Hi welcome to Mailbag Monday Yes, I'm in front of the camera this time I thought I'd do something a little bit different, give you a very quick uh update for those who don't follow along on the Forum and uh, follow me on Twitter either. where I often talk about this sort of stuff I was looking at potentially uh, moving out of my current lab space and getting another lab, but that sort of didn't happen. But what? I'm getting here now is a lab upgrade uh in my current lab SL office here into terms of: Internet So instead of my crappy ADSL 2 plus uh internet which is like 900k bits per second upload speed or something? I will this week. Uh, hopefully that's the plan.

Get an 88 symmetrical connection. so that's 8 megabits download 8 megabits upload. So I'm losing a bit of download speed. but I'm gaining that valuable upload speed which I need to upload my YouTube videos uh, efficiently and also it will.

the faster speed will allow me to do some more live stream and uh, you know Real Time video stuff so that should be fantastic. I'll link in down below a forum a section on the Forum where you can talk about that and I'm asking for ideas about what uh, people want to see what I can do with the new extra bandwidth. and I'm going to reorganize the lab here, going to put a little uh mechanical Workshop maybe and some more shelving and stuff like that to make better use of the space I've got here Anyway, that's just a very quick update. Oh I will be going in.

Uh, assuming that internet new internet connection works out. I will be going to a 20/20 Meg connection. so I'll eventually have 20 meg upload here. uh, fiber coming into the building and then 20 meg ethernet coming into the lab here.

Oh fantastic! Can't wait! So I'll be no longer editing my uh videos at home. The plan is to remove all my editing uh, video editing gear here and be more efficient in the lab here the lab SL office and do my editing and upload here. cuz this is where I have the fast internet connection I've done it at home before because that's where I've had my fastest internet connection. The lab here has always been quite slow, so that's fantastic.

So let's get on with the mailbag. First of all, it's a whole bunch of stuff. It's only been like 2 weeks and in it comes again. Unbelievable.

Anyway I missed a couple of uh postcards last times and this one here comes from Marcus and he's in Austria in and this is a photo in Salsburg a Stairway up to a so it was taken for those who want to know technically. oh I'm Foo hello love it Foo Um, it was taken by a Zenith Horizon 35mm Panorama camera thank you very much Marcus Awesome! Next up we have one from Wayne Good on you Wayne good Aussie name Wayne My uh, brother-in-law and father-in-law all are both named Wayne There you go. Um, he did a graduation trip around Taiwan So there you go. um nice sunny day thank you very much and this one's from David Good Day Dave and he is um in the room next to Wayne go figure.

they obviously go to the same uh University they're an information and computer uh engineering ice student. they focus on human activities recording with embedded systems. excellent and uh, this one is uh tooco National Park in Eastern Taiwan Awesome! Thanks guys! And next up we have one from Trey Good Day Trey um he's studying E in Louisiana Tech University Awesome! There you go, some local Louisiana Trees beautiful in a park somewhere. There you go.

That's all for the postcards. Thank you very much guys! Let's get onto the mail bags. quite a few of them. First up, we have one from Ocean Controls here in Australia and you've seen Ocean Controls on the blog before.

They do, uh, various types of little uh, embedded systems and other stuff. and I think I know what this is and it's going to be fun I Like it. This will be state, state-ofthe-art folks and it's from Greg Radian I won't uh, spoil it for you on the top there? so let's just open it up. He sent a couple of things and but one of them is a real cracker.

I Love the design of this. Everyone's going to want one of these. Look at this. let's open it up and crack it open.

What it is is a Arduino Shield You put it together like this somehow and these go in there like that it forms a spindle and you put some tape in there and it's a tape dispenser. Awesome! The best and most useful. Arduino Shield Ever. Check it out.

Now tell me. how is that not the most useful? Arduino Shield of all time. Fantastic. Oh, unbelievable.

Everyone needs to get one of these. A few little design issues with it. Oh, there's no snap off here for the tape. and yes, it is.

Uh, once it's all soldered in place, you can't get the tape out so it's like a single use Rooll. eh? Maybe that you know he'll get that right in the Mark 2 version, but everyone has to get one of these suckers. It makes your Arduino so incredibly useful. It's fantastic, and of course it only works with a genuine Arduino board because of the the signal level compatibility on there.

But fantastic. If you want one, go to Ocean Controls um website link down below. Awesome! Everyone needs one of these and you know what? I really like a letter that's got line numbers on it. Fantastic thumbs up.

And uh Greg's also include this little uh thermometer uh Shield as well and basically uses the Max uh 31, uh 85 And as he um says I've done other videos on this, it uses a linear approximation for the thermocouple voltage and also the cold Junction it's got does have cold Junction compensation on and I'll link in my uh uh temperature uh tutorial video thermocouple tutorial video down below. If you haven't seen how these things work anyway, it's inside the chip instead of right at the Uh Junction itself. but it's only a a CM or two away and that's generally okay. It certainly is.

Um is not as accurate. Has a Precision circuit with a n lookup, but for low cost per channel, it's good enough. So excellent, thank you very much. Greg That looks very nice indeed.

Got a little prototyping area there as well. Um, if somebody wants this I think I will give this one away. So uh, first person to leave their uh details in the YouTube uh comments or well, anyway, yeah, let's make it the YouTube comments. First person to leave a comment in there gets it.

And of course that is for a standard K type Thermo which you can get for a dime a dozen on eBay So that one looks, uh, very useful. eight channel Thermo Couple Fantastic. You could, uh, do some neat uh temperature logging with that. Oh, and the specs for those playing along at home: 14bit resolution .25 that translates to 0.25 de C over a couple hundred degree range.

Very nice. Uh nominal plusus 2% accuracy. That's all you're going to get on the cheap Thermo Couples anyway, so that's terrific. And he does say there's a duct tape version coming soon that incredibly useful.

You think the electrical tape one's great, but anyway, look at this documentation. quite thorough. how to assemble this: Arduino tape dispenser. Terrific and it can support two reels wide a red and black.

Fantastic work. everyone should get one. Looks like we got an Aussie Fest this one's from uh Viabus. uh Michael Costello he's in Blackburn South in Victoria Thank you very much Michael Let's crack this suck right? Oh, there's a remote control Strong.

Oh, it's a set top box. I used to have a strong set top box and uh I think it failed. Did it? Yeah, they all fail. Hang on here we go this strong.

EST Sensor dive for sub I Thought I'd sent it to you for a tear down if you wish. Thank you very much Michael It will most likely be the uh uh, caps in the thing. uh, defective? Uh yeah, yeah. crack it open and as you can see, there's not much in these things at all.

They're really built down to a price and at first glance, uh, that looks uh, quite well designed and laid out. They got the heat sink well and truly stuck onto the main chip down in there. Yeah, these SE top boxes? not much in them. There's a little, uh, crappy tuner down in there and uh, just one main chip handling everything.

Got some memory coupled onto that Main's power supply around here. not a huge amount. Happen, they're doing the right things. They've at least got got a uh PCB Mount fuse down there even if it is vertical.

ended up up up like that and uh, well, yeah. a couple of isolation slots and the upate couple of going between there and yeah, yeah, yeah, they got the basics happening. So anyway, it's good enough for the price. and well, these things fail.

I I Don't know how hot this one gets? Probably not a huge amount. No bulges in the Caps there that I can see. but uh yeah, I'm not going to, uh, troubleshoot this thing obviously. But yeah, no bulges in any of those caps is more likely to be the mains uh, the high side Mains here than the just all the secondary side over here.

Although it could be some of these low ESR output caps here because uh, the they? they will. uh, because it's a switch mode power supply. If you're getting a reasonably High current out of here, then there's power dissipating inside the ESR Inside these two presumably low ESR caps. Are they I don't know you? are they labeled as such? Anyway, they should be usually in a switch mode.

Uh, P yeah, low ESR says low ESR down in there, you probably can't see it, but uh, there you go. So yeah, they heat up. uh due to the internal ESR and then the internal heating just makes it makes the electrolyte dry out more which then increases the ESR and it's sort of a snowball in effect. And your good quality caps, you know you'll get your 10,000 hours or something.

It depends on how you uh rate them in your circuit, but the crap ones. whatever brand, crappy brand they throw in here this week in this particular uh brand I don't know could be gone, but typically you might see a bulge in there or something. but I'd need to get my ESR meter on that. But anyway, that's not.

that's not too horrible at all. I think that's quite neat and tidy. and yeah, there's nothing on these things there. just uh, tuna HDMI out and uh, for all of the well, it's got component I was going to say Legacy stuff there is, they've just got the audio and uh um, composite video down there.

but yeah, it's a set top box. Me: I've had these fail dime a dozen and this one is from Her Majesty's Royal Mail ah when's she going to car it? How old is she? geez unbelievable I don't know. um it is from Balport. There you go I haven't uh off hand I don't can't recall it is yet.

no name on that but it's from Cambridge So let's uh, crack this sucker open and see what we got. No idea. Interesting, We got some cardboard happening here and what else? We got a note. don't want to read the note? it's a corkwood puzzle rejected assembly guide missing Awesomes so we can assemble a puzzle I Hang on.

Looks like we have some sort of signage. Oh look at that. P is that yeah that's etched? PCB with an acrylic wedge between an acrylic. I Am an engineer superhero? Yeah.

Awesome. Brilliant. Thank you very much to Dave Jones There you go. Terrific superhero.

Second Edition: Red 41 of 50 limited edition A That's terrific I Love it. That's beautiful. It's a coaster. Of course it's a yep, it's designed to oh well.

no, you'd have to put the rubber feet on the bottom to make it a decent, uh, decent coaster to put your stubby down on there. But there you go. Beautiful and the guilty party there he is s good day. s dmer Oh my.

auto face detect has automatically detected your face on the camera I Can't show it here but it yeah, it's following your. the little uh uh Focus thing is following your head around so there you go. can even recognize your little uh uh, handdrawn cartoony drawn thing. Terrific! Now this corkwood puzzle thing is interesting.

Inside we have a bag of massive uh through hole uh resistors There couple of Watts, couple of huge big 10 mm leads and a couple of couple of in there and uh, let's rip this open and ah, here we go. There we go. I Don't know what the corkwood thing is I Don't uh, stand there. Oh, got a taper on that? oh isn't that sexy little curves on that? look at that? that's actually, uh, quite neat.

I'm not sure what it's uh, going to be doing unless they, um, little, you know, special lead flasher uh to 92s or something like that. I'm not sure what it's going to be doing H Check out the layout. it's all Squiggly Lines trademark squiggly Trace Trademark. There you go.

Fantastic! Not sure why to add to the puzzle feel I Guess Ah, here you go. it makes sense. Look, check it out. You use the two boards like that with the components going between them and he explains in the' 60s and 70s inventive Engineers Save space by using the corkwood assembly I Had no idea it was called that.

There you go: learn something new every day where components were sandwiched between the two circuit boards. This construction became less useful with reduced component sizes. Yeah. PCB manufacturing and all the integ we take for granted these days.

But yes, you look inside old radios and things like that, you will find this multiple board. uh, construction like that. even old meters and uh, stuff like that. Um, it was fairly common back in the day.

I Wouldn't be like it to be early 70s. it wouldn't be late 70s or anything like that. Um yeah. Puzzle is a tribute to the construction Engineers that came up with it.

The puzzle is to correctly assemble the circuit with the components at hand once assembled. All Leads light up when power is applied. Excellent. There you go.

So yeah, the transistors probably work as little uh switches as part of the puzzle or something like that. Terrific, awesome work, thank you very much S And he's got a Blog and a shop as well You can where you can buy stuff. check it out and what's inside the tiny Engineer Superhero Emergency kit. Contents: PCB Two resistors one lay, one capacitor, one fet and solder in sponges.

All you need for adults. More info at terrific. Let's crack it open. Oh, look at that.

oh engineer superhero specific sponge. Great! Ah, awesome love sponges. And look at that nice gold, sexy goldplated board. all uh, it's looks like yeah, once again, that puzzle.

hey. Vehicles IR Check it out. I Like it. Terrific.

And it looks like you solder the parts in there in line, embedded with the board. That's really quite neat. Thanks very much S That is really interesting, but the most interesting thing is here we go. All of my circuits are designed with PCB Mod E is it and open source software that he's written himself in Python Unbelievable massive props for that.

Awesome! Thanks sir! Next up we have one from Jacob Philip I'm pronouncing that incorrectly and I assume it is yet last name slir name from Poland Thank you very much. We don't get many from Poland so let's crack this sucker open and uh I have blanked out what's in it cuz I Got a few complaints that oh I was like reading what's on the uh, you know what's on the outside of the package and it was get the Customs form and it was given it away. Okay, fair call. I do I do appreciate that half the uh coolness of this video.

There's a letter in there but let's have a look first is ooh Tada it is something that I love. Old calculator: Look at that polish I presume as polish cuz I can't read that a Mark 61 Polish calculator. It looks like it's got a um uh fluorescent seven segment display. oh oh wa oh look, check it out.

We have an original schematic. oh no way, look at that. Who gives the schematic for their calculator? That is just awesome. Hi Dave Rumor has it I Like vintage calculators? Yeah, just a bit.

So I got one for you at 994 vintage I thought it would have been older than that working Mint Condition uh Electronica Mark 61 This beauty was uh designed in uh, 1984 in the USSR that's more like it Back in the USSR no I won't sing it I can't sing uh, it's programmable. 105 steps of memory, 15 registers uses Rpn of course it does and it's as slow as a dying cow d cows die slowly I guess I Have no idea how to program this puppy, but apparently people write games for it. Awesome! Well, you know you got to have a hobby. Um, have fun tearing it apart, but you're permitted to also permitted to turn it on.

There's something I want you to I'm working on an emulator an old late Polish mini computer mirror 400 in the mid90s I was able to secure tons of documentation. Awesome! Uh, make that available online because I don't access have access to a working machine. It was the main source of knowledge for getting the emulator to work and finally boot the operating system. now.

Awesome work. Lot of effort goes into that. Thumbs up. Um, what amazes me.

What I wanted to share with you is how detailed the documentation was. It's insane. Yes! I Oh, hang on there. Oh okay, that's for the um.

the documentation for this calculator is fantastic, let alone the uh documentation for an old computer I can imagine. So I'll put this link in down below so people can check it out. Oh was part of the end user documentation back in the 70s. Great awesome, thank you very much.

Jakob Philz I Love the manual. Oh man. I can't make heads or tails out of this. but yeah, there's the date 94.

Yeah, fair enough and uh ah, terrific stuff And here we go. I Put some batteries in this. electronic Mark 61 and well, yeah, cuz I wouldn't have been able to read that. So I'm glad you told me and here we go.

Will it work? And it? it's alive? Ah, there we go. We got P of 2, 4, 6, seven decimal places there. Terrific. And then, uh, where's our exponent on this thing? Oh goodness.

I Like yeah. I You know there's some stuff you recognize on there. all the numbers are the same and some of the mathematical stuff. some of the other stuff.

Yeah, check out the original pouch. Oh, that's just gold. It really is. And the screw hole actually had some gunk in there.

It was actually gunked up. not like it was plugged, but oh man. Unbelievable. Anyway, it's a flathead so let's whip the sucker open see what we got inside self Tapper and obviously I got to try open the side of the case.

Now that is interesting. Check that out. Of course no solder mask on this sucker. just uh, tin plate traces.

They got this secondary board here which is just held on directly solded in there. so I'm not sure what's going on with that. It's almost like it's an afterthought. And look at these interestingly potted chips here.

like surface mount. I'm going to get a closeup of that now. That is fascinating. Not sure I've ever seen anything like that.

is that hard? No, it's gunked. Okay, no. so it's That's not a hard? potting. so is that like a bare diee? Is that like a flip chip down and then reflowed? Maybe with bumps on the bottom to Reflow down onto the bottom like a BGA type part or are little Bond wires they got I I can't see anything going off.

so or maybe it's a um you know an LCC type package with uh well I can't even see any like castellations on the side or anything like that to solder it down. so I don't want to destroy it and dig into that. but that is that is fascinating. Never seen anything like that before.

Ah no. here's what's going on. Look at this. They've got a little like a you know a a Flex PCB so it's bare dye on Flex PCB Like that.

and then the flex PCB is solded onto like the same pad for like an So package. Very interesting. So they got that for that one and the one under there. presumably it's the same for these and we just can't see it.

They you know the uh mounted on the oh yeah there there it is. Yeah I can see the membrane under those ones. There we go there we go. just didn't see it on that bottom one.

There got something hanging off there. what's that strand I don't know but that that is fascinating and that is the Crusty old switch mechanism. Oh goodness. so this lift up module here probably some sort of uh, oscillator dead giveaway as the adjustment pot on the top here.

plus uh, you know, just a bunch of through hole Parts on there with some sort of clip on plastic cover. So let's get that off and see what's under. Yeah, there we go. Oh look at that.

that's like you know, some sort of voltage regulator. Um, is it charging? Did it use rechargeable batteries? or uh, something like that and uh, the trim pot could be. um well, it may not be an oscillator? I don't know. but yeah that is.

that is weird. Jeez, look it just tacked on with its own plastic cover. Weird and even funnier is this old Main's adapter plug pack for it. Oh my.

God How crusty is that? It feels just awful. It really does. It's got little pissant. um two wire cable on there with some sort of custom connector.

Oh, this just awful. And even though I can't read a word of this, um, of course you can. The universal language is electronics. We can read that and it looks like we got ourselves that module in.

there was a DC to DC converter. Check it out on the separate board and it's powering the chips over here. Not exactly sure what they're doing. Ah, there we go.

It's you know we've got a ourselves a RC oscillator on there I Guess so. Is that gener interesting? Is that generating multiple phase clocks or something? I don't know. Hm this schematics got it all. Look at these.

They got all these waveforms in here. fantastic notes, timing diagrams. Ah brilliant. for those at home who can, uh, read that? go for your life.

But absolutely thorough documentation. Unbelievable. Look there's the individual uh chip pinouts there. Absolutely terrific.

I Love it pin out of the display. Oh man, thing of beauty and a joy forever. so thank you very much much Jacob for that interesting look at a Soviet SL Polish Electronica Mark 61 calculator from the 80s even though it was 19 manufacturing 94 so they kept manufacturing it I guess I don't know I wonder when it stopped. but jeez that is.

that is fascinating and it doesn't feel listen to that Creek oh that is just that. screwed together folks and that is is just awful but fascinating. Uh, construction inside? thank you very much. Jacob and that's all we got for the mail bag this week.

I Do actually have like three more items, but I'm going to call it quits today. I Think the video is already long enough and I got yet more microcurrents to ship this afternoon. so I better get to it. In fact, it's there.

It is 2:30 p.m. on a Monday So I got to pack and ship another 100 microcurrents and maybe I can get that done before P hour hits I got to drive off to the mailing Depot So I hope you enjoyed mailbag and if you want to discuss it, jump on over to the EV blog. Forum The link is down below, although you can leave comments on YouTube or the blog website as well and I do read them all and I try and respond to as many as I possibly can. Hope you enjoyed it.

Catch you next time.