Hi welcome to the ever popular mailbag segment and yes, it just keeps growing. Check it out folks! Oh goodness. I'll try and get through some as quickly as possible. And first up, we have a postcard and it's a.

well, it's laminated. it's not, uh, your traditional postcard. Going into a bit of trouble there? Excellent. Looks like we're on top of the hill.

We've got some sort of religious Monument here and uh, we've got some sort of um uh radar Dome or radio telescope type thing with the um transparent Dome I presume it's uh, a one of those you know RF transparent domes and not one of the optical ones with just a split in the side. it could be I don't know, but obviously on top of the hill trying to get above all the weather there and it is from Tada David Martins and Molina Rod Rigz. thank you very much Hi Dave We are big fans. By we I mean myself, an electrical engineering student and my girlfriend whom I obliged to watch all your videos.

Well done. We now have uh, we know how much you like postcards. Tried to find this little spot on the map Coila is the nearest town to the highest place on the Portuguese continent. There you go Portugal and where and it's where we study University of Bea interior if I'm pronouncing that correctly I Never am.

Thank you for the videos. Please keep it up. thank you very much. Please visit my blog.

It would be a great honor despite being in Portuguese and not having much time to develop it. Thank you very much! David I will actually check that out and Tada here it is. let's have a look. Nice little logo there I like it beautiful and there's David there he is Tada smile here on the blog he is smiling, great work and uh yes it is in Portuguese but uh oh he's got some videos there you go.

he's got a YouTube video he's got uh looks like he's working on I don't know what that is Oh looks like a um Rs232 type little dongle thing USB type dongle. um uh HD SDR stuff neat W way we've got some calculations there. Neat. We' got some Zena diet stuff and we've got ourselves a little regulator there and what else have we got? All sorts of stuff well done.

Oh look Little Robot Awesome! Check out David's blog, thank you very much Dave Oh there we go. He's there's the postcard he sent me. Oh beautiful, well done famous Famoso I guess you're famous, you're on the blog thanks Dave Next up we have a lovely postcard from Geneva in Switzerland and beautiful Fountain there I like it look wonder how much energy it takes to and flow rate it takes to actually shoot that up. What is that? a couple hundred feet in the air or something like that? So if you know H let us know in the comments and it is from Sasha thank you very much Sasha hi Dave greetings from Switzerland all the EES and hackers there I Really enjoy your show and I hope to send you some cool stuff soon.

Awesome! I Also saw that you have are a big Jing fan so I was wondering why don't you do something cool with electronics and GE CES I haven't CED in quite some time. but I did, um, some electronic uh Waypoint decoders way back in the early, uh, 2000s. So that yeah, more than 10 years ago now. Um yeah I did like a voice um recorder one I did a binary Waypoint decoder and I did a fake bomb as well that had a countdown timer and everything like that.

Details are on or some details are on my gation page so I'll have to link that in thank you very much Sasha and it cost a whooping 8 there and what is that? I don't know. is that some sort of U Portuguese food or something like that? No idea and the next one comes comes from Amir the great awesome name I should just call myself Dave the great from St Catherine in Ontario in Canada Hi to all my Canadian viewers I Love Canada Great place and he's um, addressed it to Sir David Jones Last thing I checked I haven't been knighted by the queen and we have a snake serpent. What the if anyone knows what on Earth that is please let me know so we'll just whip this one open here and see what's inside. Obviously some sort of letter or something like that.

I Can't feel anything. It's not like a board inside. So we have a letter from Amir The Great Hi Dave I Recently enrolled in Electronics Engineering. Awesome.

We've got another one, folks. we've got one. And I consider your blog as a treasure chest. I'm not great with drawing, so excuse the heart.

Oh and I got five Australian bucks. Awesome! I'm not great with drawing, so excuse the horrid picture Amir The grain $5 that is great that is awesomely better than I would uh be capable of drawing. Let me tell you, Air the great that is a great drawing I Love it. There's five Australian bucks.

might go out and get myself a muffin M muffin time. Next up is from Henry Ranin from Finland Helsinki in Finland And and woohoo! look, we have some sort of thing. It feels like a PCB and uh, the customs declaration says two printed circuit boards for do-it-yourself projects. So oh, check out the stamp.

What do we got? there? Some sort of I don't know. some ancient drawings or something from Finland Beautiful. that's kind of like that's a shaped. Is it like does it come a shaped stamp like that? Weird.

I don't know. I like it though. Let's open it up and check out the Pcbs. Hate the dust that comes off these things.

All the paper dust just whips straight off. Let's see what Henry has sent. hi Dave Thank you for inspiring us students all over the world. Good job keep us motivated.

Thumbs up, no worries. Wanted to do something cool from RGB Leads Turned out to be my thesis and here is the final project: The Live Light Project EV Blog: PCB Design Videos really helped me on the way and gave some kickass ideas about the design process and the idea to publish my work as open source. Excellent! All the materials and software needed to build this ambient lighting system are freely available on my website Liv Light Pro.com Beautiful domain name there I've enclosed two circuit boards. first ever factory made circuit boards.

Keep it up! Thank you very much Henry Awesome! So let's have a look at Henry's boards and here we go. It's got a USB interface on the thing. Notice how he's done, left the solder mask off some of the tracks like that and uh, he's done that quite a few deliberately on all of these just for funky effect. Perhaps there's no, uh, actual reason to do that really.

So let's look at the bottom side. We're all gunked up again, so let's look at the other one and there we go. Live Light I Assume it uses uh, some sort of at Mill or Pi or other microcontroller and there you go. Solder Mas left off the main Power Trace going around there, but this is, um, really neatly laid out I Like it if we have a close up there at the solder.

MK You can see that there's no solder mask between pins. so if you're uh, doing this sort of thing, it pays if your manufacturing tolerances allow it to try and keep. solder mask. Uh, set your solder mask expansion value so you do get the solder M between those pads.

probably I'd say those pads are slightly on the wide side and uh, that hasn't allowed the solder mask and the solder mask expansion is probably I don't know 3 thou or something like that. So that's why no solder mask between pins. But if you can, pays to do it. but you'll notice over on this quad flat pack here for the main processor.

it's done it, no problems whatsoever. Let's check out Henry's Live Light Project Livelight Project.com it. uh, free Dynamic Backlighting solution. People around the world have been building their own versions of the Philip Ambi Light system.

Ah right. Yes! I Know someone who's got one of those. Phillips uh TVs and they light up behind the like, light up your wall behind the TV in response to uh, audio and uh, stuff like that. So Dynamic Backlighting reduces ice Trin visibility, velocity, backlights, blah blah blah.

Easy to build, open source. Beautiful. Where's the schematic? Let's go into the design up here. see what we got? Well, I'll tell you what.

This is a very impressively designed website. Henry You g into a lot of trouble here. It uses an 18 Mega 32. There you go.

and uh, there's it mounted in a box with all these USBS coming out I Assume that the lead strips actually plug into the Uh USB connectors around the edge of the board. there. How it works. There we go.

We've got, uh, right? Windows there's a player. There's a bob light. Get pixel, whatever that is. There's an Ft232.

Of course, there's an At Mega 32. There's some mosfets to drive the leads in a bobble light. HD No idea what that is. There you go.

There's the Ftdi converter, the firmware. it's all there beautiful. And there's not a huge amount to the schematic. Of course, there's a power supply, there's a micro, there's an Ft 232, and uh, that has a USB interface.

and then, yes, it does use uh Mini USBS around here to connect to all the LED strips and just the mosfet drivers. and well, you know that's all you, uh, need. Really, all the intelligence is in the software, so thank you very much. Henry That is a most impressive um, website and uh, project.

So if you're into that sort of stuff or your flashy leads and controllers, do check it out Livelight Pro.com Next up, we have something from Axel Rra if I'm pronouncing that correctly. from Berlin Hi to W Mate German Viewers The two Amazing! Dave Jones Jeez been uh sir I've been amazing It's uh, hardly warranted I'm just a crazy bloku shoots video now this one um I do believe is some sort of calendar because I can feel the uh spiral bind up there with the little hanger in there. So oh let's look at this Dave as I can't contribute any really interesting electronic stuff and as you always point out that you like postcards, here is what I can send you because my photographs are ERS made you better than my elect ICS even though it's a little bit late January will be gone when this reaches you. find in Clos the calendar that shows some of the highlights of my last World trip did you make it to Australia I guess he's going to tell us I also spent some days in Sydney there we go but as I caught some really nice bacteria in Singapore oh I spent most of the time my hotel in Chinatown after the great and very uh British Dr Michael richond from Leeds UK at that place here in George Street there you go Singapore usually get great food in Singapore surpris you uh got some poison in there flooded me with lots of antibiotics so I just have been able to go one day.

Guided tour City Tour including Northern beaches and a harbor cruise. Great place to be! Ah shame you only got a day sending you this to thank you for your wonderful blog. I'm almost 50 now studied computer science and always failed on all stuff having to do with electrons doing their job. I Always have been a suitable coder and software development leader, but I never understood the damn electronic stuff.

What a bummer! Bumping into your blog Uh, roughly one year ago changed dramatically as soon as I set up my first circuit on breadboard which is nothing more than inverter I needed in conjunction with an Arduino Awesome. You got to start somewhere. We all start somewhere. but it was a start and I eventually understood what I was doing and what it was all about.

I literally inhaled your blog. it's dangerous should put a health warning on it which once again showed me that. understand things Prim is depending on the presentation and your presentation, Walking through things, tearing down things, ranting at things, being enthusiastic about things as at least to be called outstanding Thank you very much. That's why you deserve a lot of thanks here.

Here is mine showing some nice spots of the world including: Singapore not Sydney mainly New Zealand A container ship trip from New Zealand through the Panama Canal ah love to do that. Some views of the new Uh England states, particularly in Sandy and New York City Thank you very much. Awesome! Let's take a look at the calendar. I Assume that that says this is a photo calendar or something like that.

There you go, let's have a look there he is Tada smile you're on on the blog. Beautiful great shot I Love it and 2012 calendar. Great tree I Love that I assume that's in New Zealand somewhere and Januar 2013 I Guess that's how you uh uh spell January in German There you go Beautiful Febru 2013 Nice shots. Oh beautiful color in that Misty waterfall there great shot.

oh that reminds me of Canyon in you should have gone up the mountains the Blue Mountains here in Sydney Oh you would have had a field day with your camera. Let me assure you May there you go. Oh beautiful Yeah that's New Zealand for you Juny July Hi to all my New Zealand viewers August Beautiful September 2013 Spelled exactly the same. Um, a couple of months are spelled the same but there you go.

we have some Dolphins there originally at first glance I thought that was a whale tail. but no there's the uh. there's the fin and there's the tail of the dolphin going in the water. Beautiful shot October with a K oh we have like a flying fish thing November and we have a city skyline for December December Thank you very much.

That is an awesome calendar. Your photos are brilliant! Hope you get back to Australia and we have a rather beat up Uh package here from the Old Dart as you can tell by the Queeny there 2p and uh it is from Dan Dan Craigs from Swans in the UK I I think I Drove through Swansey once I'm not not 100% sure, but we got Electronics the generic term put on all Customs forms. so let's comes from Royal m her majesties don't mess with her majesty. Royal Male So let's check out what we've got here.

Oh, we have a timer. We have one of it's got one of these weird ass UK plugs on it. no good. Have to tear it down, see what? Maybe that's his intention.

So I've seen a ton of these timer switches in use lately. used for anything from a tiny table lamp to an electric heater. I Just replaced two of mine with digital ones and wanted to take one apart to have a look inside. but then I thought let the crazy Aussie bloke do it instead.

Other than the pure curiosity as to what's inside, probably not much. I'm wondering how good they are. From a safety standpoint, these things can take up to 3 kilow according to the label though. never push on that hard I Know people who have and leave them pretty much unattended.

I'm also wondering how much of these things pull into to actually operate. We're probably talking less than a what, but the label doesn't say if you can find anywhere online. that gives you a definitive answer I Enjoy watching the show over here in Wales Thank you very much Dan no I've never been to whale, so I obviously haven't been too swansey I was mistaken. Thanks Dan Well let's take this sucker apart.

uses one of these annoying uh, tri-wing uh screws. but thankfully I've uh, got a little kit here that uh, gives me the triwing bit so let's rip it open. Yeah, it's just a mechanical. Um, these things will just be a mechanical uh, contact the Ti the uh, uh, the motor.

It'll have a little uh motor inside to drive the Um to drive the timer from the mains I'm assuming and then just a mechanical um, contact switch to uh, yep, there we go. Look at that. Tada we're in. Well, that's really quite neat.

They've got like a little, uh, spring-loaded safety shutter there. so when you push the uh, the Earth pin is longer than these other pin. so when you push that in, oh, when you push that in like that, it then opens this and lets the other ones oh, go through. that's that's rather neat.

They got into a bit of trouble. oh my spring just bugged off somewhere. don't know where that went and well, there you have it. Yeah, as predicted, there's not much in there at all.

but I Didn't expect like a uh, a proper uh, micro switch like that. but uh, you know, a big rugged micros switch but that makes sense I guess I sort of expected a bit. uh, worse than that I Expected. Like it just to use, you know, some bare contacts or something like that.

but they've gone to the effort. It looks like a properly uh rated micro switch which we'll have a look at. but uh, there's the mechanism just driven. um from? well, the timing mechanism just driven directly from the Uh Mains there.

Of course there's a little coil and it just drives that. They got a gear reduction mechanism. they got a cog coming out the top like that and that Cog just goes through into the top timer thing like that. so that sits on top and that's why it turns around and then you've got the little tabs on the outside that you are these the push up or push down type.

Yeah, there you go. They're a bit hard, but these are just the push down ones. So they push down into there of course and there's a little lever there which sticks up through the top like that. so when those are in the down position, that tells it to that.

Just pushes that micro switch like that off and on. Very simplistic. And of course there's the override switch there which just overrides that Great. I Love it that's actually well engineered.

Um, this is not like a you know it's not like a slap together thing. There's you know bit of thoughts going into this. and there's a micro switch. It's a Fooda brand Fm2 never heard of Fooda but it's uh rated for there you go.

16 amps, 250 volts so yes, it's going to handle should handle the power. No problems at all. and uh, looks like they've uh, welded the uh, those uh leads down there directly onto the um, like you know, ultrasonically W welded them or something directly onto those tabs. So I do declare that to actually be uh, relatively welld designed and uh, well constructed and safe.

No problems whatsoever. although I'm sure there are some real uh, cheapies out there. but I don't know. You know, like you can't get more basic than this And here we go: I've powered it up and you can see the little uh flywheel inside there spinning around.

but uh, the other cogs could take a while and if you're wondering how much uh current that coil is, uh, taking there, we go. I've got it across the 43k resistor in there. Don't touch it. No, my finger is a lot further away than probably what it looks with the angle on this camera.

trust me. I'm safe. uh 20 18 Vols RMS across a 43k resistor that's about 5 milliamps or so. So that suckers you know, only going to take maybe you know, a watt give or take.

so thank you very much. Dan that was most interesting little impromptu tear down. Next up we have something from Manuel D Silva from Belgium Hi to all my Belgium viewers and uh, nothing exciting on the front here. we've got electronic parts worth5 Dave Jones AKA that crazy Aussie bloke be box 7949 Borham Hills New South Wales 2153 Australia you know not where I get a few complaints about that people saying they keep saying it well because it's funny Australia not Austria Okay, let's have a look what uh Manel has sent.

Oh we have a postcard from Brussels Brilliant and a couple of items. Let's check them out. Oh hey, they look like heart PAC they look like pacemakers. um just off the top of my head there, let's have a look hi Dave Just a small envelope containing the Pacemakers I mentioned in 407 comments.

Hope they're worth a look from what I can see they're welded shots so they may need a bit of work to crack them open. Yeah, um I Don't think that's going to happen in this video. It have to be another tear down. They've been clean thoroughly in the hospital I got them from and gave them wash of both alcohol and bleach so they're completely safe to handle.

Brilliant! Thank you very much! Manu from Brussels look out at that postcard. Beautiful! Skyline in Brussels the European Union I guess they're quite proud of that. Excellent there you go. Never been to Brussels Looks lovely and here we have three pacemakers.

two identical models. they're a um a it 3 I think it is and a prime Advance model. um all from medtronics of course I think they're They're like the world leaders. They're a huge company so there you go.

Could be very interesting to tear down, but I think uh Mike has already done a tear down of a pacemaker so I have to check to see if it's the same one. No I checked and he's torn down a different model. So um, these will be, uh, rather interesting to tear down when I get time for tear down Tuesday they require quite a bit of work cuz they are welded hermetically, uh, welded, shut, hermetically sealed so make for an interesting tear down. So hopefully I'll get around to that sooner rather than then later.

Thank you very much! Manu Now I got a bit excited when I saw this one. opened the P box and there's this fluke box a fluke 175 but I'm sure it's not just based on the uh, uh, weight of that and uh, the looseness. I don't think it's actually a fluke 175 Multimer? bummer, but it's um, from Sweden it doesn't say who it's actually from. but uh yeah.

Well, let's crack it open and see what's inside this sucker. So maybe there's a note inside? No idea. Complete mystery package this one. folks.

that's uh, that's really rather annoying. Here we go: Oh, we got the Ah foam pellets everywhere. It's a mess. It's a mess.

Oh no, it looks like it's the original uh box though. let's have a look like the original foam. Carton And it's a video camera. It's a JBC video camera.

Check it out. Oh oh oh, that folks has had a really sad life. Oh my goodness, what happened to that Kica Manala HD Lens is cactus. so I assume whoever sent this to me I Don't think there's a yes, there might be a not.

Hang on. Oh, there's a CD They sent the CD and everything. but there is no yes there is. There's a note.

hi Dave The gravity destroyed the front cover lens. Yeah, gravity is a camera. Works Otherwise, fine by removing the scattered lens, there will be no scratch in the picture. Well this gave me the greatest opportunity to buy a camera with a wider, uh, wide angle view.

AB Absolutely. My camera's got um 30 mm wide angle but my little compact um camera's got 24 mm. Great for doing my uh walk time Rants and stuff like that. You can never have too much wide angle.

Trust me, do your best with the camera and thank you for a great YouTube video. Thank you Sin silly Mr Zed mysterious thank you very much Mr Zed Well clearly this is uh going to require a tear down Tuesday and a video in its own right. so we will do that uh eventually. Oh oh there you go.

Oh it's on beautiful and yeah it does. It does seem to work just fine apart from the busted lens. I Mean you know this is not a stateof the art camera by any stretch of the imagination. You can usually, um, tell you know any camera that's got like greater than a 10 times optical zoom or a five times like mine's got 10 times my Canon HF G 10 anything with more than 10 times you know it's just designed for the gimmicky uh consumer Market this one's only got times 20 so it's not too bad.

but you get those ones with time. 30 time 40 Optical lenses and you know the sensor in it's just absolutely tiny and uh, it's you know, and they're pretty much just toys. but uh, this one probably worked okay. It is absolutely tiny though if you compare it in size to my Canon HFM 400 which is my uh backup like my second camera that I use occasionally for uh, second shots.

it's got the same HDC Moss Pro sensor as my big Canon Hfg10 that I'm using now. but yeah, look at the size difference in those just you know this thing. you almost whack it in your pocket. Amazing! Check out that pure evil pain in the ass bastard.

Custom Power connector ticks me off. Anyone who freaking designed this into a product should be hung, drawn, and quarted Bastards!.