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. […]

25th February 2018 24th February 2018 By Bzzz In 1 Comment

OJADE Mini Plastic 21-Cell Toolbox, Electronic Components IC Chip Storage Box Case (#R4)

I wonder if I should extend or split the “Rant” category? After all, there’s another thing to mock…this time on DX :mrgreen:

Haven’t bought it, but it appeared in my heavily filtered RSS. DX has a limited and apparently redactionally populated inventory, so somebody at DX has to have put this turd online.

What is it? Well, a plain storage box. SKU 504263. 21 cells. 7 per week (starting with Sunday), one for each evening, morning and noon. In that order. Whoever the fuck thought that was a proper arrangement.

“Gramps, did you take your four imperial screws and the one nut for breakfast yet?” […]

18th February 2018 4th February 2018 By Bzzz In No Comment

DC5V USB PORT 10X10CM El panel Electroluminescent BackLight panel el foil el paper el sheet Led Board Display with Inverter (WHL #35)

Here’s another random thing from a colleague: A small Electroluminescent panel!

I was asked for an area lighting thingy that is slightly flexible. So unless one wants to bend the stiff backing of a mobile phone backlight unit, EL foil seems to be the solution. I’m not sure if that fits his needs, but I’m confident he’ll tell me if it’s not ;) I bought this thing quite recently on AliExpress (mid-January 2018) for 5.22€ including shipping. Yes, shipping cost have increased by a bit, but shipping times have improved as well. […]

11th February 2018 4th February 2018 By Bzzz In 3 Comments

BenQ EX3501R 3440×1440 21:9 35″ Curved VA monitor – AMA modes revisited for response time measurements (WHL #33F3)

Finally got a photo diode for re-measuring the panel response time of the BenQ EX3501R. It’s a Vishay BPW34 type with 7.5mm² of active area, 70pF of capacitance at 0V, 600 to 1050 nm of spectral bandwidth (Reichelt claims quite a bit more?), peak sensitivity at 900nm and a relatively big half sensitivity angle of 65 degrees. Yeah, capacitance goes down when reverse biasing it, whatever, just slap it onto a probe and let’s go:

It’s not perfectly aligned at the screen, but that shouldn’t do much. I’m running GIFs with #000000, #7F7F7F and #FFFFFF frames, flickering at 20Hz. […]

28th January 2018 29th January 2018 By Bzzz In 1 Comment

KitchenPalz and the 24 hours of customer retention (#R3)

Here’s a lazy start in 2018: This isn’t from a Wan Hung Lo item, but aside from spelling, I could totally imagine this as one of those teeny tiny “rate us 5 stars!” notes that were quite common a few years ago.

Have a look:

:roll:

So…

First thing (which I realized last): Thanks for buying a Stainless Steel Colander Set? Well, technically, it is stainless steel bowls with plastic lids and a silicone (non-slip) coating around the bottom. If that was intended to be a set of sieves, well, good job QA, good job. Do I need to send them back, or can I just drill holes as I like? […]

14th January 2018 14th January 2018 By Bzzz In No Comment

USB 3.0 to 10/100/1000 Gigabit RJ45 Ethernet LAN 1000Mbps Network Adapter (WHL #34)

While I’m at computer peripherals…this one has been laying around for quite some time. Bought in January 2017 for 5.68€ on AliExpress, but current pricing is basically the same. Guess IC prices haven’t dropped much, although laptops that do not carry an ethernet port due to height limitations have become more common. Yeah, bullshit, but Jon Doe likes thin hardware with cooling problems. Always reminds me of the Macbook Air / Thinkpad X300 ad parody…

That aside, I really wanted to compare this Gigabit adapter with the two other types of network interfaces that I have available – some Realtek onboard stuff that I deem “good enough” for everyday use, and some PCIe addon card from Intel that is usually considered worth the upgrade (after all, people still buy sound cards, right?). […]

31st December 2017 31st December 2017 By Bzzz In No Comment

BenQ EX3501R 3440×1440 21:9 35″ Curved VA monitor – line flicker (WHL #33F2)

Ahh, good old Christmas.

Been busy with other display-related things, but haven’t been using the BenQ at all. Now that everything is quiet and there are a couple days of vacation, I did fire up the system and played PoE for half an hour. And another half an hour to take some videos and photos. For whatever reason, there are now entire lines flickering during gameplay, and I claim these weren’t present the last time I used the thing. GPU driver update (still on 17.8.2 for my Radeon 260X)? Someone changed something in the PoE code (which caused an update of 600+ MB)? […]

25th December 2017 25th December 2017 By Bzzz In No Comment

BenQ EX3501R 3440×1440 21:9 35″ Curved VA monitor – AMA modes (WHL #33F1)

This post is partially outdated – please have a look at the updated version #33F3 with proper photo diode measurements as well!

 

So…I tried measuring response time of the monitor, and I didn’t really succeed. I’m missing MY PRECIOUS photo diode, so doing the same thing with an LED…is pretty meh. Don’t take these for real, time must be off due to high capacitance (“high” being some 10pF including leads?) and the LED not being as sensitive as a proper photo sensor diode.

Well anyway, the shape of the traces tells us a little about the AMA setting of the display, which is BenQ speech for the Advanced Motion Acceleration or pixel response / panel overdrive setting. […]

3rd December 2017 29th January 2018 By Bzzz In No Comment

BenQ EX3501R 3440×1440 21:9 35″ Curved VA monitor (WHL #33)

Getting sidetracked lately, I know…

Why not post about something that doesn’t come from some Wan Hung Lo factory? I could write a review and put it in some hardware forum, but as there are very few reviews out there as of now, let’s try tweaking visitor count a little ;)

The BenQ EX3501R arrived earlier today (HUGE 100x65x35cm³ box!), and I was waiting for something like that for the past two years already. Manufacturers obviously like to spoil products these days, every new monitor of that kind has something that puts me off big time – no (or very crude) height/tilt adjustment, glare (glossy) coatings, insane stands with integrated electronics meaning no VESA mounts, basically nonexistant FreeSync ranges on “gaming” displays, flickering in FreeSync mode, or something else that somebody probably got a raise for inventing the bullshit. […]

28th November 2017 4th December 2017 By Bzzz In 6 Comments

Bloody chip brokers…(#R2)

Been a bit lazy in here as I was busy otherwise – visiting family always yields an entire car full of old and new goodies for me. This time, not only another chunk of records and random crap from the attic came into my possession, but also a damaged flatscreen TV. Well, I don’t watch TV at all, I didn’t have the equipment to do so nor the urge, but as already posted, I am forced to pay bloody GEZ TV fees for not watching one of the dozens of German propaganda stations. Now, the TV was broken (why else would people donate stuff), just like a lot of other electronics from my brother’s apartment. […]

26th November 2017 27th November 2017 By Bzzz In No Comment