Hi welcome to everyone's favorite segment Mailbag Yes! I Almost. It's a weekly schedule at the moment I Don't know but I'm yeah for a while there I didn't do them but I've got a whole bunch of stuff actually. two just arrived well this morning from the same company so let's get straight into it and take the biggest one first. This is from company you've no doubt seen on mailbag and heard of before.

Tech Box Digital Solutions. They make cool niche products. You see before that they're from our Vietnam - So hi to all my Vietnamese viewers and not sure where Vietnam ranks on the on the scale of our viewership. I have to check my survey results if I remember during editing I'll see how many times subscribers I've got from Vietnam Anyway, check box.

um and they make um, you've seen them before. not only if they've done it, do they do an le truc mode I've got over there I think um yes and they also did a Rhino using you think ah beautiful right tool for the job but this just looks cooler and they make our the EMC measurement stuff so not a double double box. Hang on to that. Ah, almost there.

let's have a look. Yes I'm EMC testing staff. they're done war. We have come Pettit Ground protection and I think we're going to like this.

This is definitely not something that I can demo on the mailbag. it's something I most definitely do a second like a dedicated video on. but this is Schmick. Check it out.

It is a HD So let's play along the home the TB or Co8 artificial mains network Wow Check out this puppy. This looks like a real top call. a bit of specialized kit so that one was basically a mains AC Listen device as in an acronym listen for our you know even seeking clients are testing. We have looked at the Listen as before but it was just like the little black box.

This is like a better dedicated solution for or just you know. Plug your mains appliance in and get RF out. hook it up your spectrum analyzer and stamp it duct passes. Or it's designed for our pre compliance testing, not actually for compliance testing.

So what a compliance lad probably would you use it? They'd have their own stuff too. Pink Lifesaver? No, what is it? It's obviously all the accessories for it. We have a LED light um Fluro that you? Well, it's a LED it's got to lead the tube socket for LED series. Th Eve's soccer AAC compliant.

What? Okay, so obviously they want to use this so we can use this as a test device. It could be like a really leaky, crappy tube. Who knows. Yeah, it looks like a 100 Eve a one product I Am Seaview pre-compliance That's right, they've got.

that's right. They sent me an email. There's they sent me some software apparently or something that plugs into my RI goal DSA 81:5 spectrum analyzer and use it for pre compliance testing. So cool! Oh, and we've got the little.

it's in a tenure way to set Wow Oh Oh yeah baby. look at that awesome attenuator set to sir. one of them goes to six gig. the 10 DB one from DC to our six gig that's practically DC to daylight.

Awesome! So yeah, the attenuator set cheese ever coming real handy. We've got a shitty little plug pack here and he'd cheap it with a test report so we can actually look at that and change it to attenuate a settings. Yep, so this will we can do a complete video on EMC pre compliance testing. Fantastic! And then there's sent another one I which is a genuine Philips LED T8 lab and IAC compliant socket anyway.

So no doubt the Philips one will be a much better and possibly compliant compared to the one hung low. GP But yeah, it requires complex setups to do all this side testing. so I can't do that on the mailbag. But let's crack this puppy open.

And yes, this is work experience at the Eevblog Lab. Please love it! It Another work experience student who doesn't want to be on camera. but that's alright, he's having fun learning stuff this is. this is educational surely.

So this is a beautiful example of a specialized bit of kit in this case for our conducted mains, conducted mode, pre compliance testing. and sorry, as I said, it takes a lot of setup to actually a demo one of these and like you to do it properly and so I'm going to have to leave that to a separate video. A lot of people have are through pre compliance testing video and this is basically a complete solution along with I. They've given me some sort of software for my Reigai spectrum analyzer as well, so it's a nice bit of kit.

it's got flip feet, it comes with different, they've given me the one with the Australian like none of that American or a Yankee or European rubbish and it basically has got an attenuator building and you can choose whether or not you want it from the neutral or from the active phase as well as got the RF output which goes to your spectrum analyzer and a switch to ever connect directly through the mains earth or are through a inductive filter there and very nice an artificial hand. We'll have a look at the manual which tells us about that and separate I case earth very nice. specialised be the kid I Love it and it goes through about six hundred and fifty US dollars which might seem like a lot, but if you're doing pre compliance testing six hundred and fifty bucks plus your are cheap. Rygel Spectrum Analyzer Whatever that's the going rate for that spectrum analyzer is these days.

Um, it's pretty cheap to do EMC Capri compliance testing with something like this rather than spend huge dollars many, many thousands dollars, you know, crossing your fingers, going to the pre comply, going to the testing house and wondering if your products going to pass. with something like this, you can do what's called pre compliance testing - hence the name as before pre before you get to the compliance house and then good confidence that the product which you plug into here is not going to is going to be within the acceptable limits or not grossly out. It's not as accurate. They wouldn't use this as a test house, for example, they might, but they probably have you know, much more characterized ones.

But yet for pre compliance tests it's quite reasonably priced. I Mean you can build this yourself. It is just a basically listen it's called which is a line impedance stabilization network and we'll have a look at the schematic in the manual but there's not much to it so you can actually build by yourself. but having it all in one box it's just very nice.

and on the back we've got a big ass are strapped and you might be wondering what's that for. Well we'll have a look at the manual. this actually connects bolts down to the are shielded plate which all of this would sit on. If you're going to do this properly, you wouldn't just use it on the bench just flapping around in the breeze like that.

You know you've got to at least do it properly. Let's go to the manual. I Do like the little manual that comes with it. It's quite comprehensive and informative.

There's the features for those are playing along at home so as well see, it's just a basic 50 Micro Henry RAC Listen for conducted mode measurement and this is a basic gas system configuration for it's the RF output. 50 Ohms goes to your spectrum analyzer. Here's your mains supply input and then it's basically outputting that mains and go into your device under test your device under test. What you're testing for, of course is that does it emit any conducted interference on either of the lines here? Any EMI Is there any RF EMI on there coming back? So it basically just measures that coming back and taps off to receiver analyzer and you can see that over here.

As you can see, there's not much in here. Yes, you can build it yourself if you really want to. Yeah, it's dead. a pain in 650 bucks.

You know, design your own. but by the time you spent the effort to characterize it and make sure it's okay, you've spent more than your 650 bucks in time. You know, by all means, if you know time is not money to you, yeah you know you can make your own. But this is a purpose-designed it just works out of the box.

and Bob's your uncle. So as you can see the device under test or the equipment under test here, it's just AC coupling that off here and that's what that switch on the front did and it's selected between either the neutral light or the active line up here. just AC couples that off or you can just it with 50 I'm set and that's all it is. This is how you typically set up a conducted noise pre-compliance system.

There's our 50 micro Henry Listen here. device under test. There's a big ground playing, hence that big ass earthing strap on the bottom. Pair it with an isolation transformer, you have your spectrum analyzer also sitting on there.

Just one big ground plane like that cuz once you have cables coming off here like this coming out, then you're now no longer on the ground plane and you can screw everything up. So don't do that so one big earth metal plate and no, you can't just use your anti-static mat. can't you use a static dissipative mat? Not good enough. There's the impedance versus frequency and the frequency response for those playing along at home.

and this is really interesting. It's an artificial hand designed for pre compliance testing of handheld devices where you've got to simulate the person's hand in the thing and they didn't supply our one of these, you'd have to I Don't you know? you can probably buy like you know specific ones. They'd be incredibly nation. That's pretty much.

oh, maybe under the test houses have them. but you know, if you can get one or make one or whatever I Haven't looked into the details of making one like that, but that comes from the US this per 16 standard by the way. And just how you should do that to simulate because you've got to have a controlled, you know, simulated thing that's used by the test houses. You can't have somebody holding the device inside the test chamber.

Oh Isn't that gorgeous? Love big coils I Didn't expect them to be so big, but look at this beautifully round. They've got a set like a what? Sure, it's kind of our former that is in there. but anyway, these are just beautiful. Ah, look at this.

where was the schematic that we had here? This is basically what we're looking at right there. There you go. and we've got the big guy 50 micro Henry inductors in there, which is gorgeous, but that is not completely representative of what's actually in here because check it out! I Mean these would be your 250 micro Henry jobs in here, but look, I'll get a gorgeous Vishay cap there. Ah, but look, they've got some additional resistors under here.

Okay, so these are in series. These are for inductors in series to make up what's shown on the schematic as a single 50 micro Henry And then we've got some 168 ohm resistors down in there. So yeah, it's not entirely representative of what's inside this thing. but isn't that just? ah, holy something? Joe Somebody has time.

Well, somebody's had fun with the gunk machine look at. Is that just like completely done all of the main stuff? Anyway, proper mains connection there and look, they're just gone. They've just gone to town on crazy dunking these things. But isn't this thing just gorgeous? It's worth every one of its six hundred and fifty bucks.

There's a money shot for you Vishay Capacitor fanboys. And the front panel RF board here beautiful and I Love the just the attention to detail and they've kept all the output mains were and short as which is important. Look at this. This is hilarious.

So they're 3d printed this obviously. so it's just like a last-minute addition, which they'll fix in more production versions or something. or they just like they wouldn't make these in massive volume. That's not like they making tens of thousands of these things.

So yeah, maybe they just needed this sub 3d printed. Shim here just to clip in the AC connector on the front. Okay, it works. That's neat.

So you'll notice that there's no actual active var circuitry in this thing. So the high-pass attenuator and high-pass filter attenuator limiter thing. It's basically just a passive board there, but it isn't that done nicely as well. Yeah, you can build your own, but look like this is just so professional.

Fantastic. So that gets a massive thumbs up for construction quality. Fantastic! And yeah, all. I'm gonna try and get around to doing a dedicated video for this because a lot of people have asked for it.

RF Attenuator goodness. Imagine if you tried to take that through Airport customs and probably have some explaining to do I know all my Australian viewers in particular Western Australia This one comes from our company. unknowing. I won't tell you their dress but it comes from Osborne Park strange I'll give you a spoiler alert ah Description paper: I Get it.

Okay, the description is Taipa sorry goodnight. It's like a ball rolling around in something. Ah I thought I could smell it because I'm a connoisseur of 3m adhesive. It's good stuff.

aa genuine R 3 M 4, 6, 8 MP 200 mt. easy Thank you very much. Please keep company name confidential. it wouldn't lean on me.

Ok Update 50 doesn't even have a name thank you very much. Also included one of the company's are transmitters. Okay, you know no name a box I'm proudly designed here in Australia for 2 minutes head out into synthesized 4:42 for 70 megahertz are 5 watt transmitter. Fantastic! Used to send message to to telemetry receivers, pages and voice right? Yes! fantastic to me to tear down Australian Design transmitter Rs-232 in our FL Beauty proudly design in Australia no-name box.

Let's check it out. Here we go. We're in like Flynn look at that couple of squiggly traces that there are adding some inductance In there early. but yeah, whoa, that puppy.

And they're using the big huge tabs for our heat sinks obviously to set the address on the thing. Oh Actually, well that's on the that's not on the RF. So I Oh yeah, it set the address of the thing for the Rs-232 input. There have obviously got a shot 2 to 3 voltage regulator over there and that's quite neat.

Notice the separated ground plane here that separates the RF section from the digital section. Obviously we can't see the micro in there. It's got an in circuit serial programming port so that's on the bottom and that's an ST micro PD 65 mm. Yep, an RF Power training and you would have thought that they'd be able to get a better thermal profile and reflow that puppy properly.

But yeah, that's pretty messy. It does the job though. like a lot of thermal mass there. Maybe they had reflow heat issues so that you know, sold it on by hand.

68 HC processor on the bottom here. just some jelly bean logic soldering. Here's how you doing what's going on there? Look at that. Frosty The Snowman on this D9 connectors bloody lead-free solder a VTX Oh Why? so serious? It's a rigid coax that connects the RF Sega connects the two sections.

Why have they gone to add that effort? I Don't know something? really sure. I Understand why they need look so many by parts caps in the digital section I mean what's going on there Wow Did you do? They get a bargain sale at the Shenzhen market. the most looking encapsulated coil. they're right next to l RF transistor.

That's an interesting little list so thank you person unknown from company I know what is a neat little RF We're basically single transistor RF amplifier for the 440 to 470 Meg 5 What job? You know how many kilometres of it that translate to with you know a decent antenna with a decent amount of gain on it. You know it'd be you know, tens of kilometres transmission or something like that for a data rate so it doesn't say anything about maximum data rate and things like that I'm you know, probably a maximum Rs-232 rates that could handle with no issues at all. Interesting little beast. another one from straw Lea Bloody Rippa and this one's from Melbourne Bourke Street one of all my Melburnian viewers like Melbourne as much as we like to life fights TV in Melbourne you know who's better and see vehicles? no Melvin's like yeah I really go in the Melbourne if I didn't live in Sydney I'd like if I had to live in like a major capital city I'd be living in Melbourne so thank you very much unknown person or John um it was cleaned up his workshop and found three boys.

We've got an Ericsson NTU Network thing is that it I don't know We've got a Ericsson X let Lee whatever light line interface card from 88 and Alcatel car. oh that's interesting. Some interesting relays on that probably really relays or something. Probably really ridiculous expensive.

two minutes. well not. Teddy I'm Tim it look Wow an Ericsson NTU network termination unit X 21 bits interface. Thank you very much Our hands up.

If you use one of these babies, this would have what this one dates from 1986. But yeah, I mean the technology predates that. Okay, what the hell is that that? believe it or not, is the micro? It's a Hitoshi HD 63 p0 I've got one couple hundred bytes of RAM but it has this novel feature of having these piggyback machine pins on top that you plug your EEPROM into your program ROM into. That's brilliant.

It's absolutely brilliant sense. the PCB space I mean all the bloody traces have to just go in parallel anyway. just pissing away your space on your PCB we don't all. Michael Why didn't all micros come like this back in the day? Why don't I still come like this? That's by far the most interesting thing on here and there's nothing else to interesting on there.

I Don't know at that other big beastie is year 86 our Day codes. They're definitely 86 vintage and this is an Alcatel analog line card 16 channel fraud 1996 or a recent I Can really dig the symmetry on this thing. It's you know, it's very pleasing to my eye. Being the PCB layout guy that I am, it's just lovely.

Look at that. I wouldn't even want to datasheet half of the stuff on here. It's probably all like custom stuff. or you know, application-specific stuff.

definitely. But look at all that lovely. realize Jesus You know you'd salvage this board just for the relays. Fantastic! One of the more interesting things on here.

look these ceramic hybrids where they use their fancy pantsy surface mount capacitors on there and there's not much else doing on there. I Mean they're basically blank on the back like that, but Bail is that you know analog light. Well, it's an analog line card so that's like a ringing like a bell ringing, a ring detect type thing to see. Like if the if the input to this our phone line is ringing, you know this gives it output something like that.

So it's obviously some sort of modular functionality like that. and they've got another couple of hybrids on there. Look at that. Well, there's puppies, do couple of trainees and for you milk fans, there we go.

The backs just covered in melts. Oh Mel says far as the eye can see. Love it. This funky-looking card here is a four line line interface card.

It's an Ericsson A, XE Li Li or whatever. What's in a big Reefer Cats there? They're probably going to fail some more. Our hybrid? Yeah, I'm a hybrid? there be. Well, actually, we've got some.

Got some laser trimmed. look at that. some thin film laser trim thing. What's going on there? They love their hybrids.

You know these are telecoms companies. Ah - Jesus on a rock? Well, that's a rock well symbol, isn't it? Memory serves me correctly or am I still a fan? Maybe I'll try and Google that. but anyway, 87 vintage. Check that out.

and once again, these are like their TI parts. but these are all be all like, you know, custom-designed for these particular applications. but ah, it's neat. Look mmm special relays so think your ass John for sending those in.

It's always interesting to see telecoms tech like that. You know there's a lot of engineering that goes into these and these cards would have been. you know, very expensive and purpose design for the telephone exchanges and stuff like that and pretty much I entirely redundant these days, but you know they'll still running individual lines back in. you know, every house.

Every office had a pair coming back to the local wire telephone exchange and they'd go into things like this: meet and sucked out one of these little hybrids here and check it out. I mean then look, these pins are shorted across here here here here here. So there's just two separate what I can measure as a resistive element 115 ions each. So they're matched.

Are me, you know, thermally match because they're on the same ceramic substrate. maybe? but like, why? what? Why the big deal? Um I don't get it anyone. and Rifa Okay, didn't know Reefer, we're into doing no ceramics, but you know they got the contracts for the capacitors on here so they were like, yeah, we can supply those as well. No worries.

go on. from the United States of America I thank you very much F or from Milpitas um California like a rings, about nine rings a bell and the suburb rings a bell. Wonder how many viewers I've got in? Mill Curtis Whatever this state know the stats don't get that detailed so it's just got a spoiler. something broken.

Um, let's have a look. Oh geez, headed for our protection. Oh that's ah. Magic smokes being released from that.

whoo. Um, that's an interesting board. What on earth is this? Got this board as part of an eBay purchase. It's dead dead so it's got to AC blades from a grid feed G blade script.

Oh my coin. Dodge coin. Okay, for a coin mining, it's a cryptocurrency miner. I've designed to have two of these leads inside the closure.

Big eyes fan at the back. Okay, so yeah, it really doesn't pay you to mind the bitcoins anymore, does it? I Don't believe I Think it's gotten to the point where no, the power just cost you more than me because it gets harder and it gets progressively harder to mine the coins as you get towards the 20 million or so maximum number of bitcoins. But this doesn't do Bitcoins. It does like coin and dogecoin.

So I guess you need a different custom IC for that. Anyway, let's take a look at it. It's called Grid Seed and Jeff is currently cents in my detail here about these are Grid Seed IG Beyblade Script Things that do like coin and dodge coin mining. And yep, it's had the magic smoke escape or table to take a look at that uses 72 mm Cortex M3.

That's not for doing the mining, that's just for our control and stuff like that. So it uses 40 a six on each blade. Total power consumption of full speed is 140 watts. Most people use an ATX power supply for this thing.

The many of these are able to do scripting Sha-256 but the blade is only using their script. The script functionality? Yes. Anyway, thank you very much. Jeff and that's what it looks like when you separate the two units.

Big heat sink in on the back and it just blows air straight through the center like that. This is what the board used to look like before it was damaged. The blue head sink was not present. Overclockers: I Use it to do voltage mods.

Okay, so that's what it used to look like. Look, we've got a DC barrel Jack here so that is what it was. This is what it is now. And yes, it smells as bad as it looks.

So this is beyond just the magic smoke escaping. This is full-on flame territory. Look, you can see how the fiberglass PCBs are constructed. They're woven fiberglass like that and that's how they're so strong.

And then they're epoxy dab basically covered in epoxy. But that is like that is ridiculous. That's just caught a lot. That's good.

Like your flames of just engulfed this thing. How do you do? That was just a DC barrel, Jack and some connectors up here. It's just it will. Yeah, Whoa.

Oh wow. Well oh whoops. Well anyway, so we can we see that I Look at that? the laminates kind of look. The copper foil has come up.

You can see the copper foil on there. it's just peeling right off revealing the woven fiberglass. I Mean we saw this on the Ness alarm control panel way way back. Did it? We? It was a one of the decoupling caps.

wasn't it shorted out or something? and then it just caught a light. and yeah, well. yep. there we go.

Caught a light. and yeah, and this is actually what Fr4 is all about. You're here at Fr4. PCB It's actually a Flammability A grade Flammability rating Whether or not you know your board is going to catch on fire and stuff like that.

Yeah, this one obviously did. And there's your custom Asics for those interested. And there's the backside of that. Obviously they're getting the heat out through the bottom pad on the chip and then of course they would die bond.

these are thermally. Bondi's over to little low heatsink. little you know then it's probably a machined aluminium block that has a little machined out. well a machined thing.

All the surrounding stuffs are machined out and then it's left a pad which then just a big block of aluminium which then just contacts on their neck stretches all the heat out. Hi to all my Vancouver British Columbia viewers especially Brian else for sending this one in. We've got a demo of something used so I'm not. Let's have a look right? Rogaine I did to get what's Rogaine I didn't It's obviously not that surely.

Greetings from Vancouver Canada Yes I started Ted on Acai Rogaine Electronic advertising gadget. Oh right, we've had one of these years ago and these are absolutely fascinating. If it's like the ones with the built-in screen, do you remember the one it was in like Playboy magazine I think it was or something like that. they had a and electronic advertisement I open it cuz it could autoplay.

so I'll get this on the main camera and expert probably better in the hands of I started its hair down. battery runs out of power after about 30 seconds. Yep, Okay, cool. check it out.

So this is actually not Rogaine it's an advertisement for Rogaine And it's not just a printed advertisement, it's an electronic advertisement. We've seen these before. Whoever came up with this concept should not be allowed to work in the industry again is so wasteful. It is a like an LCD screen and usually like an ARM processor or something similar.

and when you open it so that there it is. have you heard about the latest option from Rogaine twice a day? Rogaine 5% A 5% minoxidil topical balm is indicated for the treatment of male androgenetic alopecia. On top of us now the patient also called the Vertex. These videos cover row gains efficacy, vulnerability, and safety profile and we'll introduce you to the Rogaine Press anybody, press Any button I Don't know.

Patient Brochure: okay, Efficacy: okay, Efficacy Tolerability: Yeah. and it'll play a different video. So all it is it like it's a little arm computer in there with like an SD card or memory that take a flash memory that contains these. Play with pre-recorded video clips but cheapest.

Asks? you know I'm a reject LCD they can find from the shins in my because they have to built these down to a ridiculously low cost because they're designed to be thrown away. You open it, it's obviously got it yet. I Can feel a magnet in there. it's got a magnetic plane thing.

There we go. Efficacy crew and like unbelievable I percent patient brochure to help you help your patients. Johnson and Johnson is a level of the patient education. Oh okay.

Facial Crozier Oh Sh So it's probably designed for doctors offices or something. Is it? Maybe maybe because power is not enough, That's it. Power is not enough. The world is not enough.

So maybe Bryan knows or someone else knows if you see one of these, have you seen one in like a doctor's office or a hair locks clinic? the you know thing or something like that because like we've seen these before in I believe it was like Playboy magazine where they had an advertisement for a car. Remember what it was but they inserted it in there and you get your magazine and you get this arm computer in here. and apparently everyone was buying that edition of Playboy or whatever it was not because they wonder. Well okay, I'm decent enough to look at but I need to know everyone reads it for the articles.

Um, but you've got a free like arm computer in there and you can hack it and stuff like that. so maybe this one didn't come with them magazine or something like that, it it look, it looks, you know, like it wouldn't. It's not thin enough to go into the magazine. the other one was really thin.

but well, this, that's pretty how you do it. There you go, that's a charging port. but I chose that puppy up Anyway, let's rip into it. I mean a bit like it's like okay if they designed to make these in in, you know, hundreds or a few thousand to use in doctors offices as are like a little advertisement.

Okay, I'm okay with that. but the ones that just come in magazines or anything thing else designed to be disposable after a single ad is played by the average end-user then? no, it's just yeah. it's a disgusting concept because I Really don't want to live in a world where you know something like this as a disposable advertisement is acceptable. I You know it's not the kind of world I live in and look at this.

Oh, that's how you're doing. That's what you want to see that Wow Pod Central Fantastic. But that's all it has to be I Mean, you know they've cobbled. These are like the switches just cobbled together.

Look at that and then wired over their paid salon peanuts in China to assemble this thing. And as I said it, you know it used whatever they had available. Even different batch of these batches of these might use different things. Anyway, it's going to be pre-programmed in the flash memory or the video.

It doesn't look like it has a micro SD card or anything on this particular one, but it's just going to have an ARM processor. And and there's our battery in the quarter. That's a one way to get rid of your toxic chemicals. Just welcome welcome in the cheapest possible battery.

And there's the Hall effect sensor because there's a magnet in the top. Where is it as a magnet in there? Something? Yeah, I can feel it conceal the C You'll see the outline of the magnet in there and that's just a little Hall effect sensor that detects and um, switches the thing on. So yeah, there we go. Hey, got it.

Oh shut up. Thank well. shut up. Come on.

Blow yell. Anyway, they have just hacked these together. They've obviously gotten a contractor make you know, well hopefully only a few hundred of these or something. but who knows.

Ah, okay, what is an E 200? By the looks of it, that's the main processor. So I got no idea of hand what that puppy is. Hmm. but like I said, it's got to be some sort of ARM processor.

some armored application. our processor at processor with LCD driver and everything building because I obviously don't have a separate LCD driver. It comes straight from that. So yep, probably running some version of Linux So I think these are absolutely horrible or it almost reminds me of that day.

you know world's worst tablet computer teardown. Not quite. You know it's like automate it you'd better but you know still the the how you doing wiring and just slap together just to do the job. you know and it looks good from the outside so you know like but they're just awful and if they're producing this in mass volume ha Elon Get me to Mars So thanks to everyone who sent something in to today's mail bag, if you liked it, please give it a big thumbs up and as always, discuss it down below.

Catch you next time.