Video: ZKETECH EBD-A20H first look

I recently purchased a Electronic Load to test some small power supplies. I often use little power supplies for small LED or ESP8266 projects and since I mostly buy stuff in China I often don't really know how good those power supplies are.

So I thought I would get a load bank and at least have the ability to test how they behave. I probably won't be doing any full teardowns of the power supplies (There is other people around who are A LOT better at that) but at least I can do some testing. I will also allow me to do some battery testing and other stuff I've been wanting to do.

I made a video of a first look about the ZKETECH EBD-A20H below. This version has 0-30 voltage range with 0-10 Amperage range and 4 wire measurement.

Video: Phone Chargers 101

For a while now I've been interested in several types of power adapters and power delivery. This started with LED drivers and 12v/24v power supplies for LED lighting. There will be more about that in later blog posts. For this firs time tryout talk video I'm talking about phone chargers, how they have changed over the past few years and my plans on testing them in follow up videos and blog posts!

Let me know what you think and leave a like if you liked it on youtube!

Review of the Mikrotik Routerboard wAP AC

This week Mikrotik released the Routerboard wAP AC. Internally it resembles the recently released hAP AC a lot so I bought some to take a look!

Review (Gigabit) Passive POE Injectors and Switches

A while back I tested a "dumb" active POE switch. But I still have devices which require passive POE and I don't want a mess of cables and injectors. So I took a closer look at passive PE and what is possible with it. For this I tested some devices and you can view my review below.

--Sale: I have these injectors and switches for sale! Contact me using quindor@gmail.com or IM for prices!

Review of the Mikrotik hAP AC and great wireless coverage in your home

Routerboard / Mikrotik just released a new product called the hAP AC. It's the first product they have ever released featuring a 3x3 2.4Ghz and 3x3 5.0Ghz AC radio's, 5 Gigabit ports, Passive POE (11v-57v) in and out and a SFP + USB port! I thought it would be worthwhile to run some tests on it and to share it with everyone.

--Sale: I have some hAP AC for sale! Contact me using quindor@gmail.com or IM for prices! Also take a look at my article about Passive Gigabit POE above!

The Ikea tinker storage system

Ever since I started tinkering with hardware I've been accumulating more and more "stuff". Most often these are little things like connectors, sensors, mosfets, etc.. And more often then not I don't buy 1 or 2 but buy them per 10 or even 20 at the same time.

After a while I was having trouble keeping it all sorted and easily accessible so I started to look around for a cost effective way of storing everything and I think I might have found it. Read on to see what I'm using.

ESP8266 WiFi LED dimmer Part 10 of X: Finding the right lights

Now that the LED dimmer is working and I have workable boards (Still working on better PCB designs) and I have a plan laid out for the house, the last task was to find the right lights to use them with. This turned out to be harder then I thought!

Recently I finally found what I've been looking for, both a downlights and LED strip!

Special Magic COB LED downlight

ESP8266 WiFi LED dimmer Part 9 of X: The new house lighting plan

The whole reason for building my own LED dimmer was because I'm currently building a new house and was unsatisfied with commercially available dimmers. They either didn't have the features I desired or where way too expensive and often, both!

This post will describe which parts of the house will be powered using my LED dimmer solution.

New Firmware Version 2.5.1.8 for DM365/DM368 DSP IP Camera

A while back a new firmware (2.5.1.8) appeared for the Ti DaVinci DM365 and DM368 camera's. Only recently a kind comment-er was able to find a link where to download this firmware.

Sadly, as always, there is no changelog. After testing it at least fixes 2 issues I was having with the previous versions have been fixed and who knows what else has improved! Since I've been running it without issues the last 2 weeks, it's time to share it with everyone!

You can find the previous post about the firmware here, I suggest we do new replies about this firmware (and newer) in this topic.

New Ti DM365/DM368 5Mpix Camera's

Since the first two sets of camera's I ordered I placed a big order of new camera's with AOTE last year. I ordered a lot of camera's this time because I was able to combine some orders and have decided that these camera's are worth the investment for my events. I will detail the new camera's so you know what to expect when you buy them!

Lots of camera's!

PL-PSE3008-A2 "dumb" POE switch

Over the last few years I've been gathering more and more equipment which supports Power over Ethernet such a access-points and the IP camera's I've written about before.

I need something to power those POE devices! Most managable POE switches are quite expensive so I've been looking around for cheaper options and decided to order a "dumb" POE+ switch from China to test!

ESP8266 WiFi LED dimmer Part 8 of X: Version 2 of the PCB design

With the help of kind internet folks I was able to get a fritzing part for the new voltage converter I wanted to use to try and make a smaller board. A few weeks ago I sent my new 'panalized' design to dirtypcb's and I got them back last week. They are awesome! Read on to order the boards yourself!

ESP8266 WiFi LED dimmer Part 7 of X: Updated Dimmer and Domoticz code

I recently did a small addition to my dimmer code which gives you the ability to add the dimmer time to the sent values remotely. This way you can choose to dim quickly or slowly per dim action.

ESP8266 WiFi LED dimmer Part 6 of X: ESP8266 Domoticz Wall Switch

The next part I needed for my Domotica system was a way to have physical switches in my house which would run 'virtual' actions. Tonight I programmed the ESP LUA code to test this.

Domoticz: Bash script for presence detection using NMAP

Today I programmed another part of the system I envision for my new house. It's a bash shell script which checks if either my phone or that of my girlfriend is in range and depending on if it is or not it changes a switch in Domoticz. That way I can automate all the lights turning off when we are not home, and coming back on when we are!

ESP8266 WiFi LED dimmer Part 5 of X: Ikea Lamp hacks

Since I now have a cheap WiFi controllable LED dimmer I'm looking at various ways of lighting rooms, hallways, etc. Since different rooms require different type of lighting they require a different lamp. Some simple, some more fancy. After experimenting with LED strips in aluminium profiles this post will be about hacking Ikea lamps!

ESP8266 WiFi LED dimmer Part 4 of X: Configuring Domoticz

The last part of the ESP8266 WiFi LED dimmer project is getting it to work inside of my Domotica system of choice: Domoticz. We can do this using LUA scripts, in the end you will have an easy dimmer slider in Domoticz which you can use to control each channel of the ESP8266 WiFi LED dimmer.

ESP8266 WiFi LED dimmer Part 3 of X: Flashing and programming the ESP-01

To get started with the ESP8266 ESP-01 I recommend flashing and programming it before soldering it down. This way you know it's working and that the program code is also functioning. Depending on how you mount it on your board it can be a bit hard to do so later on!

ESP8266 WiFi LED dimmer Part 2 of X: The Hardware

This post will describe the hardware you need to build your own WiFi controllable LED dimmer! This post will list what you need, why and where I bought it from!

ESP8266 WiFi LED dimmer Part 1 of X: The setup

For a while now I've been working on building my own network controlled LED dimmer. I have sampeled some commercially available remotely controllable LED dimmers (DX.com models, AppLamp, Fibaro Z-wave, etc.) but all either lacked some fuctions or where WAY too expensive to rollout house wide. So, I decided to construct my own version! In the next few posts I will detail my efforts and explain in detail how to build the latest version! Read on!