Category: Electronics

NanoICSP – pt1
Part 1 : Finally ordered my first PCB online! I’ve been fiddling with electronics for quite some time now (decades?), and I’ve always been making things. One thing I never did was order PCBs tho, and I resolved that problem yesterday! In the past, making PCBs for me was pretty much ‘Get a perf board, […]

New Lab PSU – pt2
Part 2 : The Beast I have received the new toy and, oh my, what can I say…. It’s by far exceeding any kind of my expectations except the body of the unit has a bit of wear. Also, the unit is not a ‘true’ TekPower 3005 but is re-branded as ‘Selectron 3005’, which is […]

New Lab PSU – pt1
Part 1 : Amazon Fraud??? TLDR; I was SOOOO not expecting this to ever happen to me. I got scammed on Amazon! but hey, at least, they’re offering full refund and all that so, all good… just a bit annoying that I can’t use the new toy. Long story: I received something I’ve been wanting […]

I²C OLED display experimentation – pt1
Part 1 – Failure is the first step to success (?) So, I’ve been trying to get a 0.96″ OLED display too work with a rp2040. it seemed really easy to figure out how to get it to behave but, for some reason, I get all kinds of issues. I found a micropython driver for […]

Thermostat hacking?
Can’t win them all, right? So, I’ve been donated some old thermostats from a coworker and one of them had a stuck button, I had to open it to unjam it and in the process, I moved the LCD screen connector and kinda ruined it ( these rubber connectors are SOOOOO temperamental… ) . Since […]

Desoldering plate – pt1
Part 1 : why is it always broken when I need it?! A little while ago, I grabbed that kit online to build a desoldering plate meant to “demolish” LED strips from TVs. The idea is simple: an aluminum plate that heats up and you put your part on it so the solder melts and […]

Repurposed 18650 Batteries into a power station – pt1.4
part 1.4 : cooling and completion! I finally finished to put together the tester and charger system! By itself it would probably deserve a project category on it own but I’m lazy and tired so for now, it is what it is. Last time I left off with a pretty usable system but it was […]

Repurposed 18650 Batteries into a power station – pt1.3
Part 1.3 : Charger/discharger completion… ish? So, the next step was to install the PSU and wire everything, which went rather well. The connector did fit super nicely in the slot designed for it and I opted for only putting 2 screws instead of 4 on the PSU since it is pretty solid like that. […]

Repurposed 18650 Batteries into a power station – pt1.2
Part 1.2 : Progress on the charger/discharger So, since I needed to make a charger and discharger to test the tons of 18650s I’ll have to deal with, I decided to make it convenient. plus the form factor of the discharger is a bit odd to work with. At this point, I designed a frame […]

Repurposed 18650 Batteries into a power station – pt1.1
Part 1.1 : Getting the right tools for the job. Since I had these grandiose idea with limited tools, it was a bit long and difficult to do all the testing needed. So as my usual self, I ended up ordering the stuff I needed to make a proper charging and discharging station. The station […]