$88 DE-5000: First Impressions I know I've posted the first one before; it shows the battery bay and nice bronze threaded inserts for the battery door screws, and the little foam cover over the IR comms window. This design is IR OUT only; there is no provision in the hardware for control input via IR even though there are two windows which would suggest otherwise. Pretty sure any generic IR-Serial adapter used for remote control, etc can read the output; later I'll see what shows up on my 'scope with my little IR decoder module.
Having looked over
MacBoy's teardown comparison, I don't have much to add as far as the tech side. Inside it is still the LCR VER:8, and has all the same omitted decoupling caps and clamping diodes as shown in his post from 2014. The only difference I see now is that as has been asked, YES the RPP diode has also been omitted / moved to C10 location. It does appear there is a rudimentary polarized battery bay, but it is very obvious the design does NOT prevent contact if the battery is inserted backwards.
Already have a
10A schottkey couple switching diodes to drop in there. I wonder if the diode was omitted due to
mikropure's experience with one that came pre-shorted...
I've found that it draws 12-15mA during testing without the BL on; 10.1mA idling, and with BL on those numbers jump to 15.3mA idling / 21.4ma max during testing. I could get pretty fair life even out of a carbon-zinc battery if I didn't use the BL; with BL that would probably be on the low side of acceptable life. On the other hand, I can usually get them at the dollar store...
There is oodles of wasted space; as you can see, more than enough to stash a couple 18650s inside the unit. I'm probably going to look into building some 18650 cells in and increasing the BL brightness; it's pretty close to worthless driven at 5mA. More just so they can say it has one than to actually serve as proper illumination.
Aside from these already known caveats, construction appears overall pretty good quality; much better than I'd expect for the price.
I have a number of other pics I intend to show as well, plus some testing.
L8ers, I'm vapor.
mnem
*This space For Rent*