Tag: dc-dc

The slightly more silent Ender 5 Plus (#E20F3)

Well, since the printer is running just fine, I used it to make some quality-of-life upgrades to it.
The bottom lid that covers PSU, all the mains wiring and the rest of the electronics has been removed and replaced by a 2 part print (due to size). Several reasons for that: a) Four of the six screws are covered by the additional aluminium frame, so it’s difficult to remove if properly fastened, b) if left unscrewed (which isn’t much of a load problem on the remaining two screws since it is sandwiched anyway), the ends of the large metal piece would be free to vibrate and resonate, c) the stock 40mm fan close to the driver board is terribly noisy and pointless in terms of air throughput, so I would have swapped it anyway. […]


DC DC Step Down Power Module 5-16V To 1.25V/1.5V/1.8V/2.5V/3.3V/5V Universal Adjustable Buck Voltage Converter Board 3A For LCD (WHL #77)

Just a brief service tweet announcement for today, no in-depth review of the thing – these super helpful, small and cheap “CA-1235” DC-DC buck converters, commonly available for 50 cents a pop (plus postage), do use a Monolithic Power MP1495 TSOT-23-8 control chip labelled “IACSE” – or a clone thereof. While that connection is not immediately obvious and not mentioned by MPS (it says chip labelling “ACS”), teh Googles knows about this and leads to a suitable datasheet. Some variants of the chip itself are not recommended for new designs, but of course there’s still a lot of stock and probably clones available out there, even Mouser lists a couple of original parts with hundreds of units available. […]


The PCB (Christmas) Tree 2021 update (#P32F1)

Ah yes, the good ol’ PCB tree.
It wasn’t in use for a good part of 2021 due to the fuse burning out, unclear if it was from an accident (some parts are still wobbly) or just slightly specced too low at 1.6A (slow-blow, but 24/7 operation). Since it was placed inside a somewhat difficult to access triangle cavity of PCBs, it took me a while to open it up again and move things outside. Voltage of the DC-DC converter was lowered slightly to around 3.2V and the single fuse was replaced by two individual units placed on the outside, dividing the power rail roughly equal between upper and lower tree (by current, not by physical size) […]


The PCB (Christmas) Tree (#P32)

Epiphany has already passed and St. Knut’s day is next Wednesday, it’s about time to stop being lazy and get the Christmas tree out of the living room.
Well, yes, but not the usual way. As shown previously, it’s not an ordinary tree. It’s green and it has fancy little lights all around, but it’s also containing significant amounts of lead and it needs a PoE port to operate.

Meet the PCB Tree.

Made from scrap circuit boards, random bits of wire, leaded solder and a couple of Chinese ingredients, it’s a wonderful Christmas abomination that sat the entire last year in my office and received a significant addition in early December 2020. […]


Fujitsu Esprimo E920 D3222-A12 12V/11Vsb to ATX conversion (#P28)

Recent hardware acquisition: Parts of an Esprimo E920 system (board, CPU, RAM and power supply) for replacing my main desktop system, a good old FX-6300 with 970 chipset board.

Why would I post about this? Well, it’s not a drop-in replacement. DIY required, since those OEM things always have some custom oddities. In this case it’s two (and a half) of them:

  1. Power supply has no ATX mounting bracket
  2. Power supply and board are not -12V/3V3/5V/5Vsb/12V units but 11Vsb/12V only
  3. Board has no I/O shield, just fitting case cutouts

Note that there are datasheets of this very Fujitsu board out there that show a regular ATX connector with all the standard voltages required. […]


12V Portable Auto Car Jump Starter Power Bank Booster Battery Charger 50800mAh (WHL #54)

Some random power bank, we haven’t had those for quite some time now, have we…

This heap of trash actually came from eBay, which nowadays rarely has the best offers for China-shopping. I bought this back in December 2018 for 22.99€ including shipping, and as far as I can recall, I arrived so quickly that it must have been sent from an European warehouse.

The reason for buying a “jump starter” type of power bank was that at the time I had some project running that needed a ~12V supply. In the end, we decided for a different solution, but a 3S lithium cell configuration would have done the job. […]


250W DC-DC Boost Converter Adjustable 10A Step Up Constant Current Power Supply Module Led Driver For Arduino (WHL #21)

What do you do when none of your existing power supplies can provide enough power for some decent LED module? Yeah, right, you buy a bigger one!

So I did. I had some 100W/150W DC-DC converters laying around, but most of them cap at around 36V. And with the very nice Toshiba E-Core 92W LED module that wants 40V or more, that’s just not good enough (same goes for the popular 25W/50W/100W LED modules!). So the new one in my collection is this:

Some more shots:

I bought it on AliExpress back in mid-January for 4.31€ including shipping.

Tech specs are, according to the seller: 250W total output power (boost = step-up only), non-isolated output, input current 8A or 10A with additional heat sinking. […]


Portable Powerbank Power Bank USB 1x 18650 Battery Charger Case Box for Mobile Phone MP3 (WHL #1)

Hey there!
It’s been a while and I was busy buying some gear…and getting some mail ;) Now I have a decent camera ready (for almost 4 hours at the time of writing! :D ) and this is gonna be the first shot on Wan Hung Lo products. My light box is not ready yet, it still lacks light – box is complete ;) , so you’ll notice my lighting and camera setup still needs some improvement. Well, that’ll come with time.

So, I had five single-cell powerbanks ready that I bought from AliExpress. Cost per unit with free shipping was 1,01€ (bulk I guess), current price is 1,05€ single or 0,98€ for bulk orders of 5+ units. […]