Hi its teardown time I thought I'd tear down my original like almost 20 years old I think you need in 40 channel UHF CB Transceiver you know CB Radio a thing for all you @ CB aficionados out there I'm sure there's still a few I used to use these for canyoning and bush walking and stuff and one of them ironically based on my last video, actually died with the battery corrosion. It was completely cactus and this one got a bit of treatment as well. but I thought would tear it down and the reason is because the kids just got some of these. Isn't it cute like I thought this one was really small when I got it like almost 20 years ago and you know I thought it was remarkable.

Look how small these things are now cuz they used to be like big bricks. but look at this. this is insane. This is exactly the same thing.

It's a half watt 500 milli watt. This one's an 80 channel. UHF CB Radio Absolutely tiny I mean look at this. I can almost cover that entire thing in my hand.

So I thought we'd actually just tear both of these down and have a look at the difference between like essentially our 20 year old technology and this modern one. I Don't know how long it's been out. but the remarkable thing about this is that you can get this for like 15 Australian dollars, 15 oz II bucks. that's what you know.

11 Yankee bucks or something like that. This is retail from a shop and these are top-quality Our Japanese brand unit ends although they're not made in Japan this one from 20 years ago made in the Philippines on a home where Philippines our viewers but designed and engineered in Japan and they love to brag on their website. Now about their you know, take one of these things apart and take a look at the superb build quality in them and everything else. So I thought yeah I Don't know how long these little tiny little kids models been out, but it's basically exactly the same specs.

is this one? What? 500 milliwatts and it's a three triple a battery. It's got a USB port on it so you can use rechargeable nickel metal hydrides. These ones are of course to get the insane that price point of like just over ten US dollars and that's not retail but that's what you know shop price what you can buy them for here in a recent mortar retail store. Anyway, these ones are made in the People's Republic of China the PRC.

So yeah, but the other ones might have a bonus tear down at the end of this to originally Philippines and now these super cheap ones are made in China but they're higher quality ones are not made in China So anyway I Thought we'd check it out. Let's go and here might be able to see maybe a bit of corrosion in this one. This one actually survived but another one didn't unfortunately. so maybe four screws there.

This is for a belt clip attachment and it's got a lanyard and everything else and this is from microphone and speaker up the top anyway. I Want to see you know the improvements in technology I over say the last 20 years between these two things. to miniaturize that there was a model in between which was a triple-a version of this one and it was smaller again. but this is just remarkably small.

It's just gonna be I can almost see actually see down in the PCB and there this is gonna be a single board solution. but hell, I can do it for so cheap and like why would you buy a one hand and engineered in Japan Top quality unit in brand. even though these are like little kids ones, you can get these for like 15 oz II bucks each. It's just insane.

Don't know why you'd buy the cheapest cuz the performance isn't there if because if you ever bought one of those you know little novelty CB radio things. they've probably just got a couple of driver trainees in there and that's it. and they're just absolutely hopeless. Whereas you know, these are our top quality, our design and manufacture, especially for kids.

Geez, and we're in like Flynn this top case just pop right off. It's got the mesh there to protect the speaker, the rubber membrane, microphone, little mini speaker with its my Loco and copyright mm So yep, that makes it near on. a 20 year old design so looks like it's a multi board construction of course. I Expect this one to be single board construction to get the cost down because I think these ones from memory serves me correctly.

What? You paid like a hundred and fifty to two hundred dollars each like 20 years ago for these things. They weren't particularly cheap that's for sure. And there's the bottom of the main board. and yep, that looks like it was manufactured in the early 2000s.

no doubt about it. and you need in there you go. It's a can we get the right light on that it's you see 2605 can't find any info on that. Probably a uniden custom part.

Of course that's going to be doing all of the you know, the LCD stuff. so that'd be you know, some sort of micro or you know, custom thing. maybe? Is it doing a lot of the just like because there's analog stuff on here? Look, we've got Japan at Radio Corp and some of these other parts which are kind of. you know.

they almost look like hands silked on there. Pretty much like yeah, that's a bit. how are you doing? Look at that. It's a whole bunch of discrete passes.

A little watch crystal were down here so that one, of course, that's not going to be at an actual watch crystal 32 768 This doesn't have a real-time clock in it. There'd be a higher frequency, but yeah, that's potentially doing a lot of analog E goodness. So that's got to be some you know have a custom you need an ASIC I would presume. Hmm.

Anyway, board to board, interconnect and the rest of it. Here's our transmitter and receiver up here, so it's going to be a little bit of shielding on there, so we'll get that off and see if we can get that board out so that just comes out with one screw holding down the antenna. Here we might have a look, take a look at the antenna, but this is interesting. Why have they got just that metal? They're sort of bent over and that's insulated as well.

so I'm not sure what the deal is there. anyway. Tada, there's our bottom can. Oh geez, you know we won't find all of this inside our new design.

No siree. Bob Today there's our antenna for 77 Megahertz equates to I like a point six something meters. So is that when you stretch that out, that's not going to be 600. so that would be a quarter wavelength job? You wouldn't Anyway, it'll just spiral way on there.

Nothing special, in fact. quite a few treatments. one two three, four, five, five trimmers thank you very much. They could actually be more on the bottom cuz there is a substantial amount on the bottom there so we might have to D solo that can to see the whole dog-and-pony show in there.

But yes, a lot of effort that's gone into that. So I'm gonna be interesting to see how they miniaturize this because you can't make all of this like you can't just duplicate this design and make it a bit smaller like you know with all the same parts and everything for like and sell it for 15 Australian dollars. It's just crazy So a bit. of course back when they were designing these ones you know cost was a little bit of an object but not for these like kid toy ones.

Although this is not a you know it's designed for kids but it's not a toy, it's a proper 500 milli watt unit in is gonna perform exactly the same as this and this is a somehow all embedded in there. plus all of this as well. And here's the board with the shield removed and tada, there's the bottom side. I've got our sole say in the media frequency IFR amplifier here.

Such a traditional multistage ampere configuration using different chippies. This beast looks really hard and ugly to get off. So yeah, I I have to leave that if I want this thing to still work. I've got two separate crystals here and as I said, lots of trimmers on the thing or very old school analog, you know RF amplifier and receiver type designs all embedded inside there.

So I'm gonna crack this one open see what's what for? Screws on there should just lift off. and sure enough, this is just gonna lift off. Ah hi. Even that comes slits on the antenna.

They're just the spiral-wound antenna. Nothing's changed and there you go. And sure enough, to their credit on their website, they claimed they don't use any internal wires or anything and they don't have glue holding things together. They put a lot of effort and they boast about.

you know, their design manufacturability. And sure enough, I've really liked the solution for the battery contacts. There isn't that really nice that just goes down under these large pads over there. Absolutely brilliant.

but look Jesus not much in it is there. We've got a can over here which is our complete RF front end and that's how I push the talk switch. Look at that little tactile switch. right angle.

PCB Like that. sold it on. You've seen me talk about right angle boards like that and you might think you're gonna come a gutter with the mechanical stress on that board from that. but no.

I'm sure they've done their engineering is probably sold it on the bottom side as well and that'd be tough as nails. Let me tell you, even though that looks like a point eight millimeter board, maybe one millimeter. and if you're wondering how they get away with a shorter antenna, the winding on that is actually a larger diameter and it's squished together. It's got more turns in there, but the exact wavelength would be the same.

Hang On! They boasted about no wiring, but I See why is going off of the speaker? Ah, come on. Hang on. Hold onto your hat. Look at this solder ball.

Solder Ball Alert Warning: Will Robinson that looks off for all the world like a solder ball. Yep, Oh no, they got it made in. China And they've come a guts up. But you know what do you want for the money? apart from a little less audible, There we go.

There's our antenna input there. Once again, it's all on the main boards. basically single board construction. I'm surprised they, you know, didn't put a right-angle tacked switch in there.

but I guess they thought that that would have been better. Anyway, May 3rd, 2018 is the revision of this board. So there's the main chippy down there. It's got absolutely no markings whatsoever.

It doesn't look like they're being rubbed off it, and it looks like they just never had markings on it. That's almost certainly a unit in custom. ASIC that would be doing all the fancy pantsy business as well as driving all the user interface. There would be a little charge controller down in there for the rechargeable batteries.

and of course, that job. There is our speaker driver. It's a dead giveaway here because, well, it's driving the speaker. A couple of miscellaneous trainees around there, but it's all under the can If you want to see the good stuff.

I'm gonna have to butcher this. Sure enough, there's absolutely nothing on the bottom side there. although they do have a little bit of heatsink and that is for the can under there. so that'll be our transmitter.

They're just, you know. Anchor sensors 500 milliwatts. You know it's no slouch little through-hole Mike there and jeez. But you can really see how they got the cost down compared to the original.

Know where we like flee and there we go. It just had a top cover on it. Absolutely beauty. Oh, we can see the chips upside down, but all the electrons are gonna fall out.

Okay, so what's going on here is this is clearly our effort power amplifier and you can see how they've got DC power coming in here inductively coupled that so it's par for the course for these type of in-line RF power amplifiers. We've got ground and the positive up here, so this has to be the input pin over here, so follow the money under there. So I'm not entirely sure what that little lot 23 job' is there, but anyway, there will be an RF out. It looks like, oh, that's yeah, is that it? That'd be the RF out pin going there into the 500 milli watt inline power amplifier.

You know, 500 megahertz of bandwidth. That's all they need. and then this little inductor here that goes to the output. Now they need.

to feed back to the input. So obviously they're tapping the input at this point here because you need a receiver of course. So as an inductor, a little loose and just got some duo protection there, have we and that tomorrow followed money? that would be the RF input. Then what this line is doing there? I'd say there's a couple of passives in there I Reckon that could be some bias line perhaps.

and there'll be a match in our network in there as well. And there's not much to write home to your mum about outside here. So that is the entire IRA section. CB Radio.

That's insane. So there you go. All that there Oh now fits into there. Remember this is the same a class amplifier.

500 milliwatts, all that squeezed into the magic of all that with a couple of external there and Bob's your uncle. it's all in the one chippy and this is complete analog. In and out. I mean with with DSP and everything insane.

So this single-chip solution here wasn't even a dream. wasn't even a figment of the imagination of the designers of this one. Anyway, we need to find out what this job he is. It's an 18 18 46 s.

Let's go to the videotape now. It took a little bit of doing, but I found the datasheet now. I'm not sure if this for actually this particular one we've got here I'm not sure it is because I think there's multiple manufacturers for this. so I'm going to assume that our DK Micro Electronics never heard of them are the originators of this thing.

Now the interesting thing here is that check out the date. it's 2009. This chips been around for a long time. It's confidential Shh Don't tell anyone.

Don't give anyone the link to this video, that's for sure. And it's a single-chip transceiver for a walkie talkie tada. But yeah, it's been around for a decade, so that's really quite remarkable. So if anyone's seen any older designs, I'm use this.

Please let us know. But it's got everything. It's got an on-chip 8 DBM power amplifier. It supports two frequency ranges 400 500 and the lower are 134 to 174 as well.

It supports the the dual bandwidth so that's the difference between the for the older 40-channel bandwidth allocation of 25 kilohertz and the newer 80 channel allocation of 12.5 kilohertz. I'm supports multiple clocks, digital audio frequency, or a gain control box. It's got built-in CT CSS It's got like DTMF and all sorts of stuff Auto AREX Leapings good general purpose I/o and all sorts of stuff. So the thing is if you search for the other number I Was able to pull up this datasheet in quote marks the 80 18 46 s.

It's the same 18 46 but there's no manufacturer, no nothing. Everything's the same. and they've just got the one block diagram and that's it. There's a low noise amplifier, there's an RF in and an RF out.

Just as we saw before, we've got our power amplifier. Then it's got a variable gain power amplifier driver VCO synthesizer. all that sort of stuff. and it's microphone direct straight in.

So the other microcontroller has nothing to do with the audio or analog aspects of this at all. The audio frequency out goes directly to the speaker power amplifier chip, and the micro here just talks. I'm not sure why it has both an SPI bus and an I squared C I guess I Do you need both? or does it let you I choose it? But that's it. That's it for that no-name datasheet.

So I assume like there's multiple clones of this chip. Power Consumption: Basically 50 odd milliamps. both receive and transmit because the power amplifiers the one doing all the you have the transmission power the 500 milliwatts. it's adjustable from minus 2 to 8 DBM They're in direct output power.

Of course we want 500 milli watts. You could drive the antenna directly with this thing if you're happy with your 8 milli watts, but yeah, that's not gonna get you far. I mean I tens of meters. They might do this in.

Really? they might use this Chipping Really low-end like super low-cost ones If you think this is low-end and it might use it even cheaper. Low-end where they emit the power amplifier chip. who knows. And we've got a typical application diagram.

and yeah, here's the RX TX switch over here and that's the RF input there. And yep, there it is. There's a bias so that was driving the power amplifier. that was the extra line that we saw there and then just it just gets that analog power there via that inductive path there so that the RF can't.

They have the inductor there so that the RF can't sneak back out. But apart from that, it's pretty easy. It's just GPIO so it's good that it's got GPIO because you might want to hook up like a little 8 pin micro to this thing. and then you can use the GPIO on this to drive it.

So yeah, that's about all she wrote though. But the other thing is, we've got the full programming guide as well and this is how you program it via the I squared, C or SPI. Okay, it sounds like you can use either SPI or I squared C Take your pic I Don't think you need both, so that's really flexible depending on what your micro has, so that's really cool. So you can set a ton of stuff.

You can set your start frequency the RF band you use in the reference clock frequency. These are voice channels a bias output voltage to bias your RF amp sub amplifier settings SQ that'll be our squilsh would--it I'm assuming Volks eliminating tail noise DTMF codes and things like that So FM Deviation: rx Voice range It's pretty comprehensive so there's you can toggle your GPIO St mode wherever the heck that is I don't know something to do with Vox is it? and various timers and stuff later. It's pre-emphasis de-emphasis filters. It's pretty comprehensive.

Wow You're gonna really have a field day with this. Everything's here, so you could. Certainly, there's no reason why you can't design your own walkie talkie using this thing. That's assuming of course that you can actually buy this sucker and a quick check showed it's not available from the usual stockist, even the more obscure one.

So I don't know? You might have to go to someone on Aliexpress or Alibaba who's got you know? got a reel of them sitting somewhere? or you know and go check out our De Micro. Well, it turns out that LCS C is actually an RDA Micro Electronics dealer. So yeah, they specialize in all those. but um, they don't have this particular model chip.

They've got the Our D50 807. Yeah, they don't carry this particular one. but apparently Arrow Electronics is one of the official stalkers as well. so you could.

you could get your hands on the chip. they're just not you know, catalogue supplied. So yeah, this could be a really cool little chip too. If you want to roll your own, we have to roll your own.

sort of like ORF interface. It's worth look at that. So this is how they get in the bomb cost of this thing down. So this chip has got to cost like you know if 50 Cent's or something like that and the microcontroller.

you know it's probably like a 20 cent micro or something like that. And you know the headphone power amplifier is like 10 cents. And you know, like the total bomb cost of this for 15 Australian dollars in the stores here like the bomb costs. they have to be making this for under five US dollars.

Like complete. otherwise they're not making money on this. It's just nuts. Now as a bonus, I Thought we'd take a look at this bad boy.

It's the UA 750. This is a professional-grade one. It's waterproof, dustproof, and it's a five. What one? And the size is basically smaller then my original 500 milli watt job' There you go.

It's actually it's smaller and I think it's about the same thickness. But yeah, this is 5 watts and now this plastic rubbish or die cast alloy. Beautiful. This has got a rechargeable lithium ion battery and now this made in China rubbish isn't made in Vietnam I Don't my Vietnamese viewers so that's you know that's interesting but oh yeah, this one's like this one's built like a brick Danny Unbelievable.

This one's designed to survive harsh Australian conditions. Ah the screws. Look at that into die cast alloy. It's beautiful.

Oh yeah, now we're talking. Look at the die cast front on that baby. Absolutely brilliant. waterproof speaker seal around there.

Fantastic. We've got a seal around the the LCD and whatnot and you can see the potentially see the o-ring seal around there but of die-cast case. And yeah, it weighs a ton more than the other little chintzy er plastic ones. Although course that you need in plastics.

even this. Even this tiny little kids one for you know, fifteen Aussie bucks. You know it feels really quite rugged. like you can smash it around and do whatever and it's not gonna break.

But the plastics on this Chinese low-cost Chinese One don't feel as good as my original one that I've been using for, you know, almost two decades now. The plastics just feel better quality but still is plastic whereas this, ah, diecast at all the way with LBJ Well, the bottom of the board, look at this chock-a-block There's our main micro. we're gonna sticker on that, so that'll be a newfangled a flash micro by looks of things. and we've got a border board interconnect here as our crystal.

Once again, that's not a watch crystal so that would be the main external oscillator. and bingo, look down in there. We've got some more discrete stuff like we saw in the original design from a couple of decades back and got a little you know, little boggy stuff God linked wire going over there, so like oh, hang on, that's that's come off, What's going on that's supposed to be on the can? oh that's a bit how you doing Oh Quite disappointed. you need in after all your bragging about you know, no point-to-point wiring and stuff like that.

and unfortunately in this one they've tried to solder to a some can over there and it's it hasn't taken. Hmm. and I swear that hair if you're watching this in HD you should be able to get that. that hair that is not mine.

So someone in Vietnam that's their hair. They left their little calling card. oops. Anyway, we're gonna deep down there in metal diecast.

Jersey Oh yeah, actually it looks like I'm not going to be able to get this bottom transmitter board out without taking off without desoldering. All this. it looks like they solder this board in after its assembled so they just a hand solder those in. So unless I go D solder all that like getting in there.

this is a this is my good five. What job in sorry but I don't necessarily want to go hacking around in there anyway. You can see got the main crystal down in there and it's certainly yeah. They've gone back to going back to discrete stuff and he know that little cheap our single chip solution another can down there.

So very different design thoughts when you actually go into designing this because you're obviously you know you're building this to have a bomb cost of like five US dollars. They would have had a very strict target on their bomb cost for this thing and then once I saw this chip off that enables you know the low bomb cost market and they went after that which is often the case. You know a company will come up with a nice little chip and then you know a whole bunch of companies will seize upon that and actually make a market out of it, but often it's sometimes it's the other way around. like I've worked at companies where we have approached specific manufacturers of chips and gone hey, we know we'll We'll buy a hundred couple hundred thousand of these chips if you design us this like you know variant of this particular chip.

I'm talking about my underwater our sonar stuff in 24-bit ADCs and things like that. so addicts and ADCs and they would make them specifically or target them specifically to one or two custom and big customers and that's a custom uniden job. You see thirty four, seventy six there. So yeah, they're not using the original one from a couple of decades back.

but yeah once again they're like their role in their own custom ASIC there that that'd be doing all the LCD drivin as well as I Here you can see it up here that goes up to your LCD module up there. So it's doing all that as well as um some curiously I'm doing some analog II stuff that they've got. you know, a few pots, one, two three, four little trimmer pots around there that's interesting. So there you have it.

That's a very interesting progression. a design from around 2000 so two decades ago now and you know, fairly expensive and fairly discrete. our design. Sure, it's got lots of integration in the customer ASIC up here which tries it all.

but you know all the power amplifier. that's all discrete type stuff. and then you know cue like 89 years later that we've got this thing which is convinced all of that into just this. Absolutely remarkable.

I Know it's you know people, mobile phones whoop-dee-doo right? but you know I just think it's amazing that they can make that for probably what five US dollars bomb cost and and sell that in a store in Australia for 15 oz II bucks. Unbelievable. And then this would have been designed around a similar time and they've gone back to like all the more discreet type design. Probably because it's five watts.

Okay, this one's only 500 million watts. but five watts gone back to your more traditional design that we saw over here, especially for the RF section. It's very improbable. II Quite similar if you get down in there and you know once again, it's when Cost really isn't a driver for this thing.

You have all your diecast metal. This is all you know. You've got lots of discrete stuff around here and they're not going for the same sort of integration that they were with this consumer price point. It just I Love doing tear downs of these things over time and seeing the progression, so hope you will learn something from that.

It's very interesting to see macaws based you know design constraint as opposed to a performance and rugged rugged based design constraint over here. whereas price you know we're not a huge factor really. So anyway I hope you found that interesting and useful if you did. As always, please give it a big thumbs up.

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