r/electronics • • 5d ago

Weekly discussion, complaint, and rant thread

5 Upvotes

Open to anything, including discussions, complaints, and rants.

Sub rules do not apply, so don't bother reporting incivility, off-topic, or spam.

Reddit-wide rules do apply.

To see the newest posts, sort the comments by "new" (instead of "best" or "top").


r/electronics • • 9h ago

Project Tiny RACK-Wall power supply from 230V AC

Thumbnail
gallery
18 Upvotes

I made a Power supply board to get more experience with ecad.

It connects directly to 230VAC main via the plug on the bottom left. The plugs on the right output 48/24/12/5/3.3/1.6V DC with a small webinterface via ESP32-S2 for switching and checking voltage and current.

PCB & schematic files are avalable here (Altium files): https://github.com/Timo-Hauser/POWERPANEL-HW

I will use the PCB in my Mini Rack with my Raspberry Pi inside.

I cheated a bit by stepping down the ac with a LRS-150-24 module so its DC-DC only.

I would love to get some feedback on the Schematics as well as the PCB layout.

I choose the parts mainly based on availability at JLCPCB and tried to avoid any tht parts.

I'm aware I could buy this premade for cheaper but it was fun so far.

Rail Source Rated
24 V Mean Well LRS-150-24 brick, through a TPS16630 eFuse 2.5 A
48 V LM5156H boost from the 24 V bus 1 A
12 V LMR51450 buck 3 A
12 V fan LMR51450 buck, feeds 4 × 4-pin PWM fan headers 3 A
5 V LMR51450 buck, TPS2557 current-limited terminal switch 3 A
3V3 LMR51450 buck 2 A
1V6 buck from 5 V 1 A

Also for those that care I did work with AI on the project.


r/electronics • • 14h ago

General Vacuum tube high-speed AD converter

Thumbnail
youtu.be
24 Upvotes

r/electronics • • 6h ago

Gallery DIY 3s Balance charger.

Thumbnail
gallery
1 Upvotes

So I made this 3S Balance charger that uses three TP4056 modules and three 230VAC to 5V DC modules so that they can work together and charge eatch string of cells individually, this makes it so that every time you charge your battery you make sure that it will be balanced once fully charged and no cells can stop charging before they are fully charged like with a normal chargers. And the best part is this is scaleable to how many strings you want even a 100s1p pack. Every module have to have an personal galvanically isolated power source so if you don't have 5V power supplies you can use three phone adapters instead using the usb port. It's very important that the power supplies are isolated from eatch other, you can't use one power source for all three modules. I don't remember exactly why but if i am not mistaken the GND is chared by the input and output making it impossible to series connect the output if you parallel the input making a shortcurcuit.


r/electronics • • 1d ago

General Making 1,750 programmable PCB badges for Canada's biggest hackathon

Thumbnail
va3ndf.com
63 Upvotes

r/electronics • • 2d ago

General I built a free parts inventory app - it prints QR labels, autofills from LCSC, and counts parts with your phone camera

Thumbnail
github.com
2 Upvotes

r/electronics • • 4d ago

Gallery My first handmade PCB (little bit Dusty)

Post image
187 Upvotes

I just made my first handmade PCB. I drilled and cut the lanes my self. There is no short circuit and its little bit messy. If you have any advice maybe how i can do it beter i will take it.

I know i could make it with those fluid chemicals or whatever but my parents don't trust me with it.

Its a 5-35 to 5 V Circuit with a LED that indicates when the 5V pin gives out power.


r/electronics • • 5d ago

Gallery big cap

Post image
42 Upvotes

r/electronics • • 6d ago

General MOVGTs are overvoltage protection devices with a Metal Oxide Varistor (MOV) and Gas Discharge Tube (GDT) in series

Thumbnail
eaton.com
45 Upvotes

r/electronics • • 6d ago

Project First project after LED! A pomodoro Timer with blue LED for pause and red LED for working :D

Post image
33 Upvotes
Project Pomodoro Timer

For most of my questions and debugs I used opus 5.5, I learned a lot from this project and can't wait to do more! It's been very fun :D


r/electronics • • 7d ago

Gallery Made a new battery + a 3s balance charger for my Drill.

Thumbnail
gallery
46 Upvotes

Spotwelded a 3s2p 40A Battery custom fit inside the old battery box that had completely different sort of battery cells than 18650, thats why I had to make the pack in a staircase type of way just to get the pack to fit inside the original batterybox, then I ran balance leads out from the box thru a connector that i can take apart so that I can unhook the charger that i made from the battery, the charger is a 3s balance charger that runs on 230VAC and always fully charges eatch string of cells so that the battery will never be unbalanced. Even at about 50% charge the drill has more power now than before with the new 40A pack. Cost me less than buying a new battery thats weaker and lasts a shorter time between charges than the one I made!


r/electronics • • 8d ago

Gallery My 7400 series collection from college. I spent many a night putting them together in interesting ways.

Post image
210 Upvotes

r/electronics • • 9d ago

Gallery Vacuum Tube and Germanium Powered EKG Machine from the 1950’s

Thumbnail
gallery
243 Upvotes

It smells exactly how you’d imagine


r/electronics • • 10d ago

Gallery Interesting way to mount LEDs

Thumbnail
gallery
108 Upvotes

On a safety module.l took apart to take a look, i have no intention to put it back in production.


r/electronics • • 10d ago

Gallery Dallas DS1225Y Battery 64K Nonvolatile SRAM X-Ray Images.

Thumbnail
gallery
73 Upvotes

Dallas DS1225Y Battery 64K Nonvolatile SRAM X-Ray Images. They seem to have assembled this one with the battery on the bottom side. Hope this helps people be able to bodge in a battery and reuse these. It was hard to get the perfect angle.


r/electronics • • 10d ago

Gallery Interesting heatsink on this oldish PSU

Post image
49 Upvotes

r/electronics • • 11d ago

Gallery ST-LINK V2 STM8 STM32 ISP Programmer X-Ray Image

Post image
104 Upvotes

I am running out of items to X-ray LOL.


r/electronics • • 11d ago

Gallery YIG Sphere in YIG oscillator module

Thumbnail
gallery
402 Upvotes

Disassembled YIG microwave oscillator, a high-performance frequency source that uses a magnetically tuned yttrium iron garnet sphere to achieve exceptionally low phase noise and highly linear, wideband tuning across multi-octave microwave frequencies.

Photographed with macro lens and a camera, sample from our collection.

Hope you guys enjoy it! We couldn't find high-res images of the spheres online, so we decided to shoot them ourselves.


r/electronics • • 11d ago

Gallery Dallas DS1644 Battery Timekeeping Ram X-Ray Images. I Hope it Helps Someone With the Grinding to Bodge in a CR2032. Came out of a Tektronix TDS340

Thumbnail
gallery
291 Upvotes

r/electronics • • 12d ago

Gallery Designed my first board with 0402 components - all working!

Thumbnail
gallery
188 Upvotes

This is an LED blinkenlights type of thing, driven by 74HC14 Schmitt-trigger inverters driving the LEDs directly; and 74HC157 multiplexers to select different sequences.

It's my first time using such tiny components - the matrix area of the board needs to be clear of components but I needed to keep the rest of the board as small as possible while cramming in lots of capacitors and resistors.

I know some of you solder this stuff but I can't begin to imagine doing so so I left it to JLCPCB - OTOH I'm still an electronics novice so I'm impressed/amazed/astounded it worked!


r/electronics • • 13d ago

Gallery Not a "soldering iron" stock photo

Post image
310 Upvotes

Oh dear


r/electronics • • 12d ago

Weekly discussion, complaint, and rant thread

1 Upvotes

Open to anything, including discussions, complaints, and rants.

Sub rules do not apply, so don't bother reporting incivility, off-topic, or spam.

Reddit-wide rules do apply.

To see the newest posts, sort the comments by "new" (instead of "best" or "top").


r/electronics • • 13d ago

Gallery I designed an open source, fully analog IEM Amplifier!

Post image
157 Upvotes

I'm a highschool student in Australia who's really interested in sound engineering and recently decided to start designing a custom IEMA (In ear monitor amplifier) as a cheap and opensource alternative to the Behringer P2.

For context, I do live sound at different gigs around where I live and I wanted a cheap and flexible wired IEM beltpack for when I perform that's not the Behringer P2 so I decided to make my own from scratch using analog circuits! I first built the PCB in Kicad and then modelled a case in fusion and then got my renders through blender!

All the design files are available here - https://github.com/aaravjhamb/openIEMA and I would love to answer any questions!


r/electronics • • 14d ago

Tip PSA: Quick connect banana plugs are the handiest thing ever.

Thumbnail
gallery
437 Upvotes

I didn't know about these things until recently.

I've found them to be the handiest things ever for doing test and measurement work because they convert any bare wire into a banana plug-able wire. So instead of connecting to a bare wire with an alligator clip and having an exposed connection, I clip one of these onto the wire and plug it directly into the banana port it needs to connect to - multimeter, signal generator, power supply, etc.

I also use these with banana plug to BNC converters on my oscilloscope. Obviously this isn't as good as a regular shielded oscilloscope probe for some applications but for others it is just fine. It's much better than having an exposed wire to probe connection in a lot of situations.


r/electronics • • 15d ago

General Impressive buck converter: mini560, pushed to 7A at 5V

Post image
218 Upvotes

Just wanted to share with you this gem that I have found on aliexpress:
Buck converter Mini560.
According to the seller this are the specs:
5.5–20V input to fixed outputs of 3.3V, 5V, 9V, or 12V depending on the version.
5A max, >3A with cooling.
99% efficiency

Be aware that there are different modules out there and not all of them perform well, so if you get lucky you'll get an awesome dc-dc converter, but it seems that is easy that you'll get the bad ones.
The photo belongs to the actual module that I have tested.

This little thing has capabilities beyond belief, I have thrown in the trash bin all my old and bulky buck converters as they cannot do half what this small buck converter can do in such small footprint.

I have tested it at 10V input and 5V output.
It has maintained the output voltage without issues in any case.
Under 5A always at ~100mVpp ripple, at 6 and 7 amps the ripple has stood below 300mVpp.

I have tested it naked at 28C room temperature, without cooling, with 2 small heatsinks for the chip and the inductor (even though the inductor does not heat up that much), and with the heatsinks plus a fan. I have pushed the module well beyond what the seller recommends.
Every test has been measured after 10 minutes ON.

These are the results:

Current Efficiency T not cooling T heatsinks T heatsinks+fan
3A 95.8 59C --- ---
4A 95 --- 63.3C 42.2C
5A 94 --- 80C 50C
6A 93.4 --- --- 59C
7A 92.2 --- --- 70C

I have not tried going further, just tested it extensively to know how can I push it safely.
So I would not use it over 5A, just to be clear.

So yeah, one of the best modules I have gotten my hands on.

Edit: this post was auto removed when I posted it here, so I posted it in r/diyelectronics, it seems the mods put it back, sorry, I do not know the rules of this community.