Articles

Can a PLN 27 manifold bought from a Polish importer through one of Poland's best known mail order shops be dangerous? Today I present a product distinguished by the word SAFETY in its name, which translated from English means SAFETY. Will the Safety Power Socket from Lucky Hawk really... [Read more]

Today we take a look inside an old power supply made by a Polish company from Gliwice. I recovered the whole thing from scrap metal, so I'm going to check how this power supply has coped with years of use in an industrial device, examine whether it's still in working order at all,... [Read more]

How is the 'smart' remote-controlled Tuya lamp built? What Wi-Fi module is inside? To what extent does it heat up the interior when lit at full brightness, and can this heating be reduced somehow? Can this type of product be connected to the Home Assistant and used without the cloud?... [Read more]

What kind of soldering kit for a beginner? The HU-017A kit shown here costs just under a dozen zloty, and you can get it even cheaper in a promotion. It allows you to build a simple FM radio based on a ready-made RDA5807S module, a microcontroller with a 7-segment display for tuning... [Read more]

In the city where I live we have "Re-Use" shops alongside standard recycling centres (aka tips, dumps, household waste disposal facilities). These re-use centres are packed with donations and finds that would otherwise have gone into the general waste or recycled. Of course there's... [Read more]

Ever wondered what sits in the Flash memory from a modern TV? I invite you to a short presentation of the inside of the Samsung UE55MU6452U 55" 4K UHD Smart TV combined with reverse engineering and emulation of the T-Con controller firmware. Here I will show how such a TV is built,... [Read more]

Not everyone likes the distinctive loud click of relays accompanying the switching on of lights in most home automation products available. Nor does everyone have a neutral wire available in the box - in old installations it may have been unnecessary, and its absence makes it difficult... [Read more]

Today I am testing two small devices capable of temporarily backing up the power supply of a 5 or 12 V receiver in the face of an unexpected power outage. The first is a distinctive black box plugged into a USB cable, necessarily operating on 5 V only. The second is slightly larger,... [Read more]

Are modern LLM models run locally, on an old gaming laptop, able to meaningfully tag photos? Are modern models suitable for OCR and correctly recognise electronic circuits? I invite you to the Electrode test of artificial intelligence, this time enriched by the locally run model Gemma... [Read more]

The smart building market is maturing. Private investors, developers and installers are asking less and less for individual 'smart' devices and more and more for a coherent system that can be logically designed, commissioned, developed and serviced. This is where F&Home comes... [Read more]

I am going to start this thread as a WIP for decoding (another unknown) UART based protocol. I am going to present the findings so far but in a rough state as I am still working on figuring out what is in the packets. Assumption that I started with was that the packet is similar to... [Read more]

In engineering practice, there is often a need to control a relay or other receiver connected to a higher voltage (12V or 24V) using a signal from a microcontroller operating with 5V logic. The standard solution is to use an additional NPN transistor or optoisolator, which increases... [Read more]

I recently presented the running of the PIC16LF1659 as an HID keyboard or mouse controller . A gamepad or joystick can also be realised in a similar way, it just remains to determine how to handle the buttons and axes. This is a great opportunity to take a look inside two products... [Read more]

Today we are building a tiny clock with time keeping, we will realise it based on an 8-bit PIC12F683 microcontroller with only 128 bytes of RAM, a 7-segment display module with FD650 controller recovered from electro-junk and a DS1307 RTC clock. I will also show full waveforms from... [Read more]

I invite you to a practical test of the new image generator from OpenAI. In this topic I will test the performance of GPT-Image 2 on various electronics related tasks, there will be drawing schematics, describing devices and also editing photos and graphics. In addition, I will compare... [Read more]

I invite you to a demonstration of a Wi-Fi enabled electric kettle. Here I'll show how it pairs, what its mobile app offers, how it's built inside, and see if it can be altered with firmware to free it from the manufacturer's servers and connect it locally to Home Assistant. This... [Read more]

Today a little tidbit I came across while developing one of my projects. I was looking for a simple way to mechanically disconnect microcontroller/ESP controlled lines, with a minimum of additional components. This is how I came across the very small V23100-V4 dual signal relays.... [Read more]

What does it look like to implement a storage device driver in C? Can the tiny PIC16LF1459 microcontroller, with a modest 14 KB Flash memory and an even smaller 1 KB RAM, simulate a pendrive? Will it manage to write a text file to an EERAM 47L16 connected to it via I2C? Today is the... [Read more]

I bought a pack of 3 Feit OM60/RGBW/CA/AG(N) smart light bulbs The (N) in the model name seems to denote a newer revision from the already posted non-N version , as these use a Tuya T1-U-HL (Beken BK7238), not the BK7231N They still use the BP5758D LED driver IC. Since they have the... [Read more]

Two soldering irons in one kit and for only PLN 300 - is that a good deal? Here I'll introduce the Yihua 852D+ station and see how comfortable it actually is to work on a motherboard with it. I will test both a hot air and a flask soldering iron. I will take measurements at the 100°C,... [Read more]

I invite you to a little adventure with the PIC16LF1459, an 8-bit microcontroller made by Microchip, distinguished by its hardware USB support with a minimum of external components. You don't even need an external oscillator - the built-in one has enough precision. Here I will run... [Read more]

Transfer Multisort Elektronik (TME), a global distributor of electronic and electromechanical components, announced the expansion of its U.S. operations with the appointment of three experienced industry leaders: Mark Burr-Lonnon as CEO TME US, Krister Haggstrom as strategic advisor,... [Read more]

Here I will introduce the DigiTOP VP-16Аf voltage relay designed to protect electrical equipment from excessive electrical voltage. It offers a simple LED display and a programmable setting for the upper cut-off limit, hysteresis and turn-on response time. The device is available... [Read more]

Here is an account of building a two-channel dimmer based on an 8-bit PIC12F683 microcontroller and parts from electrical junk. The project will be written in C using the SDCC compiler. A single encoder will be used to control the brightness levels, and pressing the encoder will toggle... [Read more]

The SFS 133 surge protection power strip (product 99457) is available to buy for around PLN 80. It offers 4 230 V sockets, three USB sockets with a claimed current capacity of up to 2.1 A and a main switch-off button. Here I'll show its interior and check that it matches its description... [Read more]

I always look with curiosity at devices signed as Made in Poland, and this was also the case here. This tiny module with a four-digit display, four lights and three buttons is a temperature controller. According to the manufacturer, it is designed for use in the plastics industry,... [Read more]

Here’s a little curiosity for today. This piece of kit is completely outside my field of expertise and not from my era, but it might still be worth a look – an old triple timer dating back to the days of the USSR. The whole thing is built using semiconductors. Time to take a look... [Read more]

Some time ago I presented the interior of the Saia PCD2.C100 extension cassette , today I would like to show its main module, the PCD2.M120 base unit. The PCD2.M120 consists of an enclosure, inside of which is the main board and the bus for the I/O modules, and a cover with LEDs,... [Read more]

I would like to invite you to a presentation and a detailed analysis of the interior of the WT200-16A-W thermostat compatible with the Tuya app. The WT200-16A-W offers manual control via WiFi and schedule operation in 5+2, 6+1 or 7-day modes, with 6 time modes per day. The WT200-16A-W... [Read more]

The miniature uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) shown here provide uninterrupted operation for a 9/12 V router, USB devices (5 V) and two PoE devices (12/24 V), such as surveillance cameras. They declare a battery capacity of 10400 mAh. Two models will be tested - 15 W and 30 W,... [Read more]