Here’s a novel little gadget, a USB powered soldering iron. The heating tip on these is very small & might be useful for very small SMD work. Bigger joints not so much, as it’s only rated at 8W. (Still breaks the USB standard of 2.5W from a single port). These
Here is a simple 555 timer based flyback transformer driver, with the PCB designed by myself for some HV experiments. Above is the Eagle CAD board layout. The 555 timer is in astable mode, generating a frequency from about 22kHz to 55kHz, depending on the position of the potentiometer. The
Here I will document progress in replacing standard halogen MR10 lights with LEDs. These units are from TruOpto, available through Rapid Electronics in the UK. They are 3W total, from 3x 1W emitters on an aluminium back plate. Here is the LED attached to a heatsink for testing purposes –