Hi and welcome to Mailbag again! Yes, more mailbag because it just keeps piling up. So I'm going to have to get through it and we're going to implement a uh last in first out buffer a lifeo because this one just recently arrived so people can't complain that I don't open it pretty immediately. Here you go from Thomas Johanson in Denmark Hi to all my viewers in Denmark and check this out Lego set for Sun and and Dad Woohoo let's go thank you very much Thomas we're going to get some Lego Awesome and is that H it certainly sounds like Lego Woohoo! it is what I was hoping it would be. No I haven't got this myself but Taada it is.

Lego Back to the Future Well this is certainly a very generous package from Thomas I Wanted one of these babies. It is awesome! Thank you very much! We have a read me first card and we have a package to Sean from the EV blog fans. Thank you very much! We also have a cute little ice cube tray with little Lego men on it. Awesome! Brilliant! Thank you very much! Look at this.

it's even gift wrapped a and we have a beautiful selection of postcards from Cin. Haren Sorry for all those who don't give a toss about postcards I won't go into them but Beauty thank you very much. Nice selection. Haven't been to Copenhagen H Denmark Want to get there one day? Hello from Denmark Thank thanks for all your videos, blogs and information you shared with us all.

No worries! I Was into Hobby Electronics as a boy then got into other things but after you show me how much fun it can be has restarted by Hobby awesome and blogging about it I think there's been too many tear Downs over the years so I think now it's time to build up and being from the country of Lego of course this thing. these things are probably dime a dozen over there. they're not that cheap here in Australia actually this uh DeLorean Back to the Future kits like I don't know like 6070 or something over here. it's crazy anyway.

um unfortunately the Back to the Future Lego set age 10 plus I screw that s will definitely have a play with it but he has included another one which I can't film at the moment but I will take it home and I'll shoot some video Sean opening that so thank you very much Thomas and he is tombs from The Forum This is awesome thank you very much now. I was I was actually uh really super excited when they announced that they had picked this uh they had picked Back to the Future uh to turn into Lego They've got this uh contest where if you get enough signatures or whatever then you can get that sort of thing turned into Lego and of course well it's back to the future. So they got enough signatures and somebody did like a model of it or something like that of what it should look like and it looked really good. but unfortunately the finished product it doesn't look I was I Think a lot of people, including myself were a bit disappointed that the finished Lego Product didn't sort of look as good as the original model.

uh, sort of intended. But anyway, maybe the electronics Community can get together and we could have like an oscilloscope or a multimeter Lego set if we get enough signatures I Don't know what do you think, let me know in the comments or on the Forum but here it is and well, that's a lot of pieces. I Can see why they don't give them to little 2-year-olds you know, choke hazards Galore But oh jeez, there's lots of little Parts in there this could take. Oh there's the out of time number plate.

Awesome. look at that. Brilliant. But there's wow I Didn't expect there to be so many little itty bitty pieces.

There's Marty in his, uh, life preserver. Fantastic. That's actually going to take quite some time. I'm have to do like a time lapse of building this thing or something.

Oh is that the detailed instructions? Holy crap oh man, look at that. They've gone to town. They really have. Wow! So what I think I'll do is I'll shoot a time lapse of me actually assembling this thing and put it on my alternative Channel Because uh yeah, I'm not sure if I can get it done before I upload this video.

Next up, we have Josm FS if I'm pronouncing that that correctly from Deutchland Fantastic Hi to all my German viewers big uh contingent from Germany who ordered micro rulers by the way. Oh huge, Um, it's a wall clock. oh fantastic And a circuit board. Let's crack it open.

Okay, this one was a little bit annoying to get open or we got an aluminium bracket on the bottom of this thing. Woohoo! Unpack first. Oh, check it out. Ribbon cables, all sorts of stuff.

Go La! this looks this. W clock looks complicated. Unpack first, then read this. don't want to spoil the surprise.

All right, let's not spoil the surprise. and let's I think there's something in there. let's have a look at this thing. We got three separate boards and oh holy crap.

And of course by holy crap I mean this is the most awesome mail bag. Well since the last thing I opened which was the Lego Back to the Future I had no idea what are the odds of two Back to the Future stuff back to back that is incredible a the real time circuits I'm sorry I just got to wipe the wipe the drool off there. We certainly have to read the letter to find out about this beauty. Greetings your craziness well done! This is riding for several members of Shack Space Germany's second largest and most awesome hacker Space.

Fantastic! We couldn't help but notice your affection for all things back to the future. It just so happens we finished this beautiful project about a year ago. We thought it might go well with your out of time licensed plate. It certainly will.

Awesome, as you no doubt recognize is made to resemble the DeLorean time circuits although at a somewhat larger scale because we suck at guessing Dimensions the larger the better right? Absolutely. You know if it's not going into the actual car, eh, that's good. Here's the backstory. Last year, our friends at PCB Pool a German PCB and Manufacturing House wanted to spice up their electronic uh trade show presence with a genuine DeLorean and needed a clock like this for decoration.

Their in-house design resources were limited at time, so they teamed up with us. We designed the electronics are WR the firmware, they manufactured the boards and designed the front panel. Needless to say, a jolly good time was had by all and a clock was a great eye-catcher at the trade show. Awesome.

We didn't do it for free of course. What is it they say Gas, Grass and ass No One Rides For Free I'm sure there can be an Electronics version of that all the time. Since then we had this idea of getting you one of the clocks because we love you so much! thank you very much and we sure you like it. We convinced P be CH to chip in and they produced another run of Pcbs while we took care of part sourcing the assembly.

excuse the lack of a proper yellow acrylic pain. we didn't have any of that left. No worries, it is still awesome to complete the clock into a working thing. You will need a battery and Arduino or compatible and a 5V 1 aamp Supply with the usual Barrel plug.

Yep, got all those, put the battery in the holder, put the shield, connect it and and Away you go Woo! Bob's your uncle. The firmware and all design files are available on GitHub See below for the link upload, the firmware and then so there you go. They're from Stard in Germany if I get back there I Will definitely look you guys up. thank you very much Jockey Tim Headers not sure C St Phil going on your Phil um and Andy and the rest of our approximately 200 members.

That's a pretty decent size hacker space The Shack Space Check them out. There's actually, uh, quite a bit of warping in that because they haven't actually, uh installed the extra screws down there to hold the middle of the board like that. Yeah, that happens. Not much on it, of course.

Looks like they've just got a couple of, uh, serial, uh, shift registers on each board. uh, pretty much. and uh, that just drives the multiplexed, uh, uh, the multiplex display. It's got to be multiplexed of course cuz there's simply, you know, not enough uh, single outputs.

uh here from the driver chips to drive all those uh segments. so it obviously the Arduino has to keep, uh, refreshing. all three displays and there's a little hacker space symbol the shark Beauty and they, of course aren't real labels there. This is just uh, one large um, stick on transfer sheet which is stuck on the aluminium backing plate on there.

So beautiful. and no surprises for finding the Texas Instruments TLC 59282 on there. It's a 16 channel, uh, constant current serial shift register so you can, uh, basically, uh, set the constant current with a single external resistor which obviously they' got hooked up to a pot here so you can adjust the uh brightness of the display. The constant current 16 channels serial input? Bam.

Easy. Great chips these things. And without even looking at the schematic, they've got a Hc16 4 which clearly drives some external transistors here. And the good thing about using that constant current driver is, well, look, I mean that's pretty much it.

It's a two chip solution. There's no dropper resistor and a few transistors. There's no dropper resistors on here or anything like that because it drives that constant current chip. Uh, just you know, drives the constant current through there.

You don't have to rely on those lead, you know? calculating and specifying a lead dropper resistor Really easy. That's why these chips are fantastic. Uh, well, folks, that's embarrassing. Um, that brown Mark There in the middle of the chip is a pebcak I plugged in the ribbon cable back to front in this bloody header and yes, the Magic Smoke escaped hang on double face palm.

do Bloody back to front cuz there's no key in this. this is and there's no pin one marker. but I thought I had it correct and I didn't and pretty much instantly the Magic Smoke escaped from just that one. A sorry guys, what an absolute shocker.

Um, so I'm sure that this thing is uh, I'm not going to be able to get it. uh, working today. Maybe one of the other ones? I'm not sure but a unbelievable Murphy gets you every bloody time. And that folks is what happens when you don't label uh PIN numbers and you can Goof up.

Um, these header connectors real easy and well, you get idiot users like me plugging the stupid thing in backwards and destroying it. I'm going to have to order some more. Uh, constant current chips. Ah, unbelievable.

And even when I've got it plugged in correctly, it's still like it's completely shorted in inside. It's just like yeah, it's getting stinking hot even when I've got the power now connected correctly. Well at the very least I was able to power up that bottom board there, but uh, haven't configured anything yet. Not even sure if that Chip's damaged or that Chip's normal because I did uh plug in or well I when I plugged it in wrong I had actually all three boards plugged in.

so I don't know I could have blown all three chips. Not sure. there we go I did actually manage to get two boards powered up but uh, this green one. unfortunately if I turn up the brightness Max the chip gets absolutely red red hot.

so uh, I'm not sure what's going on there at all. Well, so much for getting this working today. I Feel like such an absolute Ah, thanks guys! I'll fix it, don't you worry about that? Well after not engaging my my brain and screwing the pooch on that one, probably the only coolest, only the coolest mailbag item I've ever received, let's move on to the next one. see if I can destroy that this is from Paul Young uh from light Dream here in uh Sydney In Summer Hill Beauty and I'm pretty sure I know what this is because he uh, clued me up on Emil And let's have a look and what we have here is a uh pick controlled uh lighting controller and he's included a demo board.

Apparently it's a uh Bluetooth motion sensory thing to obviously uh, control the little controller here which is the main uh product and he's a real oldfashioned light bulbs Look at that you young whipper snappers out there wouldn't know what those things are and uh yeah, clearly we can. um control here it is. T it's the light dream. It's just a simple AC uh sensor switch.

There got some sensor inputs down here and uh, basically it. uh, it controls AC 240 Vols AC in here and then you can control your load based on the various inputs. Very simple and of course we have to do a quick tear down of this thing. Um, pretty much exactly as you'd expect.

A couple of uh, triacs here. they btao Sixers controlling the outputs. there. you got your 240 Vols Mains input here fused.

We've got a filter cap there by the looks of it. We got ourselves some opto couplers and we've got ourselves a nice little Uh Zetler Transformer there to power the pick. on the other side, it's just a 16 series pick. We've got a dip switch to uh, set the stuff and very simple.

There's the in circuit serial uh programming port for that and our sensor inputs and a little bit of protection around that. Bob's your uncle, it's all there. Beauty hi Dave Even enclos is a controller we ship out to electricians and cabinet. Akers for door activated cabinet lighting.

pretty Niche It's fairly straightforward with four inputs for connection of read switches, two Mains power outputs, three dip switches for time delay, and one dip switch for single channel. Selection is fully compliant, designed with strong emphasis on clearance between HV and extremely low voltage as well. On board is a PM controller. Uh, it's fairly easy to hack using MP Lab and Pick Kit 3.

Of course it is. There's a wide variety of F is the code available by the way. Um, is there a wide? There is white available 5V sensors on the market which can connect directly to the device and it looks like he's modded. uh.

this particular unit for the sensor 3 is now an output. This mod involves shorting out a couple of resistors and removing things. Awesome! Got a circuit diagram included Beauty And first up we have a really simple ultrasonic oh demo. it's just turned on.

There we go, it looks like a yeah and if I wave my hand over it, There we go it switches on that just powers that little ultrasonic board there and sensors that input and controls load a ah too easy and then I had that set to uh infinity there. but I can change the dip switches to set it to any one of the times on there. this is 10 seconds. so if I go like that bang it'll stay on for 10 seconds and switch off and the next demo here we've got ourselves a little uh Bluetooth board here.

excellent which we can hook up to our uh phone well in this case my Android mobile phone and control the loads using the phone. Let's give it a try. So I've got my Nexus 4 Android phone here I've downloaded installed a Bluetooth applications called Bluetooth Controller by fine apps and uh, apparently all we've got to do is uh, no device to connect scan Tada have we found something I think we have there We go Light Dream 05 and all we've got to do is enter uh, he's giving me a PIN number 2172 Let's type that in and uh, give that a go, let's pair it and hopefully we are connected Connected to Light Dream 05 Beauty And what I've done is Set uh. Two keys here and defined the data.

The first one is an At symbol, the next one is a question mark I've labeled them on and off I'm not sure if that's actually correct, but let's give it a go see if we can control this on there. we go look at that. Oh look at that. Beautiful.

Actually, it's not Onof, it's Channel One, Channel Two. So there we go. Ah, Fantastic! Woohoo! So that's a really neat demo. thank you very much Paul Worked seamlessly.

That's a Light Dream. If you got a need for, uh, something like this, Well, it works quite well. I'm not sure that he actually whether or not he actually supplies this. This is just a demo, but uh, you know this is what you can sort of do.

So Woohoo! I Like it. Light bulb. Good oldfashioned light bulb pissing away the energy. That's what we want to see and you'll notice.

this involved 2400 watts of mains and I didn't blow anything up I'm not a complete idiot and there's the schematic for those playing along long at home. Old school Pick 16 f54 cuz that's all you need. It's not doing much at all. and uh, there's our Mains input.

There's our Transformer uh standard linear regulator 5 Vols and we got 5V power to power our Uh sensors over here. Beauty and I Know a lot of people don't like postcards, but I'm going to show it because it involves beer and a lot of people apparently like beer I'm not one of them. so I have no idea how good or how bad Belgian beers are, but they look very impressive and this one is from I Want to thank you for all your great videos. Thanks! Keep on going! thank you very much! J J I Can't read that but thank you very much for the postcard and we have one from AV Bots with a zed from Pleasanton California Sounds very pleasant and uh I'm not sure if it's a postcard I can see photos or something.

Thanks for your support! Oh, let's have a look. What is it? Hey, look at these happy dudes. look at that and it's from AV Bots the Amador Valley High School Autonomous Submarine Team Barracuda o Mark 7 2013 Fantastic Underwater autonomous submarines. Terrific! I come from a marine background as well.

I've worked on uh submarine stuff not remote control real big ass submarines I'm Kevin from Amador Valley High School Robotics team We compete in Robo Sub an autonomous submarine competition. Oh that'd be tons of fun. We're big fans of your video. They help us learn about electrical engineering Concepts and practical design schools.

This year we played six out of 30 college teams. Wow, what a big competition! Awesome work though! comes 6 out of 30. Just wanted to say thanks for your videos, thank you very much Kevin And there they are there is the Autonomous Submarine Robotics team. Woohoo! Good day guys! Thank you very much And that looks like the controller board for their submarine which doesn't look like your traditional submarine but you can see the see the propeller down there.

and uh, it's like an unusual shazzy but they've got it all. Looks like it all. sort of. you know, sealed in this.

um I assume it's acrylic. uh you know, type tube there very unusual type design as I assume like these things have cameras in them and stuff because it'd be no fun if your submarine just went under the water and well, you couldn't get sort of. You know that first? Uh, that firsthand. uh, perspective view from the camera and I'm sure they've done that and that does look like a camera module in the front there.

And of course that's why you use a clear tube. Neat. I Um, mate is there another one on the other side there? can't see it or is it just on the one side. Next up is Andrew pong from Huntington in uh PA Is that Pasadena in us could be getting it wrong? I'm going to get my States wrong eventually and I'm going to get crucified for it I am sure No.

I don't bother to look them up here. we go. What have we got? I Won't people don't like me reading the uh oh? It set it on the front. Hey prepaid phone? It's an LG phone.

We can take this apart. I've enclosed a touchscreen cell phone that I purchased on sale here in the stat carrier prepaid called Trace Phone probably the most popular one here. they use At& TMobile GSM Networks. The kicker here is that this phone, although it was on sale, only cost $5 shipped.

Unbelievable! It's Free! Yes, a touchscreen GSM cell phone with 3G and web browser for only $5 Imagine how cheap these things are gone. I Notice that you have not torn down any modern cell phones. uh, modem, modern cell phon. so I'd Love If you could do so, it would be interested to see what technology goes into a $5 phone.

I Mean surely they're selling this thing at a loss. You cannot make money on $5 they're clearing them out. but anyway it's and it's even got a camera look at that. Um no.

There's no way they can like they can't do it for five bucks. it's you know, it's just not possible. but um I wonder what their manufacturing cost on this thing actually is because there is a uh tear down on the net? Was it uh, bunny? hang? who? uh did it I think he tore down like A10 or $15 uh phone or something like that. So this one at five bucks like you know, it's I don't think it's a real $5 phone.

I don't think they're they're actually making money on that. but I think I'll make that a very quick separate tear down video. A Service of Track Phone Wireless Inc LG Phone and ah man. Unbelievable.

insert SIM Emergency. Give me emergency. No emergency call, No cancel. How do you cancel? No call ended.

No, that's not good. Dial pad is that I can't even get to the main screen I Mean jeez, is that all it does? Literally. is that all it does? You know he said it has a web browser. So there you go.

Um I don't know how to get to that. Mystery solved folks. They check out the Uh Track Phone website and this is the LG Woo Boot Up sound. This is the Lg800 which actually normally sells for 50 bucks.

Um, the five. The $5 sale version is actually a reconditioned one. So presumably this is one of those reconditioned models. but this is an LG uh 800 phone.

So yeah, it is not the cheapest St phone. They've got some on there for 15 bucks. This is a $50 one because it has Blueto tooth and web browsing. Woohoo! Next up we have I think Joseph nedved Anyway, he's from Redmond Washington so let's crack this thing open.

No, it's uh, not something from Digi key I'm sure he just he's been buying stuff at Digi Key. Oh, and we have a postcard for those Seattle I've been to Seattle I've been to the Space Needle I've been up the top uh to the restaurant I have had dinner in the Space Needle I had the famous um uh dessert which is uh, what's the name of it but it's um, no I forget. Anyway, it was awesome, but look at that. M that's an awesome photo capturing that lightning there above the Space Needle Brilliant! Ah love Seattle Anyway, that's the famous uh Digi key uh packaging of course.

So he's even reused the digi key package in and uh no, there's nothing else. oh I didn't read it on the back. Oh look, we have a circuit diagram. Woohoo! Another Pck a P 16 F 1934.

It looks like we have, um, an LCD display hooked up a highs side Uh current sense. um the ZX ZX C19 I've used that before. looks like we have a what 100 milliohm shunt there and oh it's a USB power thing right? USB in USB out. don't even have to open it up USB in USB out and uh touch, it looks like it's got a touch sensor to ah, this is neat.

Switch between uh, voltage, current and power and Minmax instant I should read it hi Dave Here is a Syle device I built in order to M the USB power consumption. You can find out more details at Jeded.com USB Amps Hope you find it useful. Jsip Yes! I Got that right? Yes, it is hand soldered with unregulated solder n o Okay, let's check it out. Beauty Um, these these things are handy.

Um for you know cuz people are developing a lot of USB apps these days and uh, it is very handy. Oh I Love that I Love how the uh you see one of the segments in there. If we generate enough static, we can get the segments to uh, light up on these LCDs but that looks actually quite neat. Check that out.

That's a really neat little uh module purple PCB there. What is that? a little? What is that? a hippo or something? I don't know on there. Very neat. and yeah, hand solded.

Yes, we can definitely see that hasn't been cleaned, but uh yeah, we won't take you to task for that one. You gave us a clue on that one, but that is a really neat little module. I'm not sure what this uh one here does. It looks like it's just a a feed through or something.

Oh D It's obvious what this board does. These are actually little uh, test posts that you can measure the voltage and the current if you've got a multimeter. But uh yeah, presumably that's just another way to do that. But this thing will do it for you.

And aha, you'll notice the trays going off to the exposed little animal. Whatever the animal is supposed to be there. These are the two touchpads. They're the two touchpads.

So let's hook this thing up and see if we can get it to work. Beauty I Like it. So let's take for example, the mobile phone that we just have I got a USB uh charger here hooked into a Main's extension lead and there we go. Just powered It On by default it? uh well, no.

looks like that's showing the current. can we touch those? Yeah, there we go. Look at that Beautiful. that's power current and hello voltage? There we go.

5.18 volts beautiful. And if we have a look, the other Touch button should control the min max and instant powers. And if we go through that, yeah, there we go. Yeah, so I think that's the instant one at the moment.

5.18 Here we go. It should. If that's in instant mode, it should just drop. Now Yeah, it certainly does.

because it's drawing Uh current and we can see our phone, we can see the charging current of our phone. Let's have a look uh Power 2 Watts There we go. It's drawing 2.1 watts and with 400 milliamps charge current now I'm not sure why the resolution would be like that in 10 milliamp increments. I'm not sure why you wouldn't show 400 there.

I Mean you know you're not going to go over an amp anyway. So having 999 full scale uh would be more sensible So, but still? Um, you know it's handy just to get a, uh, a rough ballpark of how much current's being drawn there and how accurate is it? Well, let's have a look here. 5.14 Yeah, good enough. One least significant ific digit? Not a problem.

and if we just verify the accuracy of this thing for the current, here we go: 41. Yeah, there we go. Basically yeah, bang on. Not a problem whatsoever.

I Just plugged in the other module here to I see that it's the same and I just realized they're actually, um, different. They're actually back to front one. you know this one is, of course, upside down to what we had before and you can see that the little touch buttons upside down as well. I'm not sure why he's got two different boards like that.

Anyway, this one says uh, 5.10 and the other one here said 5.13 So not exactly the most accurate, uh, and repeatable things on the market, but very, very handy. Oh oh, what's going on there? We got an extra decimal place. Why do we have an extra decimal place there? I Think we have a dead decimal point? What happened? Oh, there we go. Looks like we maybe it was unconnected.

Ah, it was just some static charge. There we go look. I was able to turn that on so obviously that one hasn't been terminated and I'm able to generate that charge there and make it go away. I Love that! So they are incredibly handy little devices and I was actually going to get one of these cuz I don't have anything really.

just self-contained and handy like that to measure. USB Current I've got like a similar sort of USB breakout board to this where I can you know break in and measure stuff but just having something Standalone like that really is quite neat. So if you want one, check out Jeded.com USB Amps. Thank you very much! Joseph A Look s you want to open a present? Yes yes, look.

it says two s Again from EV blog fans Wow, What is it? Do you think you want to open you open? Open it up. Open it up. a What is it Is it? Lego Yes yes Yay wow look wow Duplo Lego You've already got some Duplo don't you? So this will go with your other Dupo Oh got a little truck. Pretty awesome Daddy you open that for you.

Is that a thumbs up? Yeah, Can you give me two thumbs up? Is that two thumbs up? Two thumbs up. Is that two thumbs up? Yes, Yes. Is it one thumbs up? Or two thumbs up? One thumb, Two thumb. Is it Jewel Thumbs.

All right.