To be fair, this made short work of completely shaving my head. A task complicated by my very dense and fine hair that feels closer to fur than hair.
But that circuitry is squirmily minimalist. I'm not sure if the chip has a dedicated charge control section built in, or if it's ...
2023-03-09 23:22:56 +0000 UTC View Post
This is just a fun, but still very useful, project that uses scavenged components to create a backup "comfort" light source for use in very dark areas or during power outages. There's no circuit board and really just a diode and resistor, neither of which is critical.
You could make o...
2023-03-07 06:10:26 +0000 UTC View Post
This was a real beast to get apart. I thought the screws on the front were going to release everything, but there are a significant number of plastic sections that clip tightly together.
I cobbled together a simple mains driver to show the LEDs in one module glowing at low level so we...
2023-03-07 00:13:44 +0000 UTC View PostFor those who knew Furr from the live stream chat, I've just received the news that he passed away peacefully this evening.
2023-03-03 20:46:58 +0000 UTC View Post
Here's a link to the weekend stream:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVWwFGANJYc
2023-03-03 00:14:18 +0000 UTC View Post
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fXV0tVIEOs
2023-03-02 20:15:52 +0000 UTC View Post
An odd find on eBay. It's a lamp that uses a thick and heavy ceramic PCB for the LEDs to suck the heat away from them quickly for convection air cooling.
It was unrealistically cheap for what it is, making me wonder if it was a listing error or stock being dumped. But further ex...
2023-03-02 05:40:34 +0000 UTC View Post
The first rule of moonshine club is...
This is the next drinks carbonation video, although I'm not sure I'd class undiluted moonshine as a drink. More a pandemic-grade sanitiser or PCB cleaner.
The results were very interesting though. There was even a bit of cryogenic fog...
2023-03-01 02:19:51 +0000 UTC View Post
A rather interesting device that allows liquid refrigerant to be diverted to either, both or none of the outlet ports.
in the near future I may be testing to see whether YouTube prioritises videos with mid-run video adverts. If I do, I will strategically position the adver...
2023-03-01 01:40:14 +0000 UTC View Post
I'm not sure that Mercedes would be too keen to actually endorse this product.
I did learn something new about the particular driver chip in this unit when I tried to hack it. One variable affects another variable, so I'd guess that tuning the driver to a specific product may involve ...
2023-02-27 06:02:45 +0000 UTC View Post
Here's the link to the weekend stream:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o29D98xHJ1Q
2023-02-25 14:55:05 +0000 UTC View Post
What do we do with all these spare microcontroller pins? We'll just add loads of extra LEDs with a single resistor for them all as a feature.
Not a bad little light. Strange police-mode that might cause issues if used in a public area.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yprg6ievg2o
2023-02-23 20:33:07 +0000 UTC View Post
The most pleasing thing about this light is the use of a modern LED driver chip to run a vintage mercury discharge lamp.
The circuitry has some strange features, and one very shady one.
2023-02-23 06:12:49 +0000 UTC View Post
I've seen these being used in small lamp factories in China where they assemble the lamps manually.
It's a specialist crimping tool that uses ten spikes to crimp the metal cap onto the plastic lamp bases.
Needless to say there will be custom lamp making videos now.
I've included...
2023-02-22 06:13:20 +0000 UTC View Post
I made a video about the original Nokero light about two years ago, and unfortunately may have caused them supply issues by releasing it during the pandemic.
I deliberately avoided making a video about this unscrupulous clone, but since they seem harder to get now that they can't cash in on...
2023-02-20 07:43:27 +0000 UTC View Post
Here's the link to the weekend stream:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON-HFIdlJ3E
2023-02-18 09:54:07 +0000 UTC View Post
After testing the UV detection card I took a look online for the UV sensitive colour changing pigment it used, and found that you can buy it as a bare pigment powder.
I think the rather dramatic warnings on the packet reflect the fact that the supplier I used is clearly aimed at industrial ...
2023-02-18 08:12:12 +0000 UTC View Post
Here's the link for the quiet Patreon stream.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJsJ97bypM4
I'm probably going to jump the recent exploding ioniser video to the front of the queue and release it tonight. I kinda want to see the reactions.
2023-02-14 17:06:13 +0000 UTC View Post
No literally... A short about a short.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ni0F-_NZge0
2023-02-13 22:04:33 +0000 UTC View Post
This video turned out slightly more exciting than I expected.
It started off as testing two more fake ionisers, but one had a very special extra feature.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENFxBLoQjIM
2023-02-13 04:36:39 +0000 UTC View Post
Here's the link to the weekend stream:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVvkclcoZ_o
2023-02-11 05:32:41 +0000 UTC View Post
For a product like this from a pound shop, I wasn't expecting the linearity of the light along the length to be so good. It seems to be really well engineered side glow fibre optic.
The circuitry is simple, but has an oddity. Possibly a mistake?
Here's the link to the quiet Patreon stream:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLjJ8SvT3yM
2023-02-09 20:17:29 +0000 UTC View Post
There's only one thing better than a Poundland lamp and that's a very dead one for our exploration.
The circuitry in this is actually quite weird, and with a mystery component that I can't identify.
2023-02-09 04:36:36 +0000 UTC View Post
Just a quick video to show the two modes of this card in operation.
It's designed to give a visual indication that your UV source is emitting roughly in the right spectrum. The test method for both types of UV is different.
The card can also be used to test things like glasses f...
2023-02-09 00:28:13 +0000 UTC View Post
Although I've featured Wago terminals and their clones in the past, I've never really explored the internal mechanism in detail.
I have now. And the clone was actually surprisingly good.
Reassembling the clone was easy, but the Wago did not go together again, as it has lots of l...
2023-02-08 04:44:42 +0000 UTC View Post
Having quite enjoyed exploring some other keychain power banks I thought I'd check out some other ones from eBay.
Let's just say that this one has a disappointing feature, and it's very fortunate that my Ruideng USB tester apparently has reverse polarity protection!
