Hi welcome to everyone's favorite segment: the mailbag. And yes, it is mailbag. Monday There it is. And yes, we've reached way past the Sean limit again.

Sean's not here, but it's much taller than he is. Oh I haven't even got the tilt on the camera tripod here to see it all look crazy Anyway I've got a little bit of time I thought I'd open some mail this one's from Vincent Hy Um, free Electron on the Forum There's some really awesome stuff in here which I'm going I know it's in here I'm going to have to do a video in its own right, so wait for that one. It definitely won't be today, but it will be upcoming. So I've got some postcards and other things so I won't actually go uh, like review anything today I think I'll just open them up.

If they happen to be something really, really interesting that needs a review then well, uh, sorry. but it's going to have to wait. so I'll just see if I can get through. So this is basically just a, uh, unboxing type mailbag.

Let's get to it. So yes, I've got less than an hour to shoot this and you know you'd be surprised. um, at how little footage you can actually shoot in an hour if you, uh, try and do these sorts of videos anyway. Postcard Yellowstone National Park Beauty Let's check it out.

Look at that. Ah that's like a uh, it's a hot spring. Beautiful color. Is that like a natural color rendition on that? Anyway, that is a beautiful photo obviously taken from the top of a hill up here.

Looking down onto that I'd love to know if that's uh, false color or is been color enhanced or whatever looks like a boardwalk. I Can see some people out there walking around wandering around. there. you go Anyway, who is this from? Uh, it's from perfect DISD Hey Dave Last weekend I got a I got a wild hair you got a wild hair and decided to take a trip to the world's first National Park.

Uh, saw this in the gift shop. thought you might like it I Really like the blog. Keep up the good work! Thank you very much! 2 hours from where I live in Idaho Falls I've never been to either place unfortunately, always wanted to go to Yellowstone I Tried to fit it into one of my uh Us trips once, but uh, it was just too out of the way unfortunately. But uh yeah, that is awesome and yes it is.

Uh, it was the world's first national park but since then ha Australia's well overtaken I think and we have world heritage listed areas. Oh oh every time I go to a national park in the US and I talk to a ranger there I Go! Do you guys have any world heritage listed stuff and they go. what's world heritage and it's like yeah, okay anyway thanks for that. That is awesome.

Thank you! Perfect dissidence. Um oh, we got a couple of other envelopes. Here's another postcard. here we go: Tada Four Seasons in Helsinki Finland Wind, sleep, snow and rain I Love it! Hi to all my oh it's almost the same color is my mat there beautiful Hi to all my viewers in Um Helsinki in Finland in the Nordic regions up there always wanted to get there.

Oh Helsinki you and Mike have the world's best electronics blogs. Oh thank you very much on behalf of both myself and Mike you inspire me for I. Also write a hobbyist electronics and Signals blog. Hey there we go Windy Tan.

Blogspot.com probably should try and get your own. um I mean it's a good start. a spot. um to do U blog spot or uh, you know, WordPress or something like that.com but it's always uh, better to get your own domain name.

doesn't cost to much but uh, thank you very much. o o O N A how do you pronounce that? OA onor raising and it's got the little symbols above it. sorry I'm I'm Australian I don't know how to pronounce anything but thank you very much I'm going to call you o good on your o that's awesome from the sui in Finland Oh, look at the lovely stamp there there like a um, it's some sort of some sort of berry or something like that. Is it the Sui? I don't know anyone let me know and I just re realized the Mis spelling there of course is have you done that Una? or is that uh or is that actually a goofed up uh card and they've actually couldn't get their grammar right.

Fours Seasons in Helsinki I Love it. Next up from Yankee and again Jay Timman thank you very much Jay from Denver Colorado another place I haven't been to I would love to go cuz look at Denver Colorado look at it Oh I Want to go there I want to climb that mountain a man I don't know. Anyway, this one's not a postcard. well it could be feels like a postcard.

It's postcard like. um but uh. let's have a look. yay look at at that.

it is some sort of postcard type thing. Let's have a look here. sorry I have to keep like changing the exposure on this. like you know if you bring something bright in like I've got Auto exposure at the moment then it comes back up.

You know you put something bright in I could fix the focus so it gets the white envelope like sorry, not the focus the exposure. There's a button on the back of my camera I use it all the time to I've set it to change the exposure cuz that's probably the second most uh thing. uh well, probably the most used thing apart from oh no yeah, it probably is. The most used function on the camera is the exposure, but then it's a bit dark because it had to expose that white before.

So I've got to press the button on the back here and you'll often see a little Shake in the camera like that it's gone back to Auto anyway Jim it's Jim Good day Jim My name is Jim Timman and Audio Hobbyist in Colorado USA Although my skills and knowledge is a bit small fraction of yours, don't say that I have to uh, thank you for your blog This entertaining and very informative. That's what I go for I Go for, um infotainment I guess you could call it I Always learn something by watching Thank you very much Jim awesome look at that. What have we got? your ticket we're writing wish I could travel again I don't know I got a family now it's hard. makes me miss it I've never been on a cruise ship though.

Next up is Melena Rodriguez from Portugal don't get too many from Portugal in uh coila in Portugal hi to all my viewers in Portugal Urgent, please send back as soon as possible oops I may have had this one for a while. what was it sent? Yeah, 22nd of uh April there. sorry about the Urgent um yeah, oops that's what happens with the Relentless mailbag. Monday I'm afraid the problem is on Mondays I got to take care of San it's Daddy Daycare Monday and and uh I never get a chance to do it and I'm always behind the a what do we got? We got a some sort of image of some people I don't know, let's read it.

hi Dave I'm not sure if you remember me but my boyfriend David and I sent you a postcard from Killa Portugal some time ago I do remember that that rings a bell. Yes, you may be wondering why I sent you that orange Orang. That orange ribbon that was an orange. Oh sorry, there's an orange ribbon.

Look at that. It's got some sort of Crest on there sna laborator Petrona. something to do with science Laboratory ribbon. Let's have a look.

Um and here comes the explanation. David Ends this year his electrical Engineering course in Portugal The students have this awesome tradition to give away a ribbon to family, friends, and colleagues. Oh, isn't that nice? Later there is going to be a ceremony called Beo Des Pus. They all use their Ubi cloth clothes and the final result is going to look similar to this but with orange and Bordeaux ribbons.

Very nice. There you go, right? So that's the um yeah I Thought it looked like a sort of a you know, a Um ceremony a a graduation ceremony kind of thing. Very nice. Awesome! Dave that you finished your course.

Brilliant! Well I challenge you to write on the ribbon whatever you want and send it back to me as soon as you can. Oh damn it. Sorry, we wish to wish good. We used to wish good.

luck a successful career and stuff like that. You're a kind of David's Idol and he is going to be thrilled to receive an undesigned ribbon from you. and I'm going to be so thankful. obviously.

I'm not going to surprise him, he's only going to see the he's probably going to see it on video. he's probably already. uh, had his ceremony Did it say when? oh I'm sorry What a bummer. Thank you for teaching David Thank you for your time and thank you for the undesigned rib I Know you're going to send me back.

All right I Assume you sent your a I've blacked out your return address oops, that's a standard thing I do here on the mail bag. um I'll try and read that I'm sure I can still, uh, expose that and uh, send it back signed no worries PS sorry for the bad English it's better than mine. Next up is a spits andf that kind of rings a bell I think I may have had one oh Stefan is it I don't know. they may have it back to front I know Anyway, from Germany Hi to all my German viewers, there's heaps of them.

Dsh post love Germany Been there. lovely flowers. That's great priority. Yeah, there's probably no points sending priority when it takes me forever to uh, open these things leads.

sorry about that folks. I Just don't get around to oh God How do I do this? Let's rip it I Just don't get around to doing the mail bag I should. but um, you know by the time like hey, hey, that's cool. A robot dog? Awesome.

but uh yeah I don't um a it's a little. look at this. oh there we go Tindy Tocom Wendy.com and we'll read the note. but I've got a little board with .1 in headers and it's got a little dog dog symbol on there I Have to get the macro lens to see that, but there's a bunch of leads.

Um, oh yeah, there's a couple of dropper resist SMD uh, dropper resistors on the back, but there's no micros and let's go to the letter hi Dave I don't have any launder so this little thing will have to do instead. it's an SMD kit but I've assembled it for you still waiting for you to test my previous dad. oh sorry Robert what's your previous Dad I know I'm hopeless I've got a whole Shelf full of stuff from the mail bag kits and things that I have to assemble and I want to assemble and um, or you know, or review or do or you know, have my way with or whatever. but unfortunately, oh man, so many Oh Come From chemical physical letters.

There we go. It's come from some Journal subtle differences in some polymetric materials. This effect can be put to good use. For example, the oberved effect can serve as a contrast me uh mechanism in polymer Nexif are very useful applications in polymer science.

The morphology o morphology wank. Word of the day. There we go. The ology in poolan Blends has already been imaged without having to resort to chemical etching or sustaining.

Very nice. There you go. That's absolutely nothing to do with these LEDs whatsoever. Love the smiley face.

There we go. Blog, spits and Faa.org with the Open Source Hardware symbol. Yeah, it's just a little lead driver. There it is has the little Uh robot dog on the front I Like that can light it up with the multimeter.

All right, let's have a look here. Got the multimeter fluk 87. What do we get? Oh hello. the wrong letter is lighting up.

That bottom letter is lighting up I'm going to have to assume I'm getting the right pins there I'm going to have to assume that they are. They're in parallel of course. So if I swap the leads here. this one here.

Tada parallel and I just uh. Googled there it is. World Web Tindy I Didn't know about this. It's the marketplace for makers.

That's their Um slogan where you can sell your Hardware Designs presumably all Open Source Hardware Designs And they got a cute little robot dog. Check it out! And next up we have one from Justin Roda Thank you very much Justin From Chinoa Illinois in the United States of America I know it will. Choa Illinois just um, southwest of Chicago there just before uh Bloomington that crazy Aussie bloke. this is where you send stuff P box 7949 still have no idea what they, uh, think about that at the local post office Global USA Global What forever Global What forever Globe forever that's not very USA USA is all about USA USA USA You know they, they don't know what happens.

You know, a globe? No, the world's you know, 6,000 years old and uh, and well, a globe. Jeez, it might as well be flat According to some Americans Anyway, sorry I won't stereotype, especially not Justin Especially not anyone from Chinoa Illinois Sure, there's no flat earthers there, so let's open it up. and uh, that crazy Oz Awesome envelope with inside an envelope? what have I got? Let's check it out. Oh oh, there's lots of lots of bits and Bobs in here.

Ah, lots of letter. jeez. there's a whole stack of little I think the macro lenses a little oh all. um RFI um shielding RFI stuff various.

uh, if you've seen the uh tear Downs thank you very much Justin This is interesting. If you've seen like my tear Downs of spectrum analyzers and stuff, you'll see this sort of um RFI uh, gasket, um stuff actually between all the metal um Shields and stuff like that. So all various RFI products by the looks of it, so interesting. So if you can remember all the letters on there, it looks like we a complete kit we've got in like a description.

On the other side, it's from Holland uh Shielding systems I Don't know if uh Justin actually works for them or whether or not he just had it and decided to fold it on cuz it's interesting but we've got clipon G Gaskets ultrasoft Shield gaskets uh, V-shaped gaskets can't read some of this due to the Um onscreen uh display on the back of my LCD cuz if you don't know I don't actually look at the product I look at it through the LCD on the back of the monitor here and uh, sometimes I that's why I miss a lot of stuff because it's you know it's only got a certain resolution on the back of the Uh LCD screen on the camcorder here, so I'm watching that in real time and uh, it's got uh, like my Vu uh level meter and all sorts of stuff on there so that can be rather annoying. It obscures all this text. Um Emi Water Seal Gasket knitted mesh gasket o profile D Profile standard shield finger strip Example: Uh Amore Foil mesh, foil, conductive fabric, all sorts of oh mu copper. There we go.

You've heard me talk about where's the me Copper? Where's the Mew metal sometimes called Mew metal? Um, it's the uh o me copper o where's o There it is is oh I don't think I got that? there it is I don't think I got that at all. No bummer. didn't get the me metal Dear Dave How are things pretty awesome mate I Do this for a living? Can you believe it? How could it not be awesome? Any projects lately? Oh yeah, if I have a bloody finish one, let me tell you so I Heard about this thing called mailbag that you do on YouTube that's it I think it's neat. So also heard about the plasma speaker.

Yeah the plasma speaker was really cool. Um is is it easy to build? Ah question? um yeah. they're pretty easy to build. just a you know you can um scrap the parts out of an old TV to uh, get the um uh to generate the uh HF and pretty much a bent piece of wire and 9 volt battery.

and you know Bobs your uncle? um just let me know if you have this letter on the EV Blog mailbag episode. well it's here you got to watch I Don't inform people saying thank you I've received your letter and it'll be on the next mail bag. sorry I don't do that that. It's like a surprise here.

it is your One's next up. There's projects I do and have them on my website and YouTube down Lou is a picture of them. Awesome! We have a TV oscilloscope turn your TV indoor scope. Brilliant Lpt binary clock I'm assuming that parallel port here I can see parallel port interface there binary clock um a Christmas ornament a logic probe and a um 7805 USB charger you can find me at YouTube There we go YouTube Delie Justin he's into dely I guess Thank you very much Delie Justin at Weebly.com Justin Rer Awesome mate.

Thanks a lot And here is his TV scope circuit. Three transistors. love it. Couple of inductors there.

beautiful build it up. Give it a try if anyone wants to give that a B, let us know how it goes. All right, let's measure the resistance of various things we've got here. This cloth.

Here we go. Let's put it right over there. Oh, very conductive. Look at that.

That's um, Metalized thread. Obviously very conductive cloth. It's not just, uh, dissipative. it is, uh, definitely conductive.

Next up, we have some of this spongy stuff. It's got looks like regular sponge on the bottom or ASD sponge. There we go. That one's very conductive as well.

What have we got here? Looks like we got some foil and backed. Yeah, it's just backed. There we go. It's foil.

It's not like hasn't got like a myar coating on that or anything. And then we have one of these really spongy uh seals. There we go. They're also incredibly conductive.

We've got this looks like an old razor packet or something. Very conductive. Again, what do we got up here? Big rubber sort of. um, end designed to clip over boards and panels and stuff like that.

and that'll be of course. Also, very low. Jeez, they're all going to be very low. We're not going to get like, sort of.

you know. Um, oh, here we go. This is like a rubber type stuff. Let's give that a bill.

No, There we go. No. That one is. uh, not conductive.

It's going to be dissipative. Of course, we just got metal. Just a metal honeycomb. there.

we've got. uh, looks like just a metal. G Of course, metal shield on the uh, sort of like a braid on the outside of a rubber coating there. Of course, this is just that's going to be complet.

They're all going to be dead shorts. Yep, Yep. there you go. No sort of high resistance stuff at all.

Sort of like, like you'd get with conductive foam or something like that. So that's there. There it is. T And yeah, this is like, uh, some sort of plastic material with like a conductive cloth mesh I'm assuming it's conductive.

Uh, you know, sandwiched in between there. So of course the plastic won't be conductive. No, of course not. But if you go off into the cloth.

Tada Ah, there we go, we have something that's reasonably. High Resistance there 50 o Ohms. Interesting stuff, and of course you can see through it like that, but it is conductive all the way through. Great stuff, so it allows you to, uh completely Shield like an opening in a case, but uh, still be able to see through it I Guess you could say like kind of like your microwave oven door how it uh, you know you can still see through it but it Shields out the 2.45 gig microwave uh frequency in there, this one would uh do a much wider range than that because it's very very fine mesh on that brilliant and a bloody alligator clip.

It's not starting to hurt yet I'll just leave it on there see how much pain I can tolerate. Next up we have Ramsay Doy doy doy I think that's how you pronounce it from Austin Texas another place I haven't bloody been. Oh man. going to have to do a US state by state road trip one day anyway.

oh hey bunch of students Hi! Dave we are E students I love the copper clad laminate they've put that on. that's 8 that looks like8 mm there. Reasonably flexible. that's great I like it.

very novel. We are E students from Texas and we love your show. Fantastic exclamation mark. We run our own site for students and we love it.

If you checked it out Turtleneck Hub now that's a cool name Turtleneck Hubb.com the CD is a song we made just for you. Thanks Ramsay and Danny thank you very much guys. Play me. Oh goodness.

definitely is a bit of H Scrap there. They somebody's had a hack at the back of that don't know what the hell they were doing there and uh, why there's a capacitor there? because well I don't see no. well there's capacitor like to the top side I mean this8 mm board is going to have some capacitance in it. hey I wonder what can we measure it? Tell you what? I Just got in these uh, brand new pair of smart tweezers made in Canada Beauty Um, they're not cheap I've reviewed these before a long, long time ago and apparently this is the updated uh one.

certificate of calibration? yeah I'll have to do a review on it. Won't be much of a review because you know, really, it's a I think it's pretty similar to last time you know: 2% resistance, 5% capacitance inductance it only goes up to uh measurement range only goes up to 10 khz. uh though I think anyway, um, there's a good reason to just uh, whip this sucker out and uh, when in doubt, whip it out and uh, get our smart tweezers. Very nice.

They're very sexy, but very expensive. but anyway, um, they should turn on automatically I think no no no, no, probably have to press a button unless the battery is flat. No, we there there we go Advanced devices and now it should Auto detect L CNR 38 mils there we go. so we could actually just probe that down there.

97 milliohms depends on the how hard I push it 52 if I release the pressure a bit 171 620 release the pressure even more. 3 ohms that kind of stuff. But anyway, look, we should be able to measure the capacitance of this sucker. So oh, how do I get in shot here? We go off shot.

there we go. Let's measure the capacitance I assume it's going to do it at 1 khz there. Make sure I don't touch them if you push too hard on there. Yeah, there you go.

874 Paa Farads and of course I can increase that by touching it my fingers and if I put more pressure on there, that's going to go up there. you go. Oh sorry, it's jumped up to 10 khz Now there it is. so 875.

so maybe that was at 1 khz before. So let me get like my agilant LCR meter. see if we confirm, see if we can confirm 875 paa farads at 10 khz. All right here we go: Capacitance at 10 khz.

Let's see if we get the same value I can't just clamp that on there. can't just clip it on because I' be shorten out both sides. It's a bit touchy, but let's see if we can get it there. We go: 876 Very very close I like it so that's within like 2% Something like that? Let's try just I don't know.

Nice little experiment here I like it LCR Auto What about frequency 10 khz and uh oh, we could do LCR Auto But there we go. Let put on capacitance. Let's see if we get 875 here as well. Oh, look at that significantly higher 883.

H And if we switch to series mode, shouldn't make a difference. but let's have a go anyway. No 883 There we go. So the IET one different.

Now let's try this: Xtec LCR Multimeter. Yes, the Evev blog. The only blog in the world that has a mailbag segment and it can turn a bit of copper clad PCB into an LCR meter shootout. Here we go.

Um, by the way I think this only does 1 khz? I'm surprised. um I'm not sure why I thought it was capable of more than that I can't switch it to 10 um Pbac I forget. Anyway, oh oh, look at that 800 and 90 891. Let's see what it is on the Uh Agilant at 1 khz.

Let's call it 890. Here we go: 1 khz. Uh-huh Ah, there you go. 886 Paarat near, you know, relatively close to the 890.

So um, at the moment it looks like the Um IET meter is the one that's out. Let's run the IET again at 1 khz. There you go. 1 khz.

We're okay. So yeah, I have to check the Uh spec the range. Well, the Uh specs on the various range changes on the I one here because it was, uh reading a bit. High I Don't know if it's out of tolerance or not.

haven't run the numbers on that, but jeez, I don't know. Anyway, the uh, Smart Tweezers was practically spot on within like 2% or quarter of a percent or something to the Um Agant which I is my sort of reference standard LCR meter. the U 1733 C something just went beep. something's about to turn off here.

and of course the lowcost LCR meter. The Xtec uh one is pretty good value I Rather like this. the the De 5000. yeah, I don't know.

it does have the four terminal uh measurement capability these things. By the way, um, if you're after an LCR meter, um, I can I can tell you right now I Said it in my previous review of these uh, smart tweezers In and that, um, really, if you're after just an LCR meter, they're you know you're much better off buying one of these. um, you know, handheld ones. Really, these are just for the con venience form factor of the really nice tweezer attachment cuz you can actually get tweezer attachments for these.

But of course, once you hook those on, you got leads that then dangle across your bench. and if you got SMD Parts all over your bench, your leads can just scatter them everywhere. Really ugly. That's um, the advantage of these.

uh, Smart Tweezers made in Canada Smart Tweezers looks like a reasonably, um, decent Advance on the previous model. but anyway, these. are expensive. This is, probably don't quote me, but probably the most expensive LCR meter here I think it may even be more than the Agilant one or very similar price anyway.

but yeah, they they are cool, but for a very niche market anyway. so ah well, that's mailbag. Monday There you go. sorry I'm out of time see how long that took to shoot this I don't know how long the final footage would be, but 6:41 I got to get home Sean goes to bed at 700 I got to be home to kiss him good night before he goes to bed.

So anyway, thank you very much people for sending in that mailbag stuff and I will try Yes! I Always say it I'll try and get through the rest of the stuff. Oh and oh, almost forgot John Box's new book Arduino Workshop here it is Hands-On Introduction: 65 projects John Boxal you know, um, fellow blogger from Tronic Stuff.com does really good I Probably should do a little video review, but anyway, it's a really really good book and from no starch press. of course who do some really good books and they have uh um I can printed in the US of a not that's printed in China rubbish printed in the United States of America and um I do actually get a uh thank you in here somewhere Anyway, look at all the stuff in here. It's brilliant if you're after Arduino um stuff I've um had a reasonably good flick through it and it is really really good and uh, it's yeah, it is really quite good.

So people where: I am I there there I am Dave Jones thank you very much Dave Jones like give a thank you thank you very much John to yeah Jonathan oxer as Well's in there LaMore they're all in there. there you go Nathan seed Everyone's in there thanking everyone. So yeah, if you're after a book on Arduino um stuff then this takes you step by step. It really is quite good I Highly recommend it to a beginner or um, anyone there's you know basic Electronics not just Arduino um stuff.

There's some Electronics uh, fundamentals, you know, resistors, identification, all sorts of stuff. and it really is. And it's a massive book. It really is quite good I won't go through it.

Some people complained last time I practically gave the whole book away as I went through, but it John has been working on this for a long time I know and it really shows and it's like 300 and you can do lead cube stuff. Great! Absolutely brilliant I love it animating the lead Matrix and then it goes on to do WiFi projects. There's 65 projects all up uh GPS stuff Wireless tags RFID NFC I think internet cellular coms. so yeah, it's got GSM stuff.

Every project you could possibly imagine for the Arduino is in here and he's done an awesome job and it is like 300 there source code, everything in there. Everything you could possibly want. all your Arduino goodness and it's like 360 something pages so you're really getting your money's worth. and I'm a big sucker for a good index and this looks like a good index.

There's the LCR meter turning off and telling me I should call it quits. So excellent work! John From Tronic stuff that's available from um No Starch Press and if you buy it, you get the Pdf version as well. So do do check it out. Uh John Boxel Arduino Workshop Beauty Highly recommended.

Catch you next time! Welcome to the Eev blog I'm your host Dave Jones Hi hi hi Dave Jones to the EV I'm your host Dave Welcome to the E Blve hi welcome to the Eev block I'm your host Dave Jones and.