Early Content #8: Making Input Power Cable for EBD-A20H Battery Tester | In The Lab With Jay Jay

This post is part of my video blog and you can find more information about this video on this show’s homepage which is here.

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In this video I make an input power cable for my ZKE Tech EBD-A20H Battery Tester and Electronic Load. This power cable connects a DC female input to four male banana plugs, two positive, two negative. This power cable can be used to connect a power source for testing by the EBD-A20H.

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Yum Cha Dual-Purpose Sanding StickThis is an image of the product.notes

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Etudes for Programmers

From time to time I swing by norvig.com looking for signs of life from Peter Norvig, but it hasn’t been updated in years. However today I pushed on the internet a bit harder and I found signs of life over at github.com/norvig. Norvig continues to hack on his pytudes project, which is cool. I was reading its documentation today and I learned about the book Etudes for Programmers. If I had more money I would definitely buy myself a copy of that book, but at the moment AUD$355 is just a tad out of my league.

Why AI Is So Dangerous & How It Could Destroy Humanity

Ah, click bait. Sign of the times! MEGATHREAT: Why AI Is So Dangerous & How It Could Destroy Humanity | Mo Gawdat.

Mo Gawdat is an Egyptian entrepreneur and writer. He is the former chief business officer for Google X and author of the books Solve for Happy and Scary Smart.

Mo says there are some things we shouldn’t waste time talking about because they are going to happen, inevitably. These are:

  1. There is no shutting down or reversing AI, we can’t stop it
  2. AI will be significantly smarter than humans
  3. Bad things will happen in the process of developing AI (the specifics to be determined)

…and the fourth inevitability? Utopia..?

Early Content #7: Sorting Soldering Iron Tips | Learning Electronics In The Lab With Jay Jay

This post is part of my video blog and you can find more information about this video on this show’s homepage which is here.

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I was watching EEVblog #168 – How To Set Up An Electronics Lab and Dave suggested using chisel tips instead of conical tips, which inspired me to check what I was using and also to sort the tips I presently own into three categories:

  • Chisel tips
  • Other tips
  • Conical tips

If you’re interested in soldering temperatures I wrote a follow-up post on that topic: soldering iron temperature.

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Following is a product I use picked at random from my collection which may appear in my videos. Clicking through on this to find and click on the green affiliate links before purchasing from eBay or AliExpress is a great way to support the channel at no cost to you. Thanks!

Yum Cha 10pcs Magic Foam SpongeThis is an image of the product.notes

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Fluke VoltAlert

I was watching this old EEVBlog video: EEVblog #168 – How To Set Up An Electronics Lab and Dave recommended a Fluke VoltAlert. I discovered there are various versions, such as the 1AC and 2AC, and those alternatives are explained here: Best Non-Contact Voltage Tester.

The Fluke 1AC II Non-Contact Voltage Tester looked like a pretty good one for my purposes and I found one on eBay for AUD$35.40 so I hit the buy button.

Electronic load cables

Well I figured out how to use my new my ZKE Tech EBD-A20H Battery Tester and Electronic Load. This video was really helpful: ZKETECH EBD-A20H first look . Also I managed to find the software mentioned in the comments for that video: ftp://randomdl:randomdl@oss.quindorian.org/Random/ZKE-EB_software_1.8.5-0320.zip

The reason I had trouble configuring this electronic load is that I thought the “cutoff voltage” was a maximum setting, but in fact it means cutoff if the voltage drops below this value. That makes sense of course, especially as the main use case for this device is testing batteries. Once the voltage drops below a certain level the battery is dead and you can stop testing.

The trick with the wiring is that you can just hook the voltage and current terminals up to the battery / power supply terminals. I think the idea is that you can put the voltage and current terminals in different parts of a circuit, but I don’t really understand that, and for simple battery or power supply testing it seems you can just connect them together.

There are two modes available: Constant Current (CC) and Constant Power (CP). I have managed to get the software working and connected so that should mean I can put this up the back of my bench and control it remotely, which will be handy.

My next video will be me making a cable to fix this mess. Once I have that cable I will make a video demoing the EBD-A20H.

The cabling for the electronic load

Unboxing #1: Unboxing of ZKE Tech EBD-A20H Battery Tester Electronic Load | In The Lab With Jay Jay

This post is part of my video blog and you can find more information about this video on this show’s homepage which is here.

You can support this channel on Patreon: patreon.com/JohnElliotV

In this video I unbox my ZKE Tech EBD-A20H Battery Tester and Electronic Load. I don’t know how to actually use it yet, so once I’ve figured that out I will make another video to demo it in use.

Thanks very much for watching! And please remember to hit like and subscribe!


Following is a product I use picked at random from my collection which may appear in my videos. Clicking through on this to find and click on the green affiliate links before purchasing from eBay or AliExpress is a great way to support the channel at no cost to you. Thanks!

Yutiars Flat Paint BrushesThis is an image of the product.notes

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