This and that.
This is the sequel to PSV3 Soldering Iron Hack - Part 1 where I already introduced the result of this whole project: a quite usable replacement firmware . Now let's see how we got there (so I guess it's rather a prequel ). I already showed my annotated board layout: Traced and annotated PCB layout, top layer (as always, click to enlarge). It was really helpful to create this image to get a first…
Intro # There are some good and inexpensive soldering irons available nowadays. Thanks to USB power supplies with Quick Charge 2.0/3.0 or Power Delivery support you basically only need a microcontroller for temperature control, a FET switching the heating element, a way to measure the soldering tip's temperature and a way to communicate with the USB supply. The one I call 'Pen Solder V3' (top,…
Nowadays when opening a cheap clock you will probably be greeted by the dreaded epoxy blob with a lot of traces going from it to the display or LEDs. Thankfully the designers of the Globaltronics GT-ACQI-22WO used a discrete display controller and no epoxy at all, so we have an easy starting point for our soon to be ESP32-enhanced clock! (As soon as I saw this, I went back to the store and bought…
This is a post about the software and hardware side of my recent project, building a mobile device that works like a Pokemon Go Plus with extra features. It is based on an Yohanes' ESP32 implementation of its protocol which uses the results of the reverse engineering efforts done by several people since 2017. A Pokemon was just caught as indicated by the green LED TLDR: My fork of pgpemu is…
I recently got a Govee H619A RGB LED strip. It is 5 meters long and its LEDs are grouped into segments which can be controlled individually. The main components are a controller box with 3 buttons, a 24V/1A wall wart, and the strip itself. The strip is divided into 20 segments with 6 RGB LEDs each. And of course there is a mobile app for remote control. top: the first segment of the RGB strip with…
Rave Generator 2 is a widely used free VST plugin that's basically a sampler/rompler with a bunch of included classic rave and hardcore samples. These instantly take you back to an era of dirty pitched up samples from orchestra stabs and piano chords. The FAQ file already sets the scene: Q: i like the sound of RaveGenerator but it aliases like hell, what can i do ? A: enjoy the dirty sound of the…
After finding out how to decode the CO2 sensor measurements in the previous post I wanted to look at other salvageable components of the "BreeRainz DM1308A". Battery Management # On the bottom side of the main PCB there is a battery management IC I didn't mention: HM4052 from Shenzhen Huazhimei Semiconductor Co., Ltd. It's quite interesting because it combines a 3.3V buck regulator with battery…
I recently bought the cheapest CO2 measurement device with an NDIR sensor that I could find: "BreeRainz DM1308A" for 25€ on Amazon. Credit: BreeRainz on Amazon I hoped to find something like the popular MH-Z19 inside which currently costs around 35€. My plan was to buy the cheaper device, save some bucks and to unsolder its CO2 sensor and use it in a DIY gadget with an ESP32. TLDR: The device…
I was looking for a quick way to write down some project notes. This inevitably led me to Static Site Generators and I especially looked at Netlify CMS and Jekyll . But I didn't want to rely on 3rd party services and CDNs to serve some simple pages with occasional images. In the end I picked a very simple Eleventy configuration based on https://github.com/11ty/eleventy-base-blog which doesn't…