Since I’m building optical power meters at the moment, I figured it was time to see what the Chinese have to offer in this department, and these meters were on offer over on AliExpress, at over 50% off. This is the Fieldbest I meter, and I got two versions –
I posted a couple of weeks back that I was soon to be the recipient of a new gigabit symmetric link to the intertubes – and there was a bit of a caveat of their use of CG-NAT due to the exhaustion of the IPv4 address space. To compensate I’ve
Here’s another Helium-Neon to add to the electric glassware collection, a 2mW Melles-Griot 05-LHR-088 which I pulled from the optical assembly from an ancient Spectra-Physics SP910 laser level. This tube is a standard Red 632.8nm with Random beam polarisation. The specifications are in the table below: The label shows that
Everyone who reads this website will know about the cost of living crisis – this is a global problem brought about by the combination of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the unfortunate situation in Ukraine at the present time. For us in the UK, the costs of energy have skyrocketed in
For 90% of the time I’ve run this website, it’s been run from a server in my house, over a domestic-grade ADSL connection. The problem has always been the very asymmetric download/upload bandwidth provided by domestic ISPs. Normally it’s about a 10:1 ratio these days (the current connection is 350MBit
I’ve been looking for ways to build a DIY Laser Power meter for some time now, but I had no way to calibrate anything. I have been aware of DIY thermopile sensors with TECs – but no way to verify any results until now. Since I have my Gentec meter
Time for another Rubidium Standard Teardown! This one was supposed to happen a year ago, however I completely forgot about this unit. This is an Efratom / Datum LPRO-101 Rb standard, which does differ somewhat internally from the previous unit I tore down. Above is the unit with the Mu-Metal
Continue readingEfratom LPRO-101 Rubidium Frequency Reference Teardown
Here we have an optical power meter, vintage 1991! This is a Gentec unit, with scaling to to handle up to 10W with a suitable powerhead. Powered either with 4 PP3 9v batteries, or from a 24v DC jack on the rear, this unit is quite versatile. I managed to
To run my postmix rig, I needed a carbonator, to turn tap water into soda water. These units are very common in pubs in the UK, and are very simple in construction. The unit is fed water at about 3 bar from the water main & food-grade CO² at
I bought two of these packs for my new DeWalt combi drill, as the branded packs are very expensive and there’s unlikely to be much of a difference in cells used. I was a little mistaken on this, as you’ll see! The top of the unit has the battery connections,
Since I got my new DeWalt combi drill, I needed a way to charge the batteries without having to resort to sticking blade terminals into the pack connectors – I didn’t purchase the branded charger, mainly due to cost. I also have a very capable multi-chemistry charger that handles multi-cell
Continue readingClone DCB090 DeWalt USB Battery Adaptor Teardown
New tool time! I figured now I’m a fully ticketed member of the F-Gas community, I’d treat myself to passing the course by buying a decent set of refrigeration gauges. This is the Yellow Jacket P51-870 Titan manifold, a fully digital unit with all the useful functions built in. Basically
Continue readingYellow Jacket Titan P51-870 Digital Manifold Teardown
Time for some more RF component teardowns, here’s a very high quality Directional Coupler from HP, I believe this was part of a Vector Network Analyser at some stage. The main body appears to be made of Brass, but the entire unit looks like it’s Gold plated – the shine
The time has come yet again, to reduce my rack footprint. For the last 5 years or so, this blog has been hosted on a small HP MicroServer Gen8, as at the time I needed a new host machine, and for some reason they were going by their thousands for
Now the cell modules have been removed from their original home, it’s time to get them repurposed! A custom mounting board has been constructed from timber, and the modules mounted on them. To say this assembly is heavy would be an understatement – it’s barely a two-man lift! As assembled
Continue readingBMW 5 Series Battery Pack – Reconfiguring The Modules & Wiring
Well, while working on the boat’s engine, I was surprised by this little sod, who’d managed to crawl into the air intake skin fitting on the transom, and got very irritated at the engine being fired up! How the little dude avoided getting sucked into one of the cylinders, I
Here’s some damage to a 1-week old Epever Tracer 4210AN MPPT Charge Controller, where some of the power FETs have decided they’ve had enough of this world. These are Alpha & Omega AON6512 N-Channel Enhancement devices, rated at 30V 150A. From probing around, these seem to be on the battery
Continue readingEpever Tracer 4210AN MPPT Charge Controller MOSFET Repair
Now it’s time to dig into the main contactor pack from the hybrid battery I tore down in a previous post. This unit contains the main output relays, precharge components, current measurement & protection. It’s pretty heavy, which isn’t surprising when you realise how much copper there is in this
Continue readingBMW Series 5 Hybrid Battery Contactor Pack Teardown
Here’s something I didn’t think I’d be doing! Here’s a teardown of a BMW 5 Series G30 530E Hybrid Battery pack – a monster 351V, 9.2kWh Lithium pack, obtained for it’s cells to replace the boat’s aging lead acids. This is something I didn’t have the safety gear to do
These days USB powerbanks are very common – ranging in capacity from about 1Ah, to about 20Ah. Internally, they’ve all got much the same format: Lithium Ion cylindrical or Lithium polymer pouch cells for energy storage DC-DC boost converter Microcontroller & LED Battery Gauge Display Lithium cell protection & charge
IPL hair removal is rather similar to laser hair removal – high energy photons are directed into the hair follicle to heat the cells up until death occurs, stopping the hair from growing. These units use high-energy Xenon flash tubes to do the job, and operate in exactly the same
Continue readingIPL (Intense Pulsed Light) Hair Removal Device Internals
My refrigerant leak detector has one flaw – from the factory it uses C-size alkaline cells. Considering I don’t normally stock these (nothing else I have uses them!), and they’re big & heavy, I decided to do a modification to run the unit from lithium cells instead. This would allow
Continue readingHLD-100+ Refrigerant Leak Detector Lithium Battery Mod
It occurred to me the other day that I’ve been running this blog now for over 10 years! This is the second iteration, as the first was lost in a server crash shortly after it went live. (Wasn’t so good with backups back then!). In that time the traffic to
Since I do a lot of camping, and several festivals per year (when there isn’t a pandemic on!), I identified the need for a proper fridge that can be powered from my solar setup. Such fridges & coolers already exist, that run from either mains AC, 12/24v DC, and some
Continue readingUndercounter Fridge – Conversion for 12 Volt Use
Just a quick teardown this month! This is an industrial RS-232/RS-485 to Ethernet serial converter.Not much to say about the outside of the unit, there’s the DB-9 connector for the 232 interface, and Phoenix connector blocks for the 422/485 interface. The main power input, and the Ethernet jack are on