A few months ago I did a teardown on this Anker PowerPort Speed 5 USB charger, but I didn’t get round to detailing the conversion to 12v I had to do, so I’ll get to that now I’ve got a couple more to convert over. Here’s the internals of the
The old Panasonic NV-M5 has the standard for the time CRT based viewfinder assembly, which will happily take a composite video signal from an external source. This viewfinder has many more connections than I would have expected, as it has an input for the iris signal, which places a
Here’s a cheap PSU from the treasure trove of junk that is eBay, rated at a rather beefy 400W of output at 12v – 33A! These industrial-type PSUs from name brands like TDK-Lambda or Puls are usually rather expensive, so I was interested to find out how much of a
Continue readingeBay Chinese Chassis Power Supply S-400-12 400W 12v 33A
Here’s a modern LED bulb, that unfortunately decided to disassemble itself within a few minutes of being installed in a light fitting! The base plastic snapped off the main aluminium body at the screw posts! The PCB in the base holds nothing but the input components. Above is the bridge
The multimode dimming/flashing modes on Chinese torches have irritated me for a while. If I buy a torch, it’s to illuminate something I’m doing, not to test if people around me have photosensitive epilepsy. Looking at the PCB in the LED module of the torch, a couple of components are
Continue readingMaplin/Refrakta Torch Modification & Mode Removal
Since I have a fair few 750GB disks sat doing nothing, I figured I’d get some USB3 caddies for them. Back when USB -> IDE caddies appeared, they were hideously expensive. Not so much these days! For £6 on eBay, you get a basic plastic box with the required bridge
Recently I decommissioned some networking equipment, and discovered the power supplies in some switches were single rail 12v types, with a rather high power rating. I figured these would be very good for powering my Ham radio gear. They’re high quality Delta Electronics DPSN-150BP units, rated at a maximum power
Continue readingCisco PSU Hack & Switched Mode PSU Background
Here is an AVR powered optical tachometer design, that I adapted from the schematic found here. I made a couple of changes to the circuit & designed a PCB & power supply module to be built in. The original design specified a surface mount IR LED/Photodiode pair, however my adjustment
This is a device to use an IDE or SATA interface drive via a USB connection. Here is the front of the device, IDE interface at the bottom, 2.5″ form factor. PCB removed from the casing. USB cable exits the top, 12v DC power jack to the left. SATA interface
Here is a cheapo 500W rated ATX PSU that has totally borked itself, probably due to the unit NOT actually being capable of 500W. All 3 of the switching transistors were shorted, causing the ensuing carnage: Here is the AC input to the PCB. Note the vapourised element inside the
This is an old cordless landline phone, with dead handset batteries. Here’s the handset with the back removed. Shown is the radio TX/RX board, underneath is the keyboard PCB with the speaker & mic. All the FM radio tuning coils are visible & a LT450GW electromechanical filter. Radio PCB removed