LabJack U6 Pro (and others) self-test script (#P53)

On the eternal quest of de-cluttering the living room, I picked up a bunch of stored “defective” LabJack units the other day. These are USB DAQ modules with generally very decent specs, in the case of the U6 Pro a 24bit (22bit effective) DAC with 14-port multiplexing (so 14 analogue ports, or 7 differential analogue ports), fixed 10µA and 200µA sources, two 12bit DACs, internal temperature compensation for temperature probes, 20 GPIOs and a bunch of miscellaneous stuff over the DA15 and DC37 Sub-D ports. All of them were discarded with AIN failure…and that didn’t add up. […]

3rd May 2026 4th May 2026 By Bzzz In No Comment

Intenso High Speed Line 128GB (WHL #117)

At work, we tend to use those godawful USB thumb drives that generally fall into two categories:

  • Ancient (and therefore tiny in capacity)
  • Cheap marketing giveaways (and therefore dog slow)

    Some even cover both bases and were the slow, crappy type ten or even fifteen years ago – and they have our own logo printed on them, because they were surplus items whenever the company logo changed.

    Sure, that happens for a lot of companies, but it’s fucking annoying, it’s embarrassing to operate in such a way, and it just wastes company time.

[…]
19th April 2026 20th April 2026 By Bzzz In No Comment

Tesla Model S Thermal Controller (#P52F1)

Aaaanother Tesla blog entry, yawn…

This is a follow-up to #P52, the grounding stud issue of the legacy Model S. Technically, as of yesterday, all Model S are legacy cars, Tesla axed both S and X and just sells off remaining inventory. Sad to see it go…

So, with the power issue resolved, this THC_w0105 coolant low warning still showed up basically immediately and never really went away. The coolant reservoir is still filled to spec, so nothing is leaking, but the sensor reading is garbage. I visited the Heilbronn service center, and they confirmed that the sensor upon power cycling just reads garbage, but they didn’t have one in stock. […]

5th April 2026 5th April 2026 By Bzzz In 1 Comment

Tesla × atg (#E28)

Quick change of plans for today: Tesla uploaded a short video to Youtube this morning called TERAFAB.

While it’s not exactly going viral at 200k views within 20 hours, it’s doing reasonably well given Tesla has 2.9 million subscribers as of now. Clearly, there’s room for more.

The interesting part (for me) however is 0:37. Out of all the Tesla and SpaceX products and factory equipment shown, there’s something that is NOT made by Tesla. Not shown for a terribly long time and also unlabelled, but it does stand out:

That is a purchased machine. […]

22nd March 2026 23rd March 2026 By Bzzz In No Comment

Tesla Model S Grounding Stud (#P52)

[tiny update in #P52F1]
*IT Crowd emergency services voice* Has this…ever happened to you?

Well, probably not, nobody is driving old Tesla Model S’es. If however you do, and you get a sudden influx of weird and wonderful warnings that include the following, this blog post might help you out.

  • frunk sensor suddenly shouts at you with MCU_u005_FrunkOpen, despite the frunk clearly being closed correctly – starts off with sub-second warnings that can barely be read on the screen, progresses to super-annoying intermittent contact where it beeps at you every second for a new event, up to full failure where the fault can be ignored once via button and then just persists
  • low beams (Xenon) on passenger side are out, including a BC_W006_rightHeadLightFail warning about their malfunction – in advanced stages also the Xenon high beams might be unavailable and the LED daytime running lights may flicker or are off entirely
  • horn isn’t working anymore, silent (ha!)
[…]
8th March 2026 6th April 2026 By Bzzz In 1 Comment

Business Card scanning grid, scanning script, and some AI-supported post-processing (#P51)

Looks like we got another case of a DIY solution that competes with existing hardware. This time, it’s from my current quest of tidying up the rooms, especially in terms of old paper documents. Over the last 2 to 3 months, I have been scanning like a man madman and accumulated over 11000 pages plus quite a bunch more in terms of deduplication, e.g. realizing my main broker does still store ALL documents ever generated. Once fetched from their servers (in packets of 20 PDFs each…click click click), those replace printed documents right away, since my physical copies, either printed myself or sent by them via snail mail, are the exact same as the PDF – and those files are of course much smaller, labelled in a somewhat useful fashion, with proper original file dates, and at least partially searchable. […]

22nd February 2026 23rd February 2026 By Bzzz In No Comment

Poor man’s compliance testing: The EnderEMC (#P50)

Such a bold title, such vague blog post – I recently had the pleasure of comparing two very different systems for EMC pre-testing at the lab bench, and one of them gave me an idea.
The two systems were a

  • Y.I.C Technologies EMScanner / EMScanner+ / EMScannerR / EMScannerR+ (with an additional capital R, whatever SEO marketing genius came up with THAT idea), which is a base plate that has all of the signal pickup coils already integrated. Advantage being a fast scan since there’s no moving parts – with the drawback that the raster is fixed in X/Y but also Z direction, and the DUT more often than not needs to be placed upside down onto it.
[…]
1st February 2026 1st February 2026 By Bzzz In No Comment

Failed repair attempt on a BSH dishwasher 9000 683 387 power board (TNY264GN) (#P49)

Here’s something unusual for today: A failed repair attempt. Well, the patient is technically alive again, but very very sick and needs replacement. But he’s currently in a working state as a proof-of-concept

This PCB is from a work colleague, it’s not from my dishwasher. The “MELECS 9000 683 387” branded power board seems to be a major failure point in some BSH appliances (Bosch, Siemens, Gaggenau, Neff, Constructa, maybe even Thermador, Balay, Pitsos and Profilo if these sub-brands of BSH sell dishwashers, I didn’t check). […]

18th January 2026 19th January 2026 By Bzzz In No Comment

A little trip to Spain, for an “X” (#E27)

Unsurprising to everyone, my travel preparations were actually preparations for a road trip. And while there is no deeper meaning to the main target destination itself, it took me quite a while to get there (not using a straight line) and to get back afterwards (even more not using a straight line). And that’s not a good thing to announce to the world when the home address is just one click away ;)

Well, main objective was to visit the Tesla Supercharger at Xinzo de Limia, Spain, since that is (currently) the only supercharger in the world outside of China that starts with an “X”. […]

4th January 2026 4th January 2026 By Bzzz In No Comment

PMK GRUPO – Kofferraum Organizer Auto Zubehör | Auto Organizer Kofferraumtasche Wasserfest Faltbar und Verstellbar – Orange (WHL #116)

Super quick update from my quest of finding a suitable car trunk organizer: I got a pair of “PMK GRUPO” branded units, and while I very much doubt the claim of them being waterproof, I think I might settle with these and add reinforced plastic bags or similar storage as needed during the trip.

That’s the one (mostly marketing images for today!) – bought for 13.95€ a piece in orange, also available in gray and purple for that price, or one Euro cheaper in all black. Currently the colored ones are on Black Friday sale at 9.95€ – and the Black one isn’t

Anyway, sizing works reasonably well for a Tesla Model S trunk, two of these connected with the latches on their short sides do fit the entire trunk width with ~5cm spacing in between. […]

30th November 2025 1st December 2025 By Bzzz In No Comment