AliExpress unbag joy - Electroluminescent panel, annoying cricket, tools and grow lights

[00:00:00]Let's have an AliExpress unbagging and the first thing we're going to start with here is an electroluminescent panel. So, I shall just get the power supply on. I believe this operates at 12 volts.

[00:00:11]And this is a material that glows over its full surface area.

[00:00:16]If it seems like a great idea, it kind of is, but it is also isn't it? Because it's notorious for having certain weaknesses.

[00:00:26]Anyway, here's a little power supply and you'll probably hear this buzz when it's powered up because they run at quite low frequency.

[00:00:32]And it is powering the material with AC.

[00:00:36]So, let me grab the bench power supply here, crank it up to about 12 volts.

[00:00:45]Hook it up to these leads.

[00:00:47]Hopefully, red is positive and black is negative. We'll find out in due course.

[00:00:53]And it has lit. The panel is lit. Let me You won't be able to see it cuz electroluminescent material isn't super bright, but let me change the lighting.

[00:01:04]I think that is a fairly accurate representation of this material. Some of these materials, you can cut them to size, but it's important to note that electroluminescent material does not like moisture. I don't know if they've addressed this issue. I don't know if if they've resolved it yet, but it tends to go dark in bits when it does get moist and also it can permeate. If this was to get rain on it, it would potentially permeate through the plastic front and then it would go dark as well. The other thing that they do is they degrade in intensity very quickly. So, at the moment this is 12 volts at 90 milliamps, which is reasonable enough. And it is bright enough. It is casting some light onto the stuff in the vicinity. It acts like a sort of light emitting capacitor.

[00:01:46]Okay, watch your eyes. It's about to get bright again.

[00:01:50]So, if you can't already hear it, I'll hold this up to the microphone.

[00:01:55]You might hear that. Uh, it's quite a high pitched.

[00:01:58]But, uh, actually, would you have heard that because [clears throat] this has apparently just come off? Uh, I'll hold that up again.

[00:02:05]Uh, it's quite a high pitched, but the way these work, they apply high frequency AC at about 100 V across this.

[00:02:11]You can get quite a tingle off the output of these. Okay, that's interesting. Oh, it's available in selection of colors, but the native color is a sort of ice blue. It's a turquoise-y white. Anything other is trying to change that color and it reduces the efficiency.

[00:02:26]Okay, what's next? Uh, a pen.

[00:02:31]People love pens. I'm not surprised. Do you you use them a lot in everyday life, and there are some interesting ones. This should theoretically be quite an interesting one because it is a multi-function pen. Let me bring in the Let me find the notepad.

[00:02:53]So, what makes this pen quite unusual is that it's marked around the barrel with black, red, point five, and blue.

[00:03:00]Whichever one is pointing up the way when you push the button in is the one that will pop out the end.

[00:03:05]So, for instance, this should be the blue. It is the blue.

[00:03:10]But, you can press this button on the little, uh, pocket clip and it pops out. If I was to turn it to the position of red the red has protective stuff in it. I thought the blue had protective stuff earlier on. Oh, well.

[00:03:27]Uh, it's maybe inside, and that will then write red.

[00:03:31]Uh, you've also got to, uh, black which also has a protective coating on it.

[00:03:41]But, more interestingly if you turn it round to the way this is pointing up and push it in you end up with a propelling pencil. And when you click the button at the end, it pops out uh pencil lead.

[00:03:56]And you can just keep uh popping it out as needed to the desired length.

[00:04:00]That's quite interesting.

[00:04:02]So, to refill the pencil lead, I'm not really sure.

[00:04:09]I would guess it's only got a single lead in it. I suppose you'd feed it in from the end.

[00:04:15]And uh it maybe I don't know if it holds a reservoir inside.

[00:04:19]But, that's what's inside of it.

[00:04:21]Interesting.

[00:04:22]There's a little bit of blue cover that was uh supposed to be in the end of that pen, but was apparently inside.

[00:04:28]Excellent. Now it's out, that should be better.

[00:04:31]But, that's quite novel that you just choose your color and write.

[00:04:36]Interesting. Right. Okay. What's next?

[00:04:41]This.

[00:04:42]This product, it's one of these things that looks as though it could be 3D printed. It'd be nice in a way if it wasn't.

[00:04:52]But, we'll find out when we open it.

[00:04:56]It's a screwdriver bit holder that is 3D printed.

[00:05:01]I wonder whose design this is.

[00:05:03]I mean, it doesn't look too badly 3D printed.

[00:05:09]But, for this application where you want to get hex bits and store them in it, are these going to fit?

[00:05:14]Let's wrangle a hex bit [clears throat] out. Oh, that is super tight. Oh, that is very tight.

[00:05:21]Is it going to fit?

[00:05:23]Yes. Oh, that's not bad. There are some strands of the 3D printing uh material across it, but it's just breaking them as it goes in.

[00:05:31]That's okay. I wonder what it's designed to hook onto. Is it pegboard, perhaps?

[00:05:36]So, you screw your put your screwdriver in here, and then you store all your bits uh in layers around along here. That's not bad. That is actually quite a useful bit of gear.

[00:05:48]It's not that expensive.

[00:05:50]How can they 3D print it for that cost?

[00:05:52]I mean, I know they're using 3D printing farms, but there's not going to be much money in this, is there?

[00:05:58]It's certainly not something you could 3D print in the UK. So, even with a farm, it would take quite a bit of time to print. Or America, for that.

[00:06:06]Now, this is a solar-powered fan.

[00:06:11]The point of this is that if you've got an outhouse somewhere, what does it say?

[00:06:16]Uh it says, incidentally, that it is a 12-V solar-powered fan.

[00:06:22]Ooh, what's that?

[00:06:26]Let's peel this off and see if that uh blemish goes with it.

[00:06:31]Is it a pockmark in the resin?

[00:06:34]There's a wee indentation in the resin, that's it.

[00:06:36]1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8. So, that's 4 V.

[00:06:41]A really Hold on, where's that box?

[00:06:51]12-V solar fan. Right. But anyway, you get a little fan with it, and you plug it into this, and when given uh appropriate sunlight, the fan will run. Let me hold this up to my workbench lights, and we'll see how well it runs.

[00:07:11]Or not, as the case uh I can see it trying to run.

[00:07:17]Oh, that's not great.

[00:07:20]Oh, that's uh it's it's struggling.

[00:07:24]What current does it require to run?

[00:07:28]Uh let me get the bench power supply on, and we'll give this a wee test at the 4 V that I reckon that solar panel would put out, and we'll see what sort of current it uh it shows.

[00:07:43]I hope the outside is negative. Isn't this fan that's about to dismiss? Well, there we go.

[00:07:48]It's drawing 130 milliamps at 4 volts.

[00:07:55]Mhm, so really this fan's only really going to run when it's full sunshine hitting this. That might be suitable. It might just be that you need extra cooling on a hot day, but I think the idea of these is that you can put them in a outhouse or or a camper or something like that. And on bright sunny days, the fan doesn't need to start and it starts blowing air through to keep the fridge dry.

[00:08:19]It's to be honest uh I'm not totally going to say recommend this. I think it also looks a very cheap and crappy molded fan.

[00:08:28]I think you'd be better getting yourself a nice computer fan and a nice fat 12-volt solar panel. But, you know, this is a start. Glad I didn't order the do fan kit.

[00:08:40]Now, something annoying.

[00:08:44]Deliberate Oh, no, that's not. That's not the annoying thing. Where is the annoying thing?

[00:08:48]There it is.

[00:08:51]That could also be annoying if it doesn't work, but this is the deliberately annoying thing.

[00:08:59]People have asked if I could take a look at one of these. I'm not a huge fan of stuff like this, although I have built annoying things in the past that work in the same way. So, this thing is designed to be planted in someone's room.

[00:09:13]You hide it in the room out of sight.

[00:09:18]There's a little battery tab.

[00:09:24]And it makes noises.

[00:09:32]What else does it do? Is it just chirping noises? No, it just says cricket sounds. Some of them can make more noises.

[00:09:39]Hey, It makes a sound every 6 to 20 minutes. All sounds last for round an hour. If you want it sound again, please switch off. Oh, so it doesn't do it continually. Okay, so it is just designed It's not to be designed to be left for a complete nuisance where you just leave it in someone's place all the time.

[00:09:56]I did that to a gaffer that I did not get on very well with in a job.

[00:10:00]I made a little bit of uh Well, I think this was supposed to hinge and it's it's broken. Anyway, I made a bit of uh I made a little device that just used a 555 to and a piezo sounder and it just made a quiet peep and I stuck it down the end of a bit of pipe or trunking. At the time, he did find it. He was annoyed. He punished me.

[00:10:19]That's what I deserved. Anyway, that's interesting.

[00:10:25]I don't think we've got crickets here.

[00:10:27]I've never Have I heard crickets in the UK? I'm not really sure.

[00:10:31]Uh while we've got this here, let's slit this thing open.

[00:10:37]And we'll see if it can open.

[00:10:42]It is They put the label over the thing, so it's not so easy to open. This is a little passive infrared operated light.

[00:10:51]Now, you can see it's got a decent lithium cell in there.

[00:10:56]And it gives you the choice of warm white, cold white, both, and off. Well, I say off, it's actually putting light out the side, isn't it?

[00:11:06]But theoretically, any instructions with this? No. There's a quality control sticker. We can put that right in the bin. Do you think these come pre-printed with this little thing on it as well?

[00:11:16]But anyway, it's a passive infrared light uh and uh when you walk by in the vicinity, it powers on. It's USB-C rechargeable.

[00:11:26]I'll give that a test. It's going to have fairly standard circuitry, I think.

[00:11:31]But it's quite nice because it's a tiny little thing that can just be conveniently put up somewhere.

[00:11:37]Okay.

[00:11:38]Right. What's next?

[00:11:42]What was this?

[00:11:43]Oh, yes. Right. Okay. So, this It says four-in-one cat eye magnet tool.

[00:11:48]This is where we have to crack out the nail polish magnetic nail polish nonetheless.

[00:11:55]Let me just turn the bench power supply off. Get the cables out the way here.

[00:11:59]Ooh.

[00:12:00]There's another thing here.

[00:12:02]This is a soft start for things like motors. We'll give that a test. I'm wondering how it works. Is it phase angle control?

[00:12:11]Don't know. We shall find out. But anyway, this is, as I say, four-in-one cat eye magnet. If I just cut right through the instructions, probably.

[00:12:21]Oh, it's a box.

[00:12:25]I did get the pink one, you'll be glad to know.

[00:12:32]And this basically has shaped magnets on the ends.

[00:12:37]Right.

[00:12:39]So, now I have to set something up. So, let's get this one open.

[00:12:48]Very very tiny bottles. It's that thing They looked bigger in the listing, and it wasn't super mega cheap listing either. So, that's quite annoying, but not to worry.

[00:13:00]I'm going to have to zoom right down this. I'm wondering what I can actually put this on. Right, tell you what. I shall find something that I can use as a demonstration surface for this. I'm not going to paint my fingernails.

[00:13:13]Uh I'll also need my ultraviolet curing device because this is ultraviolet cured stuff. Let me set something up.

[00:13:20]Okay, let's try this. It's not so easy to do in studio environment. But anyway, we've got a selection of these gels that are dark one here with purple magnetic glitter, a blue one with green magnetic glitter and so on. And if I choose some of these colors, I'll use several of them.

[00:13:37]I will put pools of them on this black surface which should perhaps show this better, maybe.

[00:13:43]So, if I literally just blob some down, initially it looks very glittery. You can't really see that. There's the glitteriness. That's okay, I'll hold them up afterwards.

[00:13:52]Let's uh also put some of the green down.

[00:14:00]I think this is a an art form, much like the professional nail salons deal with.

[00:14:06]I'm going to also put this uh dark with pink glitter on.

[00:14:13]Ooh, that's very dark, yes. All you're seeing at the moment is not an awful lot. That's fine. It's okay. The magic is about to happen because I'll tilt this back a bit.

[00:14:22]And if I bring move that out the way, drop it on the floor in fact. If I zoom down in this, right?

[00:14:32]And I bring a a magnet in the vicinity, I'll actually bring this one over the top.

[00:14:38]Has that shown that the this created a slight impression? I think you have to hold it there for a second, but it seems if you hold it for too long it uh spoils effect, but you've got other magnets like this one that you can go like that and it'll sweep and it gives this very three-dimensional effect.

[00:14:55]I'll try that in that one as well. I don't know if that worked that well, but if I put the magnet at the back, you'll definitely see as I stir about the you'll see the sort of effect of the glitter.

[00:15:08]And uh once you've basically got your effect uh you can then get an ultraviolet light. I'll have to go back down to the bench for this. You can get your ultraviolet light and you can place it over the things once they've got the pattern in as desired and after a short delay and once the resin has cured it locks the pattern in place. Oh, it's still sticky. That's all right. That was our low power device and not being used properly.

[00:15:39]But that's interesting. Can't think of many other uses but it is interesting.

[00:15:43]Okay, next item.

[00:15:45]And the next item is the soft starter.

[00:15:47]It's worth mentioning these magnets they provide with it are multi-pole so they provide quite interesting effects but if you hold them there too long it kind of I don't know what it does. It basically it all goes like the glitter disappears.

[00:16:00]I don't know if it's because it clumps or because it's maybe just polarizing but stirring it up with the magnet will actually get it back again. These are powerful neodymium magnets. I'm going to have to put them somewhere now because they're just going to stick stuff all the time. I should put them down there. Okay, let's take a look at this.

[00:16:17]So this is a soft start. Now it says it's rated for 230 volts at 20 amps. Not sure I'd rate it that. A serial aluminum heat sink.

[00:16:29]Does this cover come off?

[00:16:31]No, it doesn't. Well, let's try it out and demo take the cover off and see if we can see what's inside of it. It's probably resin potted. But anyway, I shall rig this up. I'm going to put it in series with a light bulb and we'll see if it does actually ramp the light bulb up. I'll just set that up right now.

[00:16:46]And here is my shady setup. I've put a Chubby Chinese clone connector onto this just cuz it's the first one that came to hand and I'll put this in here and this just goes in series with the load.

[00:17:00]And then I'll put this in here making sure the power is off.

[00:17:03]Put this in here and the other connect to the lamp. Can you tell I didn't have a lamp holder? I don't need more lamp holders.

[00:17:10]And if I turn this power on and it is a soft start it should ramp up.

[00:17:16]It did. It seemed to go up and would you say that was in steps?

[00:17:23]Or is it just a shimmer that you're seeing because of the camera shutter speed and it can see tones and shimmer.

[00:17:30]Okay, that that works.

[00:17:32]I feel the need and it's not a NTC thermistor because it is resetting instantly. That's intriguing. Yes, we need to try and open that right now.

[00:17:44]Will it be potted in resin?

[00:17:48]I would say there's probably a little track in the back of this or it could be a MOSFET, who knows?

[00:17:55]Um but this heat sink I would guess you'd have to put this tab on to something if you wanted to have any power rating at all.

[00:18:04]I think this is resin potted in.

[00:18:07]That's annoying. Tell you what, let's cut that off. Let's just rip into it.

[00:18:12]There's me abusing these little side cutters again.

[00:18:16]Oh, that it does look like resin potted.

[00:18:19]Yeah.

[00:18:20]Damn, that's going to make it a bit hard to reverse engineer. Maybe it's deliberate. Maybe they don't want to seeing what's in here.

[00:18:28]Uh let me just uh spend some time picking away at this plastic.

[00:18:32]And rather annoyingly, that really is well potted in. That's annoying. I drilled the rivet out. Can't really get this up because it is all also uh resin down. I'm going to have to use heat to gradually peel away at the resin in that. That's going to be very time consuming. I shall leave it for its video. One of the annoying things is because I don't know what the circuitry is in this. Could be a little micro controller actually.

[00:18:55]But what uh because I don't know what the circuitry actually is, it makes it a bit harder to basically reveal uh with the resin being picked off and then see the components and kind of work out what it is without damaging them and because ultimately when you try to take it off without damaging components, they do get damaged.

[00:19:12]it's tricky. Right, what is next? Well, since we're zoomed up, let's take a look at these. This is a pack of how many?

[00:19:22]Um it's 50.

[00:19:25]And it's a little pack of LED mounts.

[00:19:27]These are very retro. I used to use these in the past. The idea is you take a standard 5 mm LED, or you get other sizes as well, and you shove it in and it's very easy just put it in and out.

[00:19:38]But, when you then squeeze this into the hole in the panel, the things that grip it in the hole in the panel also grip the LED, and now the LED does not come out.

[00:19:47]And when you uh plug it into this tester here, I'll plug it into the 20 milliamp ish setting, you end up with a nice little panel indicator. Looks very neat. A bezel round an LED. It looks smart. It's a very simple way of putting LEDs into a panel because you can pre-wire it. Pop them through the panel, pop this over, and then push them into the panel, and then they'll lock. Very good. Handy little things.

[00:20:14]It seems fitting also that what is next is uh given that I just abused the side cutters on the resin in the plastic case, what's next is the classic five pack of side cutters. What do they call them?

[00:20:32]By Boomer Fate diagonal pliers, carbon steel pliers, electrical wire wire cable cutters, wire snips for electrical for electronic soft copper jewelry color five pieces.

[00:20:44]It's the five pieces color.

[00:20:48]What are the blades like on these?

[00:20:51]One of the best tests is just to actually cut some of the the plastic packaging.

[00:20:57]Yes, it cuts the fine plastic packaging.

[00:20:59]That's a good test for these.

[00:21:01]Right, well, these will go up in my uh side cutters yet to be destroyed uh bundle because I do get through these quite quickly as you can see by abusing them.

[00:21:13]What's next?

[00:21:15]Grow lights.

[00:21:18]These are hydroponic lighting modules.

[00:21:21]You want to see me light them up? I can do that. One moment, please.

[00:21:26]Okay, I think we're ready to test. The wires soldered on quite easily. These are 0.9 mm thick back plates. It's also worth mentioning that there's an eight by 10 array of LEDs in both these despite the fact that this one is rated 10 W. It's got a single driver chip and this one is rated 20 W. It's got two driver chips and ultimately just seems to stack the chips in parallel for higher power, which means that when they get up to 100 W, really the chips are being grilled. Let me stuff these wires into these non-compliant terminals in the hobby.

[00:21:58]Plug it in. Double-check this is a 220 V one. I'm pretty sure it's a 220 V one.

[00:22:05]Probably. It doesn't say. Anyway, let's plug it in.

[00:22:10]It's luridly pink. You're getting strobing effects off that because it is AC and it is showing 10.7 W. Okay.

[00:22:20]So, that one works. Is it warm from that?

[00:22:24]Quite Yeah, quite warm as you'd expect.

[00:22:27]These should be mounted in heat sinks, grounded heat sinks because when the chips fail these, this is a layer of aluminum with a shim of the fiberglass.

[00:22:35]When the chips uh will go open circuit as they do and burn into our arc cross, they can burn right through that and it can make the back live. I wonder how many people have homemade hydroponic lights that are slightly dangerous.

[00:22:48]Are you ready for another flicker fest?

[00:22:52]Uh how would this be if I pointed down the way and I changed the lighting?

[00:22:55]Let's try that.

[00:22:57]That is actually better. So, this 20 W one is drawing 22 W. And if left running for a while the chips will heat up and they'll gradually self-regulate back because it's not on a heat sink. But that is diluted pinky magenta purple.

[00:23:11]It's quite impressive. Okay, watch your eyes it's about to get brighter again.

[00:23:17]And the next item, not totally sure what this is. Let's take a look at it.

[00:23:26]It's a module and I believe it's to do with power backup. What is it described as? Let's read the listing.

[00:23:33]Uh YX-850 power failure automatic switching standby battery lithium battery module 5 to 48 volts universal emergency converter.

[00:23:44]So this looks like Oh yeah, I can see the relay here, right? So this is designed to be connected to a battery and the DC supply that's feeding, say for instance, a wireless router. You might have say a 12-volt battery on standby charge and you also have the um the adapter for the router itself.

[00:24:09]And what happens is that when power is being applied, if I'm right here, uh I think it powers the relay via this little switching circuit here of little uh step-down converter.

[00:24:24]And it's passing power to the output that switches between those two.

[00:24:28]And when the power fails, as soon as the voltage goes down, I wonder if it monitors it.

[00:24:34]I'll find out by reverse engineering it.

[00:24:37]But anyway, when the power fails, this little relay switches over between the two inputs and hopefully does it before the actual the router itself detects any major anomaly.

[00:24:49]Okay, interesting.

[00:24:52]Right.

[00:24:53]Um I want to see what that little chip is. Is it visible? XL semi XL7005A.

[00:25:02]That's going to be a little DC buck or boost converter. I'm going to check that out right now.

[00:25:09]And that is a very capable little buck converter. It takes up to about 80 volts in the input and the output has the feedback that is set by the resistive divider so you can set the output voltage. It looks quite an interesting chip. There is something a bit suspicious about this though. See that big diode? It goes between the power supply input and the battery as if it's trying to charge the battery via that diode. Is this a good thing?

[00:25:37]With some with current limiting I mean if the battery was low it's going to try and sync the voltage. I don't think that's a great idea. I think it want a separate system for that but you could always crop that diode out if that was the case. Very strange. Anyway, what's next?

[00:25:53]Oh, I know what's next.

[00:25:55]It's the Where is it? Where is the paperwork for that? Oh, I've misplaced it.

[00:26:02]Give me a second.

[00:26:04]It is and I quote it's the linger ring ding dang IC Christmas music chip. So linger ring ding dang. Now this little chip I've set it up. The soldering looks terrible because and it's also incredibly quiet despite being connected to a big speaker. Maybe it's designed for a bigger higher impedance speaker.

[00:26:24]But this was a a sort of gold finish and it did not take solder at all. I had to scrub at the surface to get whatever was on it tarnishing or whatever but it although it looked shiny gold it was not taking solder and also the pads are the type that detach easily from the circuit board. So not great. But anyway, here's what it does and I can It's so low current I can use a button cell to power it. No great surprises.

[00:26:53]>> [bell] >> So, basically speaking, I wouldn't really call it a Linger Ringer Ding Dang I see a toll.

[00:27:00]It's just like the typical Christmas card music chip. Anyway, what else do we have here? We have some interesting things. I mean, it's all interesting really, but these ones I was having issues with a the filament feed on my 3D printer. And I was looking at what's available in the way of these kits that go on These are sized go on to the stepper motor. And that's either on the chassis of the machine or it can actually be through the case with the motor on the inside and then this on the outside. And this is a kit of parts that assembles together and you put a drive wheel.

[00:27:48]In this case, it's had double drive wheel.

[00:27:51]And this goes on to the stepper motor.

[00:27:54]And it mates on to this one um when the spring load pressure's applied to close it. And in doing so, it grips the filament at both sides and gives it two wheel Well, let me zoom down this.

[00:28:09]It grips the filament at both sides and gives the two wheel feed. It has knurling in both the channels for feeding that through.

[00:28:16]And I got another one as well. I mean, they're not that expensive because they're so mass produced because everybody has them.

[00:28:25]This is a a more traditional one which uses a larger um drive on the actual stepper motor itself.

[00:28:36]And where is the opposing one?

[00:28:39]There it is. And it's just a smooth wheel that catches the other side of the filament. It's just kind of a grooved bearing. And uh it relies purely on gripping the filament at one side, which some people seem happy with. I'm not really sure if it's the best thing. I'm not I think mine is just gripped single sided at the moment.

[00:28:57]But because these wheels you can see their size is different, because of that, you also have to adjust the step that increments so you do have calibration thing that you measure 100 you mark the filament run 100 mm or so through see how much actually went through and then change the calibration value and it will then correct that. So put these back I won't mix the two hardware kits, but I mean they're quite smart. They're quite stylish. They're about £3 or so for for the complete little kit of bits.

[00:29:26]But I think that's more or less it. I think I've looked at just about everything. Let me bring in what I thought were my favorite bits. You can also tell me what your favorite bits were.

[00:29:36]So of these the most interesting ones are the electroluminescent panel that you can see a slight rolling shutter on that.

[00:29:45]Even though it's quite high frequency, this camera picks up a lot. It's got very fast shutter exposure. These are always nice these little LEDs. You can put them into existing lights. You can if they use the same sort of format because it is a very standard. This merits further reverse engineering and investigation. This is just going to be annoying.

[00:30:07]Yeah.

[00:30:08]Um the LED caps they'll go in for general use.

[00:30:13]This merits further investigation. I'm going to have to try and get all the resin off this this soft start. And these are just lovely. They're nicely machined out of presumably I don't know if they start with an extrusion or they just machine them out of solid block, but they're quite interesting.

[00:30:30]But yes, that was a worthy selection of stuff. There was also that little light.

[00:30:34]Oh there's loads of things and I've misplaced them already. I've just put them down in random places. But there we have it. Interesting stuff. Another good haul.