EEVblog 1649 - Mailbag: M5stack, Beelink Mini PC, ZOYI LCR, ToughOn Battery - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 31, 2024, 10:24:22 pm
content: More mailbag!00:00 - Everyones favourite segment!01:00 - The very clever Edge Wedge from Metric Mind - Zero footprint programing headerhttps://metricmind.com/05:19 - M5Stack Embedded processor moduleshttps://shop.m5stack.com/products/m5stack-core2-esp32-iot-development-kit11:28 - Err, the polarity is BACKWARDS!12:41 - The M5stack website and UIflow2 GUI software21:20 - Teardown of the M5stack Core2 module23:16 - Beelink EQi12 Mini PChttps://amzn.to/40kWbvb26:46 - Mini PC teardown33:42 - ZOYI / Zotech ZT-FS1 Handheld Anemometerhttps://amzn.to/4e6FtCX38:02 - ZOYI / Zotech ZT-MD1 LCR Tweezershttps://amzn.to/4frMejI46:17 - ZT-MD1 Teardown48:09 - Toughon 20,000mAh USB Battery Bankhttps://toughon.com/products/tough-on-65w-20000mah-power-bank-bulit-in-usb-c-cable

author: SeoulBigChris
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 01, 2024, 04:29:51 am
content: As I'm staring at the final seconds of the segment with the voltmeter, it hit me what might be the problem. I think the stickers were put on the opposite sides of the small plastic enclosure. If you were to swap them around to the other sides, wouldn't the polarity be correct then?

author: SeoulBigChris
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 01, 2024, 04:34:46 am
content: If they were put on the wrong sides at the factory, it wasn't just your unit. On the company's website page of the voltmeter, their model featured in the photographs match yours exactly. Maybe a whole batch was mis-stickered.

author: Kleinstein
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 01, 2024, 08:40:52 am
content: The M5stack wrong polarity could also be a SW issue. They could as well fix it in software.With a little search one also finds the info for the voltmeter module.The 4 pin interface for the external modules is a more or less normal I2C bus, and thus the address on the modules. With so many modules there could be a few cases of address conflicts.The diode more with the tweezers shows the polarity of the diode in the display. So on the positive side no need to test with both direction. Not sure how it would react to back to back diodes. As the test is done with AC, the large parallel capacitor interferes with the in circuit test on the rasp board.All other parts have no polarity to care about. So they don't really need to mark the polarity.The slow speed is a bit anoying, but typical for resistor autoranging.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 01, 2024, 08:50:15 pm
content: Whatever the reason, this polarity thing is unfortunate. They bother designing a polished UI and can't get polarity right. This reeks of software guys doing hardware to me, but of course that may just be a production error.

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 02, 2024, 02:48:42 am
content: Quote from: SeoulBigChris on November 01, 2024, 04:34:46 amI dont think so. look at each sticker carefully, one is longer than the other. The connector is only exposed on one side of the volt-meter box, so you can only place the shorter sticker on top and the longer one on the bottom.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 02, 2024, 04:20:03 am
content: Quote from: Kleinstein on November 01, 2024, 08:40:52 amSomeone in the Youtube comments says it's a known bug, and is not present on the version you compile for the standalone ESP32 boards.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 02, 2024, 06:29:46 pm
content: What is an Odroid device?It's a well-known family of Single Board Computers running Linux (and Android) made by KoreanHardKernel.comwith a pretty goodcommunityaround them, with lots of info in theirwiki.The name comes from "Open 'Droid", and the company has been making and selling these boardssince 2009.When people talk of SBCs, they immediately assume Raspberry Pi are the "cream of the crop", but that is very far from the truth. (So much so, that that sort of belief makes me. They are simply the mostpopularLinux-based SBCs, that's all. You wouldn't consider current popular music to be the pinnacle of music, would you?) Not only do Raspberries have Broadcom-derived hardware issues (especially in their USB implementation, which can only be mitigated in software, not eliminated outright, causing silent USB datagram dropping at specific heavy loads, which is a definite no-no; USB just wasn't designed to deal with that at all), but they don't really perform that well generally.For example, the popular Odroid XU4 released in 2015 was/is much faster than Raspberry Pi 4 released in 2019 in most benchmarks. (I personally happen to own a Odroid HC1 ("Home Cloud") variant using the same Samsung Exynos 5422 SoC, but optimized for tiny Linux server or single-drive NAS use.)

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 03, 2024, 09:04:36 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on November 02, 2024, 06:29:46 pmWhen I think of SBC I think PC-104. Depends on your vintage.