Tag Archives: In The Lab With Jay Jay

Channel News #2: Announcing Maxitronix Xin1 Projects Feature | In The Lab With Jay Jay

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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 announce the new “Xin1” feature of the show. In the Xin1 feature we will work through the various Maxitronix electronic project labs that I own. We will be working through the following project kits, one after the other:

  • 10in1
  • 20in1 (actually branded “Sensor Robot 20”)
  • 30in1
  • 59in1 (actually branded “Electronic Digital Recording Laboratory”)
  • 60in1
  • 130in1
  • 200in1
  • 300in1
  • 500in1

That’s 1,309 projects to do!

As I mention in the video each time I start a new project kit I will do an introductory video to cover the front matter in the manual and to give an overview of the projects in the kit. Then I will make one video for every project in the kit. The project videos will be in this form:

  • Project introduction
  • Project construction (in the booth)
  • Demonstration and testing (on the bench)
  • Conclusion and review

And starting today the plan is to have a new video on the channel every day. So let’s see how I go with that! :)

Update 2024-05-10 jj5 – it turns out daily videos were way too ambitious. My new goal is three videos per week. Also standby for updates to the video format, I am thinking I will add a circuit simulation in LTspice and maybe an actual circuit build on a PCB designed in KiCad and manufactured by PCBWay.

If you’re interested in getting any of these Maxitronix kits yourself the best place I know to look is on eBay. Let me know if you find them somewhere else!

Update 2024-05-10 jj5 – I also found many of these kits are available at Altronics.

John's collection of Maxitronix electronic project labs

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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 Craft Knife SetThis is an image of the product.notes

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Old Book Teardown #3: Vest Pocket Guide To Electrical Testing And Troubleshooting (1987)

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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

Silly Job Title: Charge Charmer

This video is part of the Old Book feature of my video blog.

In this video we take a quick look at Vest Pocket Guide To Electrical Testing And Troubleshooting by John E. Traister published in 1987 with 130 pages.

In the video I also wish everyone a happy new year, talk a little about upcoming Xin1 projects, and mention how expensive it will be to upgrade my scope to 350 MHz.

And if you’re interested the Wikipedia page for Logic Analyzer says that the first commercially available instrument to be called a “Logic Analyzer” was the HP 5000A Logic Analyzer, introduced in October 1973.

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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!

Victorinox Swiss Champ Red Swiss Army KnifeThis is an image of the product.notes

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Interlude #3: Demo Of The New Studio Cameras – Now In 4K! | In The Lab With Jay Jay

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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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Silly Job Title: Charge Charmer

Old Book: Vest Pocket Guide To Electrical Testing And Troubleshooting by John E. Traister published 1987 with 130 pages.

Today is just a quick video to demo my new camera setup made possible by my new studio workstation ‘verve‘.

In the video I demo the new mat/bench camera which supports various zoom levels. Then I demo the iPod touch camera for showing some of the bench equipment. Then I demo the HDMI system which supports two microscopes, the MSO5074 oscilloscope, and the AV switch which usually would show the Xbox among other things (but I couldn’t get the Xbox to work in this video, drats). Finally I demo the thermal cam.

Sorry for the dodgy audio in this video. I will try to make sure that doesn’t happen in future videos.

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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!

3ELIGHTING 14″-42″ VESA Wall MountThis is an image of the product.

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Interlude #2: Mail Call! Plus Two Old Books And A Floppy Disk | In The Lab With Jay Jay

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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

Silly Job Title: Ohm Oracle

Old Book: Electric Circuits by J. Richard Johnson published 1984 with 888 pages.

Today we pop open a few bags of stuff that has arrived in the mail.

I mention about the trouble I had with my Western Digital Purple drives.

I mention about my new Western Digital Black 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD WDS100T3X0E drives.

I mention about my Educational 555 PCBs which have arrived from PCBWay. The website of the designer is given as: basitelektronikprojeler.blogspot.com.

The systems of units mentioned in the old book Electric Circuits are discussed at MKS system of units and Centimetre–gram–second system of units.

The 256GB M.2 NVMe drives I got to use as my ZFS L2ARC cache are these: TOSHIBA KIOXIA 256GB BG5 NVMe SSD M.2 2280 – NEW GEN4.

The automotive fuses I got are these ones: Car Fuse Blade Fuse Kit Fuses Automatic Truck Blade The Fuse Insurance Insert Insurance of Xenon Piece Lights Auto Accessories.

The test clips I got are these ones: 10X Universal Chip clamp micro IC clamp SOP SOIC TSOP MSOP SSOP SMD IC Test Clip pin Socket Adpter Programmer for logic analyzer.

The book which arrived in the mail was The SCSI Bus and Ide Interface: Protocols, Applications and Programming (2nd Edition) by Friedhelm Schmidt published 1997 with 396 pages.

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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!

OULLX NSS-681HDMI-RJ45 Cable TesterThis is an image of the product.notes

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Electronics Project #2: Teardown of Homemade Continuity Tester | In The Lab With Jay Jay

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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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Silly Job Title: Grounding Genius

Old Book: Industrial Electronics Reference Book by Electronics Engineers of the Westinghouse Electric Corporation published 1948 with 680 pages.

Today we teardown a homemade continuity tester which I put together for use before I had a multimeter, so that was in the early days of my new lab, circa August 2021.

While I was preparing the links for this blog post I discovered that the plastic case I used for the continuity tester was the HB5610 Black Hand-held Electronic Enclosure from Jaycar. I purchased one of these for AU$9.95 back in August 2021, which was around the time that I made this continuity tester.

I subsequently purchased a ten pack of similar plastic cases from AliExpress for AU$64.55 (inc shipping) in March 2022. I went to find the AliExpress listing so I could link you to it, but it’s an old listing and has been taken down. I did search for an equivalent product but didn’t find what I was looking for. The dimensions are roughly 70mm x 135mm x 24mm and there is a facility for 2x AA batteries built in.

The multimeters I use/mention in this video are:

The multimeter I mention I want to get is this one: EEVblog 121GW Multimeter.

What I say in the video about active vs passive piezoelectric buzzers is correct. The active buzzer will do the buzzing for you, all you need to do is supply some power. The passive buzzer will need an input signal in addition to power, so some sort of oscillator if you want to generate a tone.

I knocked up a schematic for this continuity tester, something like this:

Continuity tester schematic

I’m gonna try getting some PCBs made for this circuit from PCBWay, because I’m still trying to learn everything I can about that process!

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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!

FNIRSI M328 Component TesterThis is an image of the product.

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New segment for In The Lab With Jay Jay videos

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A while back now I had the good fortune to pick up Silicon Chip‘s library of old books. I didn’t get *all* of them, but I did get quite a lot.

I was thinking that as part of my In The Lab With Jay Jay videos, in future, I will tell you about one of these old books during the introduction to the video.

Interlude #1: Mail Call! Cheap Stuff From China! | Learning Electronics In The Lab With Jay Jay

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Silly Job Title: Science Officer

Today we’re gonna take a look at what arrived recently from AliExpress. They were having a sale so I purchased some natty tools and a few consumables. Details below. I made some notes at the time of purchase if you’re interested in what I paid for this stuff.

In the video I refer to the workstation I am planning to buy for the studio. When I get this new computer I should be able to improve the quality of my YouTube videos. If you’re interested in the details the new computer I’m planning is ‘victory‘. In the video I say this new computer will cost me AUD$6,000, but it’s looking like it will cost more like AUD$7,500 (roughly USD$5,000), so I will have to save my pennies! The Dell OptiPlex computer that I am presently using is ‘wonder‘.

In the video I refer to “box openers”. If you know what these things are actually called, please do let me know!

The spider who popped up on my bench during the recording of this video was found later. He, um, didn’t make it…

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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!

Sudake SDK08 Test ClipsThis is an image of the product.notes

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Unboxing #9: Unboxing of Sudake SDK07 and SKD08 IC Clip SMD Gripper Test Probe | In The Lab

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Silly Job Title: Hack In Residence

Today: another unboxing video! This time we’re taking a look at the Sudake SDK07 and SKD08 IC clips / SMD grippers / test probes.

Originally I was going to demo these things in this video too, but the test circuit took like two hours to make, and then when I turned it on it didn’t even work, so I cancelled that and now this is just an unboxing video and not a demo. Stay tuned for the demo which I will do, just when I can find some more time.

These test clips are really great, they let you attach a probe to the foot of an integrated circuit or a surface mount device.

Be warned: there’s a bit of swearing and bad language in this video. What can I say? I’m just a passionate individual, ya know? :P

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!

Yum Cha 100pcs Releasable Cable OrganizerThis is an image of the product.

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Unboxing #8: Unboxing of Mini Classic Game Console | Learning Electronics In The Lab With Jay Jay

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Silly Job Title: Power Provider

It’s the In The Lab With Jay Jay Halloween Special! This evening: another unboxing video! This time we’re taking a look at my retro gaming console: The Mini Classic Game Console. Complete with 620 odd games!

I picked this thing up at Vinnies (the thrift store) for fifteen Aussie buckaroos.

The main circuit board looks like this:

I found the S71PL256NC0HFW5U2 which is a 64Mb flash memory. The details of the other circuitry was obscured.

Here is the list of games on this thing:

And this is the manual:

I managed to get this thing wired through an AV to HDMI adapter, then a HDMI to USB adapter, so in the last half of the video you can see me demoing a few of the games and scrolling through the full list of games.

Oh, and in this video I read “NTSL” on the manual and say “they got that wrong, it’s NTSA”, but *I* got that wrong, and it’s “NTSC”. The American video standard. In Australia almost everything is PAL.

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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!

aToolTour Black Hexagon Deburring Drill BitThis is an image of the product.notes

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Unboxing #7: Unboxing of FILCO Majestouch 2SS Edition 104-key and tenkeyless keyboards | In The Lab

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Silly Job Title: Sparky

Happy Halloween! Today: another unboxing video! This time we’re taking a look at my two new mechanical keyboards from FILCO (affiliate links):

As I mention in the video I usually like to purchase my mechanical keyboards from WASD Keyboards in California. They make excellent keyboards but just a bit too pricey for me at the moment. Instead of purchasing from WASD Keyboards I picked these keyboards up from Amazon Australia and I paid AU$202.55 (US$130) for the 104-key keyboard and AU$188.89 (US$120) for the 87-key keyboard which was roughly half of what I would have had to pay if I purchased from WASD Keyboards.

Both of these FILCO Majestouch 2SS Edition keyboards come with Cherry MX Speed Silver switches. If you’re into mechanical keyboards definitely give these switches a try; now that I’m used to them I will accept nothing less.

It was a bit disappointing that while doing the unboxing I discovered some of the keys had fallen loose during shipping. I have since plugged in and tested the keyboard (I’m using it now in fact) and everything seems to be working okay, so no harm no foul.

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!

Miniware DT71 Digital TweezersThis is an image of the product.notes

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