YIHUA 850AD Digital Display Hot Air Desoldering Station: Power inlet + power switch retrofit (WHL #85F1)

Small-ish update on the Yihua hot air station: Standby power draw is now zero!

But as is common, things weren’t quite as straight-forward as I had hoped for. Let’s start with a quick teardown of the unit, as promised. The lid is uneventful in that it has the same color on the inside as it does on the outside – and surprise, surprise, the holes go straight through Other than that, most of the chassis space is taken up by the pump, which is very reminiscent of the unit of the Toolcraft hot air station at work, even the sizing of the cable ties. […]

25th June 2023 16th July 2023 By Bzzz In No Comment

RIP Cadsoft/Autodesk Eagle (#R20)

Oh well, looks like we got another piece of software to mourn for…good ol’ Eagle is no more!

Autodesk announced in a recent blog post:

Effective June 7, 2026, Autodesk will no longer sell or support EAGLE. Moving forward, we will continue to invest our energy in Fusion 360 Electronics.

(Note that it says 2026: That’s the end of the support. However, nobody sane will buy into that package from now on and switch again with all their projects in less than three years…)

Sure, the announcement itself was a surprise, but the path was clear once Autodesk tried squeezing out money. […]

11th June 2023 11th June 2023 By Bzzz In No Comment

*NEW*National Instruments NI GPIB-USB-HS Interface Adapter IEEE 488 Controller (WHL #87F1)

Well hello again, welcome to the famous “the internet is full of fake GPIB adapters” show! Today we got… *drum roll*…a fake National Instruments GPIB-USB-HS! Like last week, but different!

In all seriousness, after the recent experience with the fake adapter from Amazon (and NI’s reaction, or the lack thereof), I decided to buy one myself. After all, my HP 6644A power supply does offer HPIB/GPIB so I could maybe control it remotely and log data (with a Raspberry Pi?), plus likely any outcome of delivered goods would be suitable for a blog post. […]

28th May 2023 29th May 2023 By Bzzz In No Comment

Fake National Instruments GPIB-USB-HS converter (and NI not caring about it) (WHL #87)

Niche hardware again for today, a USB to GPIB/IEEE-488 converter from National Instruments. Or at least what the Chinese have deemed necessary for a functional copy…but first things first.

This adapter was bought at work for connecting an ancient beast of a scope (a LeCroy LC334 – 4 channel, 500MHz/2GSa/s, 400W, 20kg spread across 50 liters of chassis volume, 9″ 640×480 color CRT) to a modern computer. While that sounds crazy (well, it is), that old hulk was purchased with a current probe, which is actually very useful for a current (ha!) […]

14th May 2023 21st September 2023 By Bzzz In No Comment

RIP RS DesignSpark Mechanical (#R19)

Well,

It looks like RS has pulled the plug on the free Designspark Mechanical 3D modelling software. I’ve only been using it for about three years, starting right on the transition from DSM4 to DSM5, but I spent countless hours with it, making or editing probably close to 100 models, plus opening hundreds more, e.g. recently checking electronic component STEP files before importing them into Altium. OpenSCAD doesn’t really work for complex geometries, and Sketchup, later Google Sketchup, was quickly dismissed when I tried DSM – it’s simply inferior software, at least, it was back in ~2019/2020, plus Google als tried monetizing it at that point. […]

30th April 2023 30th April 2023 By Bzzz In No Comment

JBC HDE soldering station repair/refurbishment (WHL #86)

Do you own one of those very expensive JBC soldering stations?
A damaged or defective one, maybe with a display (with salt water ingress) like this?

Or an abused case with pinky-sized holes and damaged inner wiring like this? (after a lot of cleaning!)

Or a smashed stand with dislocated tip holder (and several 3D printed replacements that all shattered like the original one after hard impacts on the floor) like this and this?

Or just a soldering iron with broken wiring near the moulded handle, caused by people ripping apart the bend relief and then folding it even tighter because they can…like this? […]

16th April 2023 16th April 2023 By Bzzz In 1 Comment

Samsung TV custom USB jacks (#R18)

Dear Samsung,

here’s a random thought: If you already know you’ve fucked up a device design, and you know it so well that your own folks have decided to create a custom solution because it’s obvious the end-user will tear apart a standard part in no time…then maybe (just maybe!)

  • don’t make that special part and fix your impractical design? Reaching inconveniently placed ports with minimal clearance for cables and devices is a terrible user experience in the first place?

    • …or

  • make that part available to everyone (you’re a big company, you can handle that!)
[…]
2nd April 2023 2nd April 2023 By Bzzz In No Comment

Panasonic TX-55AXW634 backlight “fix” lifespan data (WHL #84F1)

Someone’s busy, so here’s a lame, lazy follow-up post to the Panasonic backlight “fix” from WHL #84:

It died. Again. Another string of LED backlight bit the dust just four months after the first one. Guess they’re all the same type, age and power-on hours at the same load, so why wouldn’t they fail left, right and center once the first LED has reached its lifespan?

Well, I had fun disabling another string on the Rohm BD9479FV backlight driver. Exactly the same procedure as shown before, and conveniently, someone already routed AGND for the PWM pin to connect to . […]

19th March 2023 19th March 2023 By Bzzz In No Comment

YIHUA 850AD Digital Display Hot Air Desoldering Station Air Pump Can Adjust Temperature Heat Gun SMD Phone Soldering Station (WHL #85)

I got a (reasonably) big box from China!

Since changing jobs, I’m in the process of buying tools that I dearly miss – some of them are no longer easily accessible in the new place, some aren’t available at all, and some are so darn useful, I should have bought a unit for myself at home ages ago. A hot air station checks the last two boxes, since my regular 2000W hot air gun is certainly useful for like removing stickers or preheating boards, but temperature regulation clearly isn’t good enough for soldering. So…I bought a Yihua 850AD. […]

5th March 2023 5th March 2023 By Bzzz In No Comment

Panasonic TX-55AXW634 backlight (short-term) fix (WHL #84)

TVs are apparently still a thing, and so are defective ones. Here’s what I did to a 55″ Panasonic TX-55AXW634 with the red blinking light of death – likely also applicable to similar units of the “LA58 chassis” generation, e.g. the TX-48AX630B 48″ unit or the even smaller 40″ TX-40AX630E. While this fix isn’t perfect nor permanent (I heard it lasted for four months, when presumably another row of LEDs died), it’s good enough to keep the TV going for a bit longer, so one can order spare parts or decide/save up for a new unit. […]

19th February 2023 19th February 2023 By Bzzz In 1 Comment