Category: basic building blocks

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. […]


100W Aluminum Power Metal Shell Case Wirewound Resistor ±5% 0.1R 0.5R 1R 2R 6R 8R 10R 20R 100R 1K ohm Aluminium Shell Resistor – Dummy load project (WHL #56)

Something very basic for today: Resistors. Yaay. :lol:

I was tasked with troubleshooting a Blu-Ray player that cut the sound a few minutes into movies repeatedly. Sounds like a thermal issue to me, and after the local electronics shop grabbed 35 bucks for an “inspection”, yielding a “motherboard issue” which makes this Samsung heap of sh.. a total loss, it was given to me for a last look into it, before it was tossed. Of course the owner would never buy a Samsung player again, as this high-end model played Blu-Rays just fine, but does refuse to do so with double-layer DVDs, which his previous Samsung DVD player was absolutely capable of. […]


PWM Pulse Frequency Duty Cycle Adjustable Square Wave Signal Generator Module (WHL #43)

Haven’t reviewed a lot of China gadgets lately, have I? Well, what about a tiny PWM generator…

I remember having the need for some good old TTL PWM signal and being too lazy to program an Arduino for it. I mean it is dead simple and there are examples included, but hooking up some knobs for live modification of the duty cycle and possibly the frequency as well, nah. There has to be a Wan Hung Lo solution to this, and indeed, there is.

This unit was actually purchased via eBay, as Ali wanted significantly more money for it. I’ve checked and now the eBay is the more expensive dealer, as it basically always is these days. […]


3590S-2-103L 10K Ohm Rotary Wirewound Precision Potentiometer Pot 10 Turn vs genuine Bourns and Vishay pots (WHL #36F1)

Quick follow-up on the fake Bourns pots – only thing you get when reporting IP stuff is the following mail and a case ID:

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Beetle Virtual Keyboard BadUSB Pro Micro ATMEGA32U4 Module Mini Development Expansion Board For Arduino Leonardo R3 DC 5V I2C (WHL #37)

Having no internet connection because your telephone provider screws up is bad enough – but this time, I screwed up. D’oh…
Well, I’m back, and now speeds have doubled. And cost has halved. Was that worth two weeks of heavily limited 2G/4G cellphone tethering interwebs? I don’t know, I don’t want to do that again… :???:

Today’s item is a small Arduino compatible board. I bought this mid-February for 3.52€ including shipping on AliExpress, and it arrived yesterday.

Why do I buy such a limited version instead of one of the larger (Pro Micro/Mini, etc.) […]


3590S-2-103L 10K Ohm Rotary Wirewound Precision Potentiometer Pot 10 Turn vs genuine Bourns and Vishay pots (WHL #36)

Visiting the dark side of China today – product piracy.

First things first, I actually bought this item twice from two different sellers on AliExpress. One back in September for 1.07€ and now two more for 0.95€ each in early January, just to be able to kill one during inspection. The seller may be the same (I’ve seen that recently from BME280 sensors, review to come), but the shop name is different. It is intended as replacement for the current adjustment knob on my electronic load, as I am an idiot and during build I set the voltage over the pot not to the two end pins, but to one pin and the wiper. […]


Breadboard friendly Four Decade Programmable Resistor Board, 1%, 1/4W, KIT (WHL #25)

Got some more Open Hardware today! Not mine, though…it’s a four decade resistor adapter from luftek, who apparently comes from Slovenia. He has a github repository for his project called Dekada if you want to check it out (literal git checkout is also possible :) ). I happened to buy Version 0.1 back in September 2016 for dirt-cheap 1.99 USD per unit – I bought two pieces via eBay, directly from luftek. Unlike the Wan Hung Lo guys, we in Europe generally have to pay a reasonable amount of money for postage…in this case 3.98 USD. […]


Black 0-9 Digits Single Unit Pushwheel Thumbwheel Switch (WHL #11)

Folks, this is a big one. I will split into two articles to make the item review available now and show the finished project later (once I got a box around it). Maybe even three articles to post DMM comparison data. Today, I will show the unit and the first measuring results.

Back in January ( :neutral: ) I bought a 10-pack of these dials for 5.33€ including shipping at AliExpress. I saw these in the EEVblog forums and decided to have a go. And now you know the purpose of the assorted SMD resistors in WHL #10 ;)

First things first: Shipping took ages, and quality is very Wan Hung Lo’ish. […]


0805 SMD Resistor,1% 123 valuesX10pcs=1230pcs,Chip Resistor Electronic Components Package, Resistor Samples kit (WHL #10)

10 Posts, and I haven’t overtaken Dave Jones in popularity yet. I’m clearly doing something wrong! Maybe I should change something…what about “let’s not complain”…for today? ;)

Really, I cannot gripe about today’s review item even though it actually is pretty far away from advertised. I have ordered a set of 0805 SMD resistors via AliExpress for the extremely high price of 3.87 Euros including shipping (that was actually back in January 2016 – stuff piles up!).

Sure, entire reels of 0805 resistors cost measly 10 Euros for 5000 pieces (1%), that’s next to nothing per unit. […]