APC Back-UPS capacity upgrade (#P11F1)

Was that foreseeable? Not sure, but the design called for it…

Now that my modified APC UPS is running smoothly again (#P11), I still had two pairs of these nice XT60 connectors laying around. And as old, to-be-recycled lead acid batteries from UPSes pile up at work, I took one or two of them with me for testing at my electronic load. Like previous batteries, quite a lot of them are really toast, but some of them are in decent condition. Not as in “like new, ready for another year of service in a commercial fire alarm system”, but still holding a significant fraction of their original capacity and delivering a suitable amount of current. […]

7th April 2019 8th April 2019 By Bzzz In No Comment

150W Welding Repair Tool Titanium Plating Lead-Free Solder Pot Adjustable Temperature Tin Furnace with EU plug (WHL #48)

What’s worse than lead-free solder? Lead doped lead-free solder… :roll:

Today’s item is a “500g” solder pot that I bought during the Christmas/annual leave shopping spree mid-December for 12.06 USD including shipping on AliExpress. Prices have even dropped a bit since then.

I’ve always been collecting residue from desoldering stuff as I want to minimize contaminating ordinary trash with lead. Not on a crazy level like the EU tries forcing us to, but if I can avoid PCBs and electronic components getting mixed with domestic waste, I’ll keep them separate. […]

24th March 2019 24th March 2019 By Bzzz In No Comment

USB LiPo battery BBQ arc lighter – CCFL test device (WHL #47)

Fun with high voltages.
[NOT a sponsored post! They’ll probably do not want me to do that in the first place…]

This week (at work…), I repaired an old Siemens PLC unit with a failed display backlight. Good old CCFL crap that literally burns out over time. As this wasn’t time critical (unlike the last unit), I ordered some CCFL to LED conversion kit from China, modified that to fit the tiny display, threw away the crappy “converter” PCB and installed some homebrew.

While fiddling around, my mind wandered off. […]

17th March 2019 17th March 2019 By Bzzz In No Comment

APC Back-UPS external battery mod (#P11)

Good thing I’m a doofus. While tidying up cables after some keystone module action, I also moved the bulky power supply of my monitor. And then I noticed that the only thing that absolutely has to be on the battery backup outlets of my UPS unit was in fact…assigned to the surge-protected ones that fail when mains power is gone. D’oh. After some cable identification in that tight space, I moved the UPS around a bit and I discovered a drop of liquid. A very dubious drop at a place where liquid would have to seep through 4 centimeters of a wooden table, or somehow permeate 1.5mm of solid steel against gravity’s pull. […]

10th March 2019 3rd March 2019 By Bzzz In 1 Comment

Revox Evolution front panel repair (#P10F1)

Soo…the Revox thing from #P10 wasn’t done at the time, and when the missing cable arrived from China (“DB9 Male to Female Gold-plated Extension Cable Pure Copper Line RS232 9 Pin Serial Connector Wire COM Core with Double Shield” for a whopping 4.53€), it didn’t really work as expected.

I wondered: Did they do fancy things with the shielding, in order to squeeze out one more connection from this otherwise 9 pin cable? The cable might have different characteristics compared to the metal-to-metal contact of the serial connectors directly sitting on top of each other. […]

3rd March 2019 2nd March 2019 By Bzzz In No Comment

Sony to the rescue! (#E9)

I’m back, with more pixel power than ever ;)

After a bit of research in addition to the thoughts back when I bought my very first dedicated camera, I decided to go the Sony route. Sony RX100, to be specific. There are three models that fall in my price bracket for “new camera without being able to sell the old one”, that is the original RX100, the RX100M2 and the reasonably different RX100M3. There’s a very handy feature comparison over at Reisezoom which also adds data to the newer RX100 models, so before regurgitating everything for the interested folks, please pay them a visit. […]

2nd March 2019 2nd March 2019 By Bzzz In No Comment

Camera …issues (#E8)

Houston, we got a problem…

My Canon S100 died yesterday. Did a photo of the working Revox display (yup, that’s another blog post right there), turned it off, set it aside on the table. Later decided to take a picture of something else – lens error. Common problem with the S100/S110, mine carries a high 41xxx serial number.

Engadget and others reported…

Canon even acknowledged it, but unaffected (not-yet-failed) devices were not recalled or repaired, and mine didn’t fail that way in time. Well, until yesterday. […]

27th January 2019 27th January 2019 By Bzzz In No Comment

24V to 5V 10A 50W DC DC Converter Regulator Car Step Down Reducer 24V to 5V 10AMP Daygreen CE Certificated (WHL #46)

Alright, part two of the DC-DC converter tests that’ll lead to a small project. This time we got a 5V/10A converter from Daygreen, model number B10-1224-05, shipped together with the 12V/10A unit from WHL #44. This item was 2.41€ excluding shipping, as described in that blog post.

It’s a brick style unit as well, a tad smaller, but also has two mounting holes left and right which are flush with the case. Contrary to the more powerful 12V one, this is only a plastic case that was potted, but it has four screw terminals and therefore offers more flexibility when it comes to attaching your own wiring. […]

22nd January 2019 22nd January 2019 By Bzzz In No Comment

Revox Evolution 19″ panel mount (#P10)

Christmas, the fabulous time of the year where you got plenty of free time, but you aren’t supposed to make hell of a noise :suspect:

Happy 2019, y’all!

Having ordered a second 19″ keystone plate recently, I decided to finally make the user panel of my Revox Evolution stereo system into a front-mount panel that fits the outside of the rack. Without, it got even more hidden inside because of the top-mounting system that is used. Here’s an original marketing wankery image from Revox:

So if that unit is sitting inside of a 19″ rack, imagine the user experience (wank, wank) of operating the display if the top part is blocked by other stuff. […]

6th January 2019 6th January 2019 By Bzzz In 1 Comment

Samsung USB 3.1 Flash Drive BAR Plus MUF-256BE3/EU (WHL #45)

Wan Hung Lo #45 – Christmas Turd Edition!

Yeah…wasn’t planned to do that, but just like with the much more expensive “proper hardware” item from last year, the BenQ EX3501R that caused m u l t i p le revisits, I guess I found something worthy of in-depth reviewing. A simple USB flash drive.

Let me explain. I’m in the market for some 200GB+ device, as I’ve come to the point in the upgrade cycle where my 128GB Sandisk Extreme Pro (wank, wank) is no longer capable of holding all data that I want to carry around. […]

24th December 2018 24th December 2018 By Bzzz In No Comment