Hi. it's Bizarro bit of industry kit tear down time after I got this in the mailbag. I think it was from someone anonymous. Uh, thank you very much who sent this in and I guarantee you are not going to get this through airport customs.

Um, that's no chance whatsoever. This is incredible. What is this thing? I didn't tell you in the mailbag episode. But what it is is it's actually like something you would totally not think of unless you're in this particular industry.

It's an ultrasonic gas leak detector. It's got four ceramic ultrasonic sensors on top here. it's got a digital, uh readout like this, I don't know. you can set it up, um, somehow.

I'm not sure what the top interface is. we'll uh, find out shortly. And the reason it's in this? sort of like a gas cylinder type. Um, you know construction like this is because this is um, explosion proof.

Basically this is rated to will find a standard on here somewhere. here we go. It's um, the Exd is standard plus of various other things, but this is basically a um like explosion fireproof standard basically means if there's any failure inside this thing, nothing can escape this thing. I mean it'd have to be some massive internal uh, pressure for it to escape because this is a gas leak detector designed for use in potentially explosive.

You know, industrial factory environments where you got, you know, pressurized gas pipes running everywhere, filled with you know, who knows what flammable the pressurized material. And if if you get a leak in any of the pipes, you know you get a burst or a seal leak or something like that. Then depending on the pressure, uh, differential, the temperature and the type of gas, and you know the size of the hole and all sorts of things. Um, it can actually make an ultrasonic sound and that is what's picked up by these four uh, ceramic ultrasonic sensors on here.

So I guess they're in this arrangement to get like a 360 degree thing. You're supposed to mount this like several meters off the ground, like on a pole or something. That's why it's got like these big mountain posts here and it can be electrically earthed of course, down to uh, mains earth here, so you know there's no sorts of uh, funny business going on and it's just absolutely incredible. That, like you wouldn't think an ultrasonic sensor would look like this, but you know Sure enough, there it is.

so it's maximum power consumption 160 watts and we'll see why. hopefully. um, in the uh, tan down. So this is the type Nsm Su 343a um, a 30 000 serial number 20 manufactured in 2013 Do not open when there's explosive atmosphere manufactured in the Uk by Net Safety and it's the Banshee 343 for those playing along at home and do not open when explosive atmosphere is present or when energized.

Well, it's not going to be energized. I don't even know where the cable port is on. This thing Is this like up the Uh top here? But oh geez, I tell you what, I so want to actually, um, after this teardown, I still want to put it back together and actually, um, like design a little board that goes in there to drive this Led display and have a countdown timer on it. Oh, that's like, oh man, yes, why not it? It's got to be done.

So yeah, who knew that? um, when pipes leak, they can generate not only audible sounds you know that's hissing sound, but they can generate ultrasonic um sound as well. And this is designed to measure a 40 meter radius and works from 25 and kilohertz to 100 kilohertz and can work up to anywhere from 50 db to 160 db pressure levels. And it's got all sorts of you know, it's got fail-safe uh, sensor systems and also apparently like self-cleaning sensors in there. so I'm curious.

And it can actually generate and do self-tests and stuff like a periodic self-test So I believe it has like internal generation or something like that. So I'm curious to see like, uh, what's happening in here and also, um, can do like internal heating and stuff like that as well. So I possibly expect to see you know, um, some sort of like, uh, you know, heating elements and I don't know. Let's tear it down.

Well I guess I I'll start by taking off this top cover. here. Is this where the interface is? because it has both a 4 to 20 milliamp current loop output and also an Rsr485 output as well. So this is going to have some serious o-ring ceiling I suspect.

So oh yeah, I can see a gap in there. Yep, Yep. there we go. And yeah, it's supposed to have an infrared system as well.

and I believe I can see an infrared uh, transceiver down there as well. I think it's designed to like report back to like a central operator or something. so I don't think there's anything internally like a buzzer or anything that goes off. So oh no, hello, that's it.

What? I don't know, no idea what that is. Read the manual I guess. So I'll take off one of these ultrasonic sensors here. But I'd imagine that you know with this huge basically pressure vessel, um kind of thing.

Um, I don't know if like, the sensor will be actually have a sealed interface between the sensor itself and inside. Um, because it kind of seems to defeat the purpose of this huge thing if you've got this relatively tiny sensor head here. But yeah, there we go. Yep, that's all.

Wow. Yep, that's what you'd expect. Look at that. this is all machine like.

This is all part of the machined part of this big head here. Oh there. How much are these things anyway? that? um anyway, that's got a connector in a face like that. Um, is that like a high pressure connector interface? But there's your.

there's your sensor. so it's just a three pin jobby down in there. Once again, these are all. They're just the machining that goes into this.

But oh, does that come out? Yep. that comes out. So there's our oh there ego. Each individually tested.

That's our ultrasonic ceramic sensor head. We can take that apart later. It almost looks like inside this, that almost looks like it's a port going in there. And that's yeah.

Sure enough, that's got an o-ring on it that might may be part of the uh, pressure, um, self-cleaning system, so you may have to hook up as a guest. I'd say hook up a uh, pressurized, um, gas system. Um, ironically, to actually, um, self-test like to actually apply pressure to the sensors to actually test them. Aha, no.

It turns out these are the actual um, ex D rated, uh, cable glands that are designed to get the cables in and out to the terminals. Here's the down diagram over here and this has all the terminals in the bottom here. Ah, there you go. So here we go.

Yeah, that's why they've got the cable here. Because this thing can be like, you know, hanging, uh, from a roof. There's various. I'll put up a photo, there's various ways to like, you know, mount this from the wall, and um, stuff like that.

But look at this. I mean, isn't this just glorious? It's massively. This whole thing is just. you know.

One big machined part, these gigantic cable glands coming in and out. But this is what you need. Um, in terms of like cable glands and like interface to go into something that's designed for an explosive containment atmosphere. I mean, it's just incredible.

And yeah, they've gunked up that down there. So yeah, no workers on that. So that's how I guess. Cables from this board go into the main chamber.

Is it? Wow, That's got Grovely Detection Limited. so I don't know. Is it another company who's involved in the, uh, design of this thing? But yeah, there's your, uh, four to twenty milliamp, uh, current output and uh, the Rsr485 interface as well. So wow.

Like I can. just what's going to be in the rest of this thing. Like just the interface to get into. This is incredible.

There you go. There's the base that I bought each one of those got a uh, ferrule on there and it's just it's it's nice interface. There's a bit of uh, protection stuff on the back, but uh yeah, geez, that's a just a really nice interface and that down there is just yeah. they just sealed that going into the main chamber, that sealed the thread and also gunked up the entire cable.

But then you can have, uh, pressure of course being leaked through the cable. um, you know, through the gaps in the cable so I don't know, how they're taking care of that. But yeah, we'll find out. And of course this uh, probe thing sticking out here.

which, uh, they've got two holes down the bottom there, so I guess it can. I don't go into either one. There's only one option to come through, but this would be the ultrasonic transmitter which is designed to actually, um, you know, test this sensor because it can go down there and then it can simulate Um generating the ultrasonic signal and test out each individual sensor periodically. So the reason that they have to go to all this Um interface here is because of course, one of the risks in explosive atmospheres would be a spark due to a loose connection.

On something like this. you know, when it can draw significantly a significant amount of power. Uh, for example, when it's uh, doing its ultrasonic sensors and cleaning and testing and whatnot. Um, inside as you saw like 60 watts or something like that power consumption.

So if you've got like a loosey-goosey connection, I want to hear um, you know, and this is just out in the out in the open, flapping around in the breeze, then that can cause a spark in the atmosphere. So they have to have this interface just for the connections and then another interface inside the main chassis itself with the other electronics inside here. So yeah, just the connections need their own. uh, protective physical protective interface from the atmosphere.

All right. I think I've loosened all those bolts off. Yeah, they can actually pop out. Yeah, there we go.

Six large ass bolts. So let's see. I don't know if I have to take the sensors off first, but let's try and get this. Can we get this open? Wow.

this thing is thick as let me tell you, it's absolutely incredible. So how much do these things cost? Brand new? I know they're like you can buy them. I checked on ebay, you can buy one for like 300 bucks secondhand on ebay. but whoa, there we go.

We're in. now. There's a few loosey-goosey uh washes floating around in there, so I think somebody's had a hairy hacker on this. But uh, yeah, I don't see any other, like, um, any other ceiling inside there for the uh, penetrator down there.

Or I don't I said no, no, There's no gunking on the end of the uh cable. so they're obviously allowing for, uh, the pressure, uh, to get to be able to like, seep through the cable and stuff like that. But I guess you know the standard, um, satisfy all that. I don't know if you've got experience in those sorts of standards, leave it in the comments, but wow.

All the electronics here on this can and that's interesting. We've got wires going up to the top here and this is all gunked all in here that that's that port that we, uh, took off on the top which didn't seem to do anything, but there is something connected to there. So there you have it. We've just got like a board on gigantic standoffs that just sits in there.

Nothing fancy pantsy. You know, there's a micro and and a few other um, things. You know. there'd be like an Adc and stuff to measure the multi-channel a four-channel Adc system to measure the ultrasonic sensors, and I don't know how they'd be sampling those.

There's a couple of, uh, um, adjustment. They aren't um, trimmer parts. They're actually, um, like to set a code so I don't know. Does each one have like a you know, a coded uh type system and address? uh system I guess.

Um, for the you know, Rs 230 Rs 485 line. So there's the entire Pcb there and uh, these were the two Uh cables coming in. You know you've got your Rs40 uh, 485 and you've got your connections for your heater and other stuff. We've got relays.

they'd be, you know, largest relays. They'd probably be Um switching the heater off and on. Would that be the heater connection over there? I'm not too sure. Got a couple of ribbon cables going off.

We've got another thing out here which is uh, plus minus 20 volts? Is that oh no, no heat heat one. Is that going off to the Um heater and M1? I don't know. It's got a couple of uh, you know, buttons for like a production testing or whatever and some extra mode jumper switches. Something like that, but uh, yeah, not a huge amount.

Do we don't really care about the Pcb? That's not not the interesting thing here at all. although I guess people want to know what the micro is. It turns out that's a Xilinx, Rcp or D, so wasn't expecting something like that in there. And the only thing that looks like a microcontroller in here that I can find is this thing.

Near to impossible to read the number on, but maybe I can get that. I know it's an Nxp Jobby, but I can't read on the camcorder screen. Yeah, sure enough, that's an 8051 Joby. No surprises there, really, because you know this would have dated back to an old design.

I'm sure many, uh, decades old. And you know, 805.1 is all you need for uh, something like this application. Well, it's got. you know, a Cp or Xylex Cpld in there that's a bit confusing.

Got the Uln 2803. uh, relay. That's for driving the Uh relays and stuff and other miscellaneous some stuff for acquisition and whatnot. Um, I couldn't pull a part number off that, but that's obviously uh, doing like the Adc interface.

There's got an Ltc uh, probably. uh, serial converter up there, something like that, and a few other Cmos stuff. and Bob's your uncle what's underneath? Well, first of all, I've got a heatsink on the bottom there, and that's got some. don't know if you can see that, some bent over our to20s there, so that's just doing some regulation.

And uh, so there. your voltage regs tied under there. They're just using that as a small internal heatsink. and there you go.

Um, they're interesting. They look like little reed relays. maybe? Are they? Oh no, they're No. they'd be optocouplers.

Oh yeah, there you go. The component of the Week award goes to this site. What looks like a do-it-yourself um, Opto isolator. We've seen this once before.

I can't remember what it was in, but obviously, look at the Pcb clearance in here. We've got like at least an inch of Pcb clearance. I'm surprised there's not a routed slot under there for good measure. but basically, um, yeah.

infrared lead and infrared photo transistor on this side here. And um, this is the isolated electrically isolated interface going over there. So and is that one of those uh, Dc to Dc converter isolated converter blocks up there? Maybe. But look at the look at the fuse.

Oh my. They've soldered it down to the board. Oh, it's terrible. Muriel.

By the way, all of these boards are conformally coated. You can tell by the sheen on them, so it's often not easy to read part numbers through that. But yeah, no surprises for finding conformally coded board. But um, yeah, that's obviously interface.

These are your four sensors. Um, so yeah. they. they're just getting that data.

Um, across the so they're doing. Are they doing the digitization here and then getting it over? Um, digitally? No, Well, it turns out these are our 4000 series cmos. These are 405 1 analog muxes and this is a 4093. So um, yeah, it's it's all analog on this side.

Uh-huh. Turns out this device down here is an Sa-614 This is an Uh Fm intermediate frequency uh modulator down here. So yeah, that's how they're That's how they're doing it. So they're just mux in, uh, the four channels.

um, by the looks of it. and they're just getting some optical isolation. and then you've just got an Ifr amplifier down here. and then this sampling is, uh, done on the uh, digital board.

I was just checking that there was nothing else inside that can got an insulating sheet. They've got a couple of uh, these insulating things on the on the side of the can there. but um, no, that's that's about all she wrote. So yeah, right off the bat, I'm not seeing this, um, supposed like heater, um interface thing.

and the Um channels the four channels there that are going down. sorry, it's a haven't got much light in there. Put some extra light in there. You can see that they've got, um, this uh, potting compound in here and all of these wires.

They're all. This is how they of course get the uh pressure interface going over to the Uh sensor itself and that's why they had to use the connector interface because they you would have used a pressure rated uh connector um as well for that particular interface on over on the sensor here. So yeah, that would go over to the other side of this uh connector here and this would be a proper pressure rated connector. So yeah, you'd you know you take all the issue out by having the uh, the interface there.

But there you go. they've got something down here. Got a little tiny board down there? I think. yeah, the ribbon.

yeah, tiny ribbon cable did go off to it. Um, I assume that's like a little temperature sensor maybe down there. Um, and it's just attached to the chassis like that. But um, yeah, there you go.

So but interestingly, look, what's in here or not in here is these threaded things. These go down to those what I thought was like the ultrasonic uh transducer to generate like the test signal, but these just don't seem to go anywhere. Um, there's no cables going to them. There's no nothing so there's nothing doing there at all.

Yeah, so I can only think that uh, this is like a option that um, is not installed in this model. Perhaps because obviously you know there's a there's a purpose for that And they do specifically say that this does have um, self-cleaning Yeah. and here's the detail on that it has. It says it has a patented, failsafe Sonic Cowl system.

Our fully diagnostic system runs an automated broadband self-test every 15 minutes, applying a true pressurized gas leak to confirm each sensor's detection capability, and removes any potential external contaminants such as sand oil or dust. And well, sure enough, I mean, you know to do it at each individual sensor, you need an individual, um, you know, transmitter transducer there to generate the acoustic. Um, the ultrasonic signal that's going to go into the sensor. So I yeah, but there's nothing hooked up to it.

It's it's just. there's no wiring at all, so it's just a cylinder. So yeah, an option not fitted, perhaps. And the good news? that display board down in there.

Aha. it's just got a ribbon cable interface. So yes, I could design a board that just connects to the other end of this ribbon. and um, I I can get that board out and then I can like reverse engineer that looks like it just has some, um, you know, serial display.

Uh, drivers. Um, just like the old 4000 series. Cmos or something would be my guess. And then uh, yeah, I can just drive that display.

That might be a nice little mini project. Um, leave it in the comments down below if I get enough thumbs up on this video and I'll leave a comment down below If you actually want me to do a little mini project actually designing a little counter interface for this thing, in fact, you wouldn't even need a micro controller. You could. Just if it's like a serial thing, you could just have a couple of, you know, 74 series cameras or something like that and uh, you know it's um, and then the infrared um thing to actually reset the thing.

And we've got of course no shortage of space inside this thing for like, you know, you could have a battery pack that lasted forever. You could have this digital display you know, work for like a decade or something and you could have a little remote control system that sort of like resets it and that'd be groovy. Yeah, if we get enough thumbs up down below for the comment and this video, I might do that project. And there is inside the uh, ultrasonic ceramic sensor.

That's all the details we've got. It's you know, some proprietary uh sensor thing. they've got like a green earthing wire going there. Uh, just to make sure that the uh metal work is earthed.

but uh yeah, it's just two pins. I don't know what. Don't know what that is in there so that might have a little bit of is that gunked up is that is there some like preamp circuitry under there or something like that. But anyway, anyway, that's just a real high pressure capability.

uh, ceramic ultrasonic sensor. and of course the uh, specialized pressurized um, pressure rated I guess? um, interface connector down there. So that's all she wrote. So there you have it.

I hope you found that as interesting as I did, because when I took this out of the mailbag, I had no idea what this thing was. Of course, spending a long time in the underwater, uh, marine industry, I'm used to like, uh, seeing like pressure vessels, uh, like this for like, you know, ocean bottom electronics, underwater high pressure, um stuff. But in this particular case it's not. Well, it's basically it is a high pressure, um, chamber it's designed to if you know if something goes wrong with any of this electronics and I don't know where that heater was um, so I don't know, obviously is not inside this thing, you know, and so it can take a significant amount of power and you know you get a spark from one of the connections or something like that and you've got a pressure leak Because you have to assume worst case scenario, you do actually have a pressure leak and at the same time this electronics has failed.

Um, then you don't want, uh, you know, the gas igniting or whatever and you're factoring your whole factory goes up. So these are why these are intrinsically safe and pressure right into the Ext standard. I won't pretend to know all the ins and outs of that, but uh yeah, it's an international um standard for you know, these sorts of uh uh, contained devices so that they don't ignite flammable atmosphere and it's like it just looks like you know, some mine or bomb or something like that. It's just, you know, demonetized.

Now you know. As I said, yeah, try and get one of these bad boys through airport security. Please leave it in the comments down below. If you actually have tried to take this on your carry-on good luck explaining it, especially with a countdown timer.

Anyway, if you liked it, give it a big thumbs up. As always, discuss down below in the comments or over on the Eevblog forum. Catch you next time.