Hi welcome to everyone's favorite segment My ol' Baguette where I open my mail and you might be able to see there on the shelves. We've actually started to get through it, there's 15 items left on the shelf still no for may not be able to finish them on today as mailbag but we're getting close so let's go for it. This is a a lastin first-out buffer here and we've got ones from it. Just yeah.

I I Just rubbed crap I Just rub the put some permanent marker on there to get rid of the address and well, it's sort of rubbed itself onto my mat. Oh What can we clean it with? Anyway, this one's from I think Jeff or is it yeah I think so he's from a Redwood City in the States of America This is weird. it's got like the attached mail is returned. Check that out.

it's got like a return form because they couldn't. Custom form needs signature and date. what though I don't know, maybe put his arm they sent? no idea. Anyway, don't think I need the knife for this one.

So this one just arrived this morning I Just picked the eyes at one of these pain-in-the-ass ones. With all that all the prep falls out. No yes it is. yes it is.

Be very careful ripping these open this one. all that shredded newspaper crap in it and so Jeff as it is now the 25th of February Happy Solar year I'm and happy here. Oh the goat as well. It is the year of the goat I thought I'd send you some more Yahoo Swag I've included a small t-shirt I hope it fits better I've also included a little compact USB hub I Hope it's useful for you thank you very much Jeff He's obviously having a second suck at the save the name is familiar.

She wrapped it up, wrapped it up ah perfectly. So my color. Look at this I'm wearing the Amp-hour swag by the way which I'll have to link in down below. And if you don't listen to the Amp hour, it is the world's biggest and best electronics.

a podcaster slash a radio show and it's more Yahoo Swag purple Yahoo swag Thank you very much Chef! And there's a USB thingy and you know, little velvet pouch. what is it? Hey, that's that's weird. There's something. Oh, look this little way I these King these things are kind of okay until they file these retractable USB cords.

but there's something so Dickey about them that yeah I don't trust them. they're just like I've occasionally taken these like on holiday and and stuff because they like pack away really well. but yeah I Really don't trust him and it's just a little four-way me, huh? thanks Jeff It's got like that silicon textured velvety feel on it. Oh, that was all the rage.

wasn't it at one stage? or products to come with that sort of I don't know. does anyone know exactly what it is? It's like a real velvet feeling silicon as I said I'm sure that's a technical term for it. Next up, we have one from Austria not Australia I Do all my Austrian viewers, this is our Lukas Schmidt Thank you very much here. Open here for dummies like me.

What does that mean open like how I see like a little finger thing here So why should I stick my finger in there and so like yeah it says open here here I guess I have to slice it here and then open it like that. There you go I guess it makes sense if it hasn't been taped. Oh there we go, It opens. We have eight varta battery 9 fault so obviously we have something that needs.

There is a note here but uh oh okay. I got a USB connector, I got a strip, a matrix board and we've got a heat C and a a 7805 voltage regulator and a 9-volt battery snap and schemata and a couple of caps and a schematic for a standard 7805 regulator. What's going on here I Said you would do it yourself. Pocket phone charger for any five watt USB device under an amp.

it's using a 7805 voltage readers power from Navarro Also working on a CAD program written in small basic it's called Dave can I actually smallbasic I haven't heard of I think I've heard a small basic before I usually wrote my own CAD program back in the day. don't know if I called a Dave cat I actually can't remember. this was geez. late mid to late 80s, mid 80s I think I wrote my head CAD program wasn't that great but yeah I had a shot at it before I lost interest in it.

realized well it was a lot of work. Um, well. when the first version is ready, you'll send it to you. Thank you very much.

Lucas It's am just a 7805 voltage regulator that just goes on a bit of matrix port. The only problem with this is that it's very inefficient because you're using a linear regulator and it's only. and it's going down to what? Seven volts, Which like nominal 9-volt battery, right? So the dropout voltage of a 7805 is going to be around about two volts. It actually depends on a very specific type and the load current and all that sort of jazz.

But anyway, you know. Rough rule of thumb is that the dropout voltage of a 7805 voltage regulator. In case we didn't get the schematic before, everyone's seen the schematic of a 7805 voltage regulator before. Yeah, the input voltage must be greater then 2 volts too much higher then the output voltage.

So the problem with that is that Well, that means the dropout voltage is a nominal 7 volts for the battery. There's 6 cells in here. 6 alkaline cells. so therefore a cells by the way.

So the 6 for these outlines 6 physical for a cell's I've taken a battery apart. Foreign showed that. so the dropout voltage is a nominal what? 1.6 Yeah, one point one volts or there abouts six volt, One point one five or something volts per cell, which isn't very low. You want at least one volt per cell.

Ideally, you want the voltage regulator to go down to nought point eight volts per cell, because that's when you use most of the capacity in your 9-volt battery. So unfortunately, this is a very simple thing. It'll work fine. But yeah, it doesn't regulate when it drops out, so there's nothing that cuts it out.

So if you are designing something like this, I'd recommend using a switch mode converter which then works down to a much lower dropout voltage for your 5 volts so you can get right down to that almost naught point. 8 volts are at least 1 volt per cell. So dropout voltage is 6 volts for example, 1 volt above the 5 volts required output and any decent switch mode converter is going to do that easily. So yeah, this is incredibly simplistic, but it has limitations.

So there you go. Next up: one from John de Rosa. he's from West Dundee Very act that I'm using the Crocodile Dundee knife, then I'm from Illinois I believe it is in the US so look, he's gone. It's one of these I pull tab to open things.

Don't do it because it's one of these. Look, follow these evil ones. As I said mentioned before, that's got to have all this recycled bloody paper in it. Stuff just makes a bloody mess.

It's already starting to get across here. so I'm gonna have to cut it along here. Maybe I don't know either. Anyway, it's gonna make it horrible.

No mess. maybe I should have. This should be banned by the UN They really should do something useful. You in band buddy recycle I Don't care.

Let's recycle with the fact that it's just all garbage like that. Look at that. go everywhere breathing my crappy mom thank you very much John So West Dundy and it's a yeah. I'm Rhett Shock.

Check it out. Rat check Radio check T-shirt Check it out. Hey there we go. Established 1921 Awesome.

Where'd you get that from? I'm very apt to that. They're now closed down so it's a cool retro now retro t-shirt because they've effectively gone bust. A lot of people said on your radio show haven't gone bust. They've only gone into bankruptcy which is not actually puts chapter 11 it's not real bankruptcy, they're gone Gonski Um, he was crying in his beer.

He went into a RadioShack store last week not Radio Schlock was the Premiership lot. a supplier of electronic bits and bobs. They always just around the corner when you needed them and they did some unique items only carried by them. Last month he built a bill for Christmas cool translucent box with a myriad of buttons made lots of the sounds and noise to entertain his three-year-old grandson.

We named it the he's Korean son his name Jack so we named it the Jack trap Baton. Nice. Two days before Kristen had to run to RadioShack now it is Internet delay or else got a long drive to a bricks and mortar store in Chicagoland Ah heavy sigh Yes RadioShack indeed thank you very much John um he doesn't say where he gets the from I don't know I guess you can look at that I'll try and find link anyone wants it? yeah, old fashioned a RadioShack t-shirt Hopefully I'll link it in down below. Next up, we've got one from Michael Caine Nikki if I'm pronouncing that correctly, hickey from Kenickie I kind of rings a bell I think I've done that joke before.

so is he having the second suck of the south? Anyway, he's from Bangor in the Usme, it doesn't really build that mine by. Memphis Memphis could be Memphis laughter I'm sorry there's 50 bloody US states and I'm not even a Yank So I'm doing my best to remember all my US states so it wasn't ingrained in me as a school child. I'm sorry so Michael he's from um he's at Femto Cal I love the name so he's 50 Cal on Twitter I Believe it, he's got a 10 DS store which I'll link it down below and he said sent you some stuff Oh what's the stuff? Let's check it out and first product here. Check this out.

I Haven't seen something like this before. It's a PCB calendar and yes you guessed it, it's got some LEDs in there and actually lights up through the PCB look at and this is Femto Cow Oh A great name and you see the cow on the back there. There we go. Brilliant.

Let's light her up and there you go. That's it. Lit up. Look at that, that's the dim mode and the bright one.

I Originally hooked up a 5 volt thinking it was a 5 volt adapter. It's not, it's 12 volts so it didn't do anything but Michael does have both 5 volt, USB and 12 volt versions available and if you're wondering how it's possible to do, I get that effect. Well if I turn it off here and you have a look on the inside, all the coppers been removed from the back and of course you can't actually shine light and you can get that through the fiberglass material. but on the front here he's done in verse copper so all the text on there is where the copper has eaten away.

So that's one big copper ground plane here and you could probably do this with our photo image of all solder mask as well. not one of those are inkjet ones if you're so if you removed the copper you could probably do it that way as well. but copper is going to be a really nice sharp way to do it. You can see the text on there is just really very nice and sharp.

Check that out because of course you can get awesome resolution on your copper. So yeah, so that's how it's It's just done, one bigger ground playing there and you can still get and so the light kind of you know it shines through or it's sort of. you know, lights up a little bit. It's not very even here because he's only got like four LEDs behind there so it is a bit spotty.

But I say you should maybe use a diffuser thing or something like that perhaps. but that works quite well and it's rather neat effect. I Don't mind that at all. And next up Michael's got a Kickstarter or had a Kickstarter for these manual SMD trays.

look at this for art picking place. He did meet his up funding goal. it was very conservative. it was under like a thousand dollars and he got a couple of grand for these 3d printed trays.

these are You'll notice that they're they've got different sizes for different width types and they're designed to put your tape in there and have it fold back under. So if we can pull this, hang on. here we go. We pull this out so the way it works is you just put your tab in there, you peel back the tape here of course and then you just can move it forward with your finger like that and it exposes the next chip and then of course you can come along with your pick and place head and then just move it over manually.

Scizor for manual hand placement of course, but you know you can get a reasonable amount of speed with that, so that's it's. not bad, it holds them in, you know, recently, a tight frame like that? Oops, they just jumped out. don't lose your resistors on the carpet and it kind of works reasonably well. they don't.

There's enough tolerance in there for these things not to get stuck which would be the worry with a 3d printed part like this. would be better if they'll mold it'd be better if they were like machined out of metal or something like that because that'd give them some weight so you wouldn't have to because if I just try and do that, you can do it by hand, but I would prefer more friction. Yeah, look see, I can't I can't actually do that? I've got to hold it down with my fingers and go like that. It's not too bad, but if there was some weight in there, then you wouldn't have to worry about that or some sort of sticky service.

You could actually stick these down, put some double-sided tape, stick them down to your bench, or or something like that, which is a solution for these things. But yeah, that's just neat. It gets the job done nice. anyway.

I'm linking the Kickstarter down below. I'm sure he will be out selling these after the campaign because it's already finished. Next up, he's got an ICS P in circuit serial programming, level shifter and this can. It's got 3.3 volt in two point seven volt voltage regulators, and a tri-state buffer there.

So it connects between a 5 volt AVR program that allows you to program devices that run at 3.3 volts or 2 point 7 volts. Very handy. And here's something: I Really like: check this out casing with altitude up. Yes! I'm into our G ocation.

For those who've been watching the blog for a long time, you might know that I used to be big in the geocaching community way back in the day I Don't talk much these days, but this is a Geocaching Waypoint decode a fantastic look how he's done the ground speak symbol there. With that, he's like the custom characters in there like that. That's really quite neat. Anyway, it's just got this little battery-powered sensor board and it's got as the name implies, an altitude sensor in it and it's a game.

The idea is there's a button over here so it's saying please press this button over here So you press it and it says get me higher in 15 minutes So this thing could be programmed. The goal is you are you hide it in a patient like the base of a hill or something like that or some sort of cliff or something and then you have to get higher I hear you've got to get to the top of the hill or however many meters you actually program or feet for you Yanks that you actually program into this thing and then it will only if you get to managed to get to the top of the hill. well it sense that and then actually give you the coordinates for the next for the next case or the next Waypoint or whatever. So here we go.

If we hit the button again it's it. shows that it's already done for feed he's actually programmed it so hopefully I can get it here the lab but it's got 29 feet to go and if I lift it up if I lift it up you will see that it will actually change. Well yeah it kind of kind of does. It's not hugely accurate just based on out it cheered here.

but I can probably cheat this thing just by blowing on it. So here we go. try this. There we go.

I don't know where the sensor is but anyway so we can't actually cheater and as soon as we hit that goal of a feat I could maybe go to the lift here and actually achieve that. So I might I might do that I might start at the bottom of the lift and come back. And here we go. We've got the magic coordinates and I checked that smack bang in the middle of the Indian Ocean that's where Mh370 years it's gonna be bang on.

So there you go. I Really like that. The altitude? Yeah, okay, that's really it. quite Nova Well done.

That looks like it's got a silver board. There we go. It's got a not a gold plate. It's got a silver plate aboard.

There's the tiny little pressure sensor down in there. The dead giveaway is the tiny little hole in there, but that works really well. That's a really novel and Michael's going to make these available for sale, but he's only going to limit it to one per country or one per area or something like that's just so it doesn't get saturated. So if you're a G Okay, sure.

and I highly recommend. If you're not, you should give it a go. It's awesome Fun! Yeah one of these waypoint decoders. Fantastic.

I Used to design my own waypoint decoders back in the day. Geez, I'm talking. Yep, 2002 something like that. Yeah, a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.

Next up, one from Joe's Liptak pronouncing it incorrectly and the state suburb area where is from Jiminy Ants Canova There's I have no idea. Yucky and viewers thank you very much Yosef II for that some even correct, it's probably not. Geez, is there anyone worse than pronunciations than me? I Don't think so I Think: Take great pride in the fact that I completely suck at it. So here we go.

we're gonna giggle. I'm sure it's not a gigabyte. eighty Four hundred GS video card is a video code anyway I don't think it is. Hey, he's a PhD student from the Technical University of Cassis in Slovakia and he loves the show and he like to contribute something to that.

Oh I Prepared for you: a collection of old electronics parts mainly from the producer Tesla Tesla as in cars I Don't think so I think we've got some old school and Joseph has sent in a whole bunch of weird and wonderful stuff from like these aren't our Western components. these are the east and of course they had to manufacture their own buy components you know back in the Cold War days and all the rest of it and some really old-school stuff. We've seen similar things to this on the blog before. We've got a just a look, a multi gained rotary switch that would have been used in in our scope or something like that.

Neat. we're gonna saucer thumb will switch. They made all their own stuff and this is interesting. This is a quartz crystal.

100 kilohertz. Look at that. That's a that's a real interesting beast. Yeah, Tesla Look at that.

Tesla Bren hundred Kilohertz crystal. Is that like a hand blowing tube? Then you got hybrids like this. analog to digital. our converter block.

It's all fully potted. can't get. Oh, is it it's a baseboard? Yeah, there'd be a potted block or something like that. Very interesting.

No idea what that's from. We've got some strain gauges might have a look at that, some Sumit tremors, and a Tesla branded Eight Two Five five. There you go. They actually did their own eight to Fifty-five Unbelievable.

Well check out that high-voltage precision capacitor Tenth, there are a hundred thousand puffs. Sorry, This is how they There was none of this Nanofarad rubbish back in the day. I was Eva microfarads or Puff picofarads. So yeah, they would do like a hundred thousand picofarads there.

or a point one mic that sometimes market nor point five percent. That's pretty darn impressive. Two hundred and fifty volts. and look, it's all just open wound like that.

Unbelievable, that's that is look that is terrific. Wow To make all their own components. even the metallized resistors, the chips, the whole works. Here we go.

Got a strain gauge and it's a rather unusual physical construction that's on some sort of card. Whether or not it actually you know you can peel it off and then stick it onto your own thing. Or whether or not you put the card, you sort of attach the card to the thing you want to do anyway. Um, this would detect our strain, so haven't seen one of that physical construction before with just those bare wires going across.

It looks like there's got two wires on each one going to each contact. That's really, really unusual looking. strain gauge. Hmm.

I Built many a strain gauge amp back in the day. Wow Look at this. the old datasheet for it. Unbeliev.

One hundred and nineteen. Point One owns. There we go. Had a mean current of 1 milliamp.

There we go. It's the strain gauge, Not embedded and not pasted on. Terrific. Anyone can translate 1977 vintage? Yeah, Bang In the middle of the Cold War There we go.

There's a bit of a close-up on there. There we are. That's what's going on. These are like, looks like maybe two separate ones with the leads attached like that.

So yeah, you could just maybe peel it off and paste it on the thing that you wanted to measure the strain on. That's how these things usually worked. Let's see if it still measures 119. Ohms I Haven't zeroed having 0 this puppy out? Yeah, look at pretty much the bang on.

Awesome. So yes, as I said, you'd kill that often you would paste it onto the you know, the piece of metal or whatever it was that you wanted to measure the strain or the flexion of the actual product itself. And then you would Because this this actual resistance in here matters because it will change based on when this thing flexes like that. Even the tiniest little flecks in there can cause the resistance to change.

And you'd put that in a Wheatstone bridge configuration circuit with a very high stability precision voltage reference and some other high stability resistors in there. You couldn't just use junky ones. Yeah, you know, strain gauges are very precise type things and then you'd have a differential ampere. you know, highly stable high precision differential amp in there and you can actually get the voltage difference out when you're even.

You know, like that would be a huge amount of flex. I mean these things are designed to measure minut minut amount of flex in whatever material that you're actually trying to measure mixed up. one from Sebastian Johansson from Alva Shine in Sweden but almost Swedish viewers quite a number of them. Let's I have a look.

It's an envelope so don't think there's anything hard in there. Usually people like slip in a board or something. haha. There we go all oh okay.

little modules in there. Chinese modules do that for those who can read their Chinese. I reaiiy don't reckon doesn't ring a bell sec. I We've got some Arab RF type modules.

Awesome. And what did you do to yourself? Broken his arm? Some sort of hacking accident perhaps after fall went ice-skating I'm don't teach you to do that non nerdy stuff, won't it? I'm now stuck with my arm in a cast for a month. Think any. Lots of things done, including breaking down three printers and catching up on two months of Eevblog.

Geez! I'm at the moment working open source hardware, high-precision CNC at the young age of 17 Brilliant! Um, he's sending two Bluetooth Art sound board things including the datasheet one with the rotated main I see two NFC stickers? Um, might not be much because what I have at home right now the 19th of January written with one hand Sebastian Awesome! thank you very much I've always loved you'd never know when you need an addendum. always save your Docs right working on my own EDA as well. really another person working on their own CAD Package Awesome! so we'll take a quick squeeze at those. Sebastian has sent in these cool little Bluetooth modules these that this is the BT 6145 if I can link in that Chinese a data sheet I will.

nothing on the reverse side there, but you can see the antenna they've got here. that's and these cast elations on the side. These Halfmoon cast elations. They're called on this board so you can like a surface, mount these things onto your board so they're You know, a really neat way to do modules.

Like though there's a really thin board, it's only like point eight millimeters or so, and they've rotated the chip like that to fit it on. That's a common way to round out signals like this on a height constrained board because if you put the chip square like on this other one for example, see how it's hard to route out the traces from the pins. You've got no height left on your board. You can't do it.

Whereas if you rotate rotate your chip 45 degrees like this. look, you can route out all of your signals from your quad flat, pack away your Qfn, or whatever package you've got like that. So that's a that's just a common layout technique in the industry for size constrain boards. We also set in line like our bigger video boards.

You know, like a big PC board that you plug in and things like that. You'll have that big main chip on an angle like that. No, it's not to help the electrons all pull down in the bottom or something like that. It's -.

it's just for a right. Routing it just from sometimes makes for more efficient routing. So cool. I'll link that one in down below and this is a different one.

This is the SCR 8,000 module. It's a 2012 vintage and it's not as nice as the other one. It doesn't look like as nicely integrated, um, similar sort of antenna there for this thing. Of course, these zigzags on there to get the wave length they need in the board size.

And once again, we've got the cast elations on there, but they've combined like the Halfmoon ones here with the square ones a lot. Not entirely sure why they've done that. that's a bit dust range, but anyway, each to their own. so thank you very much.

Sebastian We might be able to use these Bluetooth modules in a project. Hope your arm gets better mate. Next up one from Michael Castiglione Here's some Jupiter in Florida never heard of Jupiter Sounds good, sounds far away. it's Florida it's a 15 hour flight.

I'm in no more than that. Geez, it's 15 just to get a bloody La. Then you're gonna fly across the 15 hours to get across the ditch. and then what is it? Another five, six, maybe to get all the way to Florida Anyway, um, here's an example why you don't send whatever it is in here in just paper envelopes like that, it's going to rip I'm surprised it made it here at all.

Whatever it is. and yeah, it made it in pieces. It got completely and utterly shredded so it looks like it was. It was a seven segment display module and now it's just.

well, yeah, toast across the old single sided job. So like I have to say for himself, he's been watching your videos through all I'm he's 11 Awesome. There you go First lesson learned at 11 tender 11 years of age not to send stuff like this in paper envelopes because the envelopes have to go through automated if their envelope they go through automated sorting machines which then bend around like this and they crunched. So yeah, not good.

Do I have any recommendations Interested in learning about electronics? Do I have any recommendations for Hear Me and they're in. America I'm glad you asked. Get yourself an oscilloscope if you don't have any. Try and beg borrow, steal an entry-level scope.

There's been a lot to talk about this recently. I Did this video is go years ago? It was a Drivetime rant about buying analog oscilloscope please I Might have to link it in down below if you haven't seen it. A lot of people took that out of context and think that everyone, every beginner should have an analog scope and that analog scopes are bad oblong and it's ya know, and an analog scope. A 20 megahertz dual channel analog scope or CRO as we call them here in Australia Cathode ray oscilloscope is better than one of those Do So quad nano theme.

Yeah, it's better than one of these things. Actually, that's a quad that's a deer so quad which is more expensive than the Nano It's a for visitor for channel thing. Yeah, it's something like that. Anyway, it's better than one of these pocket toy oscilloscopes.

having a real bench scope. There's no. there's no comparison. Dual channel 20 megahertz analog scope.

Infinitely more usable than one. Sure, the analyst copes. Not single shot. you can't do single shot captcha, but apart from that infinitely more valuable learning tool.

But apart from that, you should just get yourself a cheap deer. So, but if you can score for free or for like fifty bucks or something a or less a dual-channel analog scope, definitely get one. The best learning tool possible. if you don't have a scope, should arrest them.

Maybe he's got one. I don't subscribe to my channel to help me out. Thank you very much. Every viewer counts.

It's the way that I grew this from nothing to where I am now, which is like two hundred and ten Fifteen thousand subscribers I've looked at lately, but it's well over two hundred. Um, I don't of course get everybody watching that. I might have you over two hundred thousand subscribers. only about maybe fifty thousand on average.

Watch a particular episode, for example, depends on what it is, but that's a very typical YouTube ratio. So I'm actually doing reasonably well in that respect. So you know I have to have it like a quarter of your viewers. watch out of your subscribers watch every time.

That's generally you're doing pretty good as a Youtuber, especially for a general-purpose show like I. Do you know it's not very specific? You're more niche videos where they do exactly the same type of video. Each and every time they'll have a higher ratio of subscribers to viewers. He included the seven segment time clock that I might use for a later episode.

Hmm I think so. Thanks! Anyway, appreciate the thought running. Take it, he's only taken apart in old. Motorola Wi-Fi router a gaming system and ease into it.

Raspberry Pi And all that jazz. There's nothing wrong with being a Raspberry Pi but it's not electronics as such, it's embedded programming. so it's so good that it gets you into electronics. But now that you're into all that, Charlie Sheen Doing tear downs, you need some bread Boysen Parts this is.

Oh yeah. The advice: I got stuck on the crow thing there I Got ranting on about the oscilloscope thing and a breadboard. the way to go variable the matrix board we saw before in the one of the earlier ones. Build up.

stuff like that build up fail. The best way to learn, so hope your next project doesn't work. and I mean that very sincerely because it is by far the best way to lose. Learn anything if you just build it up and it works First go.

Well, you don't learn at nearly as much if it doesn't. If your circuit doesn't work, he use that oscilloscope your big, borrowed or stole and you use that to troubleshoot your circuit. You figure out how it all works. You know the step by step go through, figure out each circuit element and what it's doing, is methodical process like that and eventually find the problem and you'll learn a ton.

So yes, your project doesn't work at a tender 11 years of age. Awesome! Oh, and because you're in the U.s. you have access to tons of surplus stores and things like that. If you have one in your city, you probably have somewhere.

Go jump on the Eevblog forum and I'm ask for someone that's in your city I'm not sure if your parents will let you go out and living they did when I was a boy. jeez I could just wander anywhere I wanted I didn't care I was like there's a name for that now. isn't it like free range children or something like that? I Don't people have parents of paranoid these days? But anyway, if they can let you go there or even get them to take you there, it's some awesome surplus stuff and there's a whole bunch of cheap Teske in the US as well on eBay and Craigslist and for the other stuff. so you can get very well-equipped lab for all money if you're patient and 11 can afford to be patient.

And I was just thinking putting this in the envelope like that, that yeah, teaches you that. Oh You can't put things through the mailing, but teachers just like you know, it's fun to meet like you know, physics of bending moments and all that sort of stuff you can really, hey, look, there's lots of mechanical engineering that goes into things surviving in the mail and packaging and and shock and vibration. And you know all sorts of that stuff like that, so you know the angles of shocks and and all sorts of stuff. So humble.

Sticking this in an envelope probably learn a lot more suddenly than you might think. Hmm. Mechanical engineering. We put border electronics as well as pesky fundamental laws of physics on in cases like this at the very macroscopic level.

Yeah, we have a commercial one. You can tell it's in a UPS box no one in their right mind would personally send via. UPS It's too darn expensive. so this one actually comes from Gangin Luthra he's from Cypress Semiconductor so thank you very much.

Janssen Let's check out some sort of demo. Bluetooth Low Energy Pioneer kit that could be interesting. Oh I don't have any development kits for Bluetooth Low Energy I Don't think so a Bluetooth Low Energy made easy. really industries best and simplest CapSense as well, really most integrated Bluetooth Low Energy Solution Really bold claims on that.

So yeah, let's have a Squiz Silver for our protection and some nice stuff in there. Hmm. now this thing looks rather exciting. It's Bluetooth Low Energy Pioneer Kit and it's only 50 bucks.

On this Cypress Art website, that's a bargain for what you get. I Mean you can get it Master and Digi Care? check the digi-key price of their price gouging. That's like 70 bucks on there, but it's available I Guess if you're ordering from digi-key and you get a lot for Euro for your 50 bucks. I mean check that out! We've got a capacity of at touch sense thing, so once again, if you want to play around the capacity that touch sense, that's probably not a bad way to do it and then looks like we've got a separate Bluetooth Low Energy module.

There were similar to what we just saw. There's our Bluetooth antenna up there, but it's us beer. It's got a Cypress um micro controller and then this looks like a programming Note that note: it's a Bluetooth Low Energy module. There's the antenna.

Again, check it out. We've got ourselves the probe. Do we get the programming cable? What's that? I'm not sure. we thought I saw some big jumpers.

Some are some big-ass jumpers to go on here. Here we go. that almost looks Arduino-compatible actually. I think it.

I think it might be I think it's Arduino shield compatible. What looks of it. There's a dual row one down here, but I'd be surprised if that. Yeah, it looks no.

I think it's shield compatible but it uses the arm. it doesn't use the Atmel one. So and we've got another module. So you get all these Bluetooth low-energy modules plus that for 15 bucks.

Awesome! Ah, even get a free battery! And just to show how ultra-low power this thing is, look at that coin cell battery. but let's look on the bottom here: I Like this look they've done Hall silkscreen label in there if the there we go. P 1.73 So they've labeled all the pins. That's really very nice I like that.

but let's anyway. I won't be up playing around with this in this video ever. I can't resistor popping in the battery there and actually seeing if it does something. Is there a button? oh I don't know.

Anyway, I'm gonna have to do a separate video playing around Bluetooth Low Energy Oh there we go. Got some buttons. What's going on? Hmm, there's a proximity sensor as well. Look, everything is labeled on here.

Let's go through it. So there's a Cyprus app called Size Smart and I think my Nexus phone is barely compatible. Anyway, Ble devices. Here's an unknown device, but it doesn't.

It doesn't connect to it. so I'm not sure what the go is, whether or not I've actually got this board right because there's no LED on it to indicate whether or not the the applications even preloaded on here. whether or not it'll talk to that. I've got no idea I might not have time to play with this thing here I need to.

It's Tuesday now I need to finish editing and upload this video. So yeah, I might have to I might have to leave it all for a separate video anyway. it's supposed to work and you're supposed to be able to like actually connect to your phone and usually and see the CapSense and update in and the proximity sensor here so you can have like a field proximity metal detector and things like that. So yeah, I'm sure it does work eventually.

So yeah, I'm not sure if it actually comes pre-programmed on the board. It shows like the IDE and things like that which you know you'd have to download and install. and the example apps for the CapSense proximity slider and things like that. there's the props one and then there's the capacitive slider in the app working.

But yeah, the I yeah, I Don't know, it requires more time and effort to play with it. Anyway, it's a 32 bit Forty Eight Megahertz Arm Cortex-m zero CPU on there 256 K flash 32k SRAM that's not too shabby and the Bluetooth Low Energy. Of course with it, it's got an integrated Balan It's got a 12 bit 1 Meg sample per second ADC That's not too shabby either. And because this is the Cypress PSoC devices, they've got the programmable analog stuff as well, which is really quite novel.

So you get the 4 op amps and low with two low-power comparators as well and they working our sleep mode. They're independent of the micro and it's got programmable digital blocks and you'll see these segment controllers no LCD on here. Unfortunately, that's a bit of a bummer. But anyway, I'm an CapSense and all the rest of the Jasmine So there you go.

That's a looks like a very nice kit. Bluetooth Low Energy development kit for your 50 bucks. Check it out. linked in down below Now hold on to your hat folks.

All of a sudden it's Desai It was I swear a second ago that this lead here was flashing and CapSense slider and lead and it was yeah I don't know what I did I don't know I was just getting ready to like measure the battery voltage and all the sudden this LED started flashing. So um oh yeah yeah there we go. There we go. Yay we're in.

look at this swipe across. Oh I missed it. Get CapSense slider here. We go here, we go.

Come on yeah, look look at works There we go. So we're connected. Bluetooth Low Energy device here and my phone is obviously our Bluetooth Low Energy compatible. it's got they've got iPhone apps and Android this is Android of course so that's really quite neat.

RGB raw of you. Ah oh look there we go. We can change the color of our RGB LED there. check that out, make it green.

look at that. that's quite nice. You can see like the different dye in there, they're in different corners of the chip. that's really that's great.

hi and this worked out on the box I Don't know why it like took forever to boot or whatever I'm not sure I get DB I Got no idea what that is but yeah hey it works. That's neat. Check it out for your 50 bucks. Ah, bargain and we've gotta have one from the old dark, don't we? This is from Advent Controls.

They've been on here before so they're having a second sack of the south and let's see what's in here. Obviously one of their products I would imagine. Hey that's some nice postcards. different show postcards all the time we got Liverpool we've got wherever that is, it's the K2 gallery that's in Liverpool as well.

they're all in Liverpool Oh look at that. they got drove through Liverpool once and I think I said I stayed so that's neat I like that nice town Liverpool I'm sure hi Dave I Thought your mailbag section need a real mailbag so live being a Liverpool Ian People from Liverpool UK like the 60's pop Pan the Beatles I'm half inclined I'm half inch to one for you I have inched one for you from Royal Mail Yes hilarious joke in the UK is that's scousers like me like stealing things, especially car caps. Liverpool has a reputation for you know, if you stop your car and satellites they jack it up and steal your wheels. Is that what it is? Hmm.

I'm hoping for my penance they send me over Deuce try. Yeah, but they did in the old days. Still, they do that right now. Maybe if not, we have two cathedrals in Liverpool Paddy's Wiggum wow I don't know which one Paddy's Wiggum is can I guess which one? Paddy's Wiggum I don't know.

that looks too formal for Paddy's Wiggum I'm gonna yeah that one that looks like Paddy's Wiggum am I wrong? Yeah, probably Anyway, one's Anglican and one's Metropolitan Cathedral Yeah, it's all imagined. It's all the imaginary fiction anyway. But yeah, good on him. He snagged it from Royal Mail with this Awesome.

haven't done this in a while. This maximum load 11 kilos. Why might I weigh a bit more than the living kilos and that's a Royal Mail satchel. Don't do this at home kids.

I'll get in trouble for that last time We have a genuine product from the Lone Pine mall. I Love it The future I'm the remember Lightning never strikes twice sorry I'll spare you my singing. This is awesome. It's awesome.

Check it out! Just what I need for the DeLorean beauty Looks like Michael actually designed and built and he actually, um, sells this thing. It's a replica of course speedometer digital speedo for your DeLorean and it's actually more complicated than it actually looks. It's a GPS It's got a GPS sensor in it apparently and all sorts of modes so we allow you to set it up. There's demo display modes.

look, you can set all these different um, but you can go into setup modes. It's got capacitive sense buttons under here and it's really gone to a lot of effort. power management, speed limit warning alarms, touch switch, sensitivity, and all sorts of stuff. And and presumably it looks like this is GPS built in Awesome! Wow Check it out inside.

look at that. There's a bit of he's got a bit of effort here and is that it like an off-the-shelf module with the relay and whatnot? Anyway, there's our GPS receiver down there. He'll get ourselves a little surface mount GPS Antenna Jesus really. And he's even written on their point eight millimeter thickness board.

Is that an instruction to the PCB house to it? make sure they give him a A whose rip Adam Oh sorry. Adam It's got a bit of hot snot to hold his leads in place, but generally that is. Um, yeah, that is quite neat. There's the I cap.

since then, it looks like that's not a spacer I reckon he's using that as his cap. since our terminal there we go to actually touch that. So yeah, I think that's what it is and there's another one over here. so it's got to be because there's no.

oh yeah, they're actually up screw holes so he's mounted those on. so he actually has used him as physical mounts. but he's also got them I reckon electrically connected as CapSense terminals dual use. That's really quite clever.

anyway. I Don't have the time or the GPS reception do I play around with this now. the video has gone on long enough. but if you want one of these puppies, I'll link it in down below thank you very much.

Michael This is awesome. I'm gonna have a good at play around with this sucker. You bet maybe I can go on the Sinclair C5 and is included a scrap auto dialer. it doesn't work.

This is the Gsm auto dialer so it's got a Sim module here. this is for one of the like an alarm system be are fairly generic. Um you can actually hook the thing up and yes it is scrapped. it's made in the old dark.

There we go. so thank you very much. Michael I Won't go through the details of that but yeah it's a fairly generic ax thing. You can just hook it up to presumably any alarm system and then if there's an alarm it can dial based on your uh Sim module.

you puttin just puttin one of those that prepaid Sim modules and Bob's your uncle at dials home and the guards with the shotguns and the big nasty dogs come around hopefully in time. Thanks Michael You.