you know it pays to follow the instructions I guess Anyway, it's powered up.

There's no LCD adjustment pot on there, which is really, uh, uh, rather annoying. so that's just like a, um, a fixed value. You'd have to, uh, change that manually if you wanted to and it's a quite messy kit. I'm not I'm not that happy with it.

actually. you know the LCD mounts on the back. it's okay, but as I said, they didn't uh, think about mounting it flush or anything like that and then this board here I know it's like designed to be like a separate board so it's you know, over so you can mount it, mount it remotely or uh, something like that. but you know I just sold it directly on to get the thing working and the uh pin diet.

of course for that to work properly, you don't want ambient light getting in so you got to seal all that uh, somehow. um, but I couldn't download the thing from the website I wanted me to log in or something. ah screw that and uh anyway. yeah, it's just it's just kind of messy in the speaker.

It would have been nicer to have like an onboard speaker like just a little. PCB Mount uh, piso transducer instead of a wire one like this. just messy. And the 9V thing it would have I don't know.

You could have even mounted an you know, a 9volt battery holder on there or something just to, um, you know, make it sort of all self-contained So yeah, it's an example of you know, the board it's designed as an example for the book. uh, obviously. and yeah, it doesn't make that great a kit, but it working I'm not sure what it's telling us. we haven't detected anything at the moment.

Zero. um I think I need to read the instructions. catch you next time.