EEVblog No Script, No Fear, All Opinion

Microsoft’s new Instaload battery technology allows batteries to be inserted into a product either way around. Is it one of those brilliant “why didn’t anyone think of that before” moments, or just another silly patent on a really obvious idea? Is it workable in practice? Can YOU bust the patent …

The 2nd EEVblog Live show. A whole bunch of stuff – Extech update, Agilent, Extech and BK Precison LCR meters, uCalc project, broken chairs, BP oil spill solution, the Large Hadron Collider, decade resistance boxes, multimeter shootout and countless more viewer questions. Podcast: Download

Off-Topic, but I know some people might be interested. A presentation I gave on the weekend about the early days of Geocaching. Warning – 50 minutes of random waffle!

Sorry for the short notice, a last minute decision. I’ll be doing another trial live show tomorrow (Monday 28th) 8am Sydney time (+10UTC EST) This is the time I have programmed into Ustream, but I heard a few people complain about a timezone goof last time. I think Ustream may …

Drive-Time. Dave rants randomly about TI’s bold new entry into the hobby/hacker/maker market with the $4.30 MSP-EXP430G2 Evaluation Board, and what it’s got to do with the Arduino. Podcast: DownloadPodcast (podcast2): Download

A bit of a follow-on from the linear regular episode. Dave dances with a simple linear closed loop circuit he built, and bodges it up in LTspice to get a remarkably consistent result. Not really a tutorial, just a few random tidbits. Podcast: Download

Dave was looking forward to reviewing the new Extech RC200 SMD Tweezer Multimeter, until the damn thing tried to kill him. Now he’s, well, kinda mad!… The Cryrustek ES51928 DMM Chip: www.cyrustek.com.tw/spec/ES51928.pdf Podcast: Download

Drive time rant again. Dave begs beginners not to use PCB autorouters, and questions why the low end EDA CAD packages even bother to have them. Podcast: DownloadPodcast (podcast2): Download

Has electronics design information become a bit of a commodity? And how can you differentiate yourself? Podcast: DownloadPodcast (podcast2): Download

Is the bad design of the IDEAL multimeter tilting bail really that a-typical? Should you expect to be able to poke the buttons on a multimeter while it’s standing up? Dave does some comparisons to find out. Podcast: Download

Dave compares five $50 Multimeters to see if they are any good, and how they compare. Download the PDF comparison sheet Thanks to Evan from Tequipment.net The Extech EX330: http://www.tequipment.net/ExtechEX330.asp The Amprobe AM220: http://www.tequipment.net/AmprobeAM-220.asp The Elenco M-2625: http://www.tequipment.net/ElencoM-2625.html (Also Jaycar Digitech QM1535) The Global Specialties Pro-50: http://www.tequipment.net/GlobalSpecialtiesPRO50.html The Vichy VC99 …

Bad Product Design 101: How to screw up your product with a simple design oversight. The IDEAL brand 61-342 looked like a nice multimeter until Dave tried to actually use it and discovered an epic product design FAIL! Podcast: Download

Back on May 10th I exposed Telstra/Bigpond’s very poor Youtube bandwidth and how 1/3 of all Australia’s households using Telstra were having their Youtube bandwidth effectively throttled in some way compared to every other ISP in Australia. The blog got lots of coverage and as a result Telstra contacted me …

Just how different are linear, LDO and switching buck voltage regulators? You might be surprised! It’s tutorial time. NOTE: There are many different methods of SMPS control, this is just one of the simple ones, go investigate! Podcast: Download

The first Live EEVblog event – unedited. Dave short circuits his wife’s laptop and cuts the feed, proving that anything can happen live. The audio sync is not the best, sorry, minor file conversion issues. And the last bit is supposed to be crap quality video that freezes due to …