PowerTech 0-24V bench top power supply teardown

 Here's my newest toy, a 0-24V, max 18A PowerTech branded switch mode benchtop power supply. In this blog we'll take a peek into the supply and see what makes it tick!

Homemade Macbook mini-DVI to VGA adapter

With Apple's need to make things as far away from normal as possible, I found myself with two Macbook's with smashed screens. To fix those would have cost $200+, so that was out of the question. I could have also brought an adapter for them, but that takes all the fun out of it!

Here's how I made the mini DVI to VGA adapter using some old ribbon cables used for connecting PCB's together (not IDE type ribbon cable), and an even older mini VGA adapter for the VGA port, and don't forget the 10K resistor!

Newcason XC4070L inductance meter review/teardown

This is the cheapest inductance meter I could find on eBay, and here's a quick review/teardown into it!

Recycling

It's funny, I go out and wish I could find old things to reuse, like airconditioners (heat pump), fridges (air compressor) and just other stuff like misc. electronics... Then I end up at places like the local junkyard, or the scrap dealer. This world must be here to torture me.

Heat pump water heater ponderings

As of late I've also been wondering if it's worthwhile to turn an old scrap airconditioner into a heat pump to heat our hot water, based on Tesla500's. As a result of our house utilising a solar hot water system, the only time we need to use a booster is on overcast days.

Cairns.com.au reports that we receive approximately 1992mm of rain over 152 days, hence this leads me to believe it may be worthwhile, although I'm still uncertain. Anyone else got an opinion on this?

Holiday projects

With the holidays drawing to a close, I thought it'd be a good idea to summarise what I've done and what I have planned left to do.

Babington oil burner

With most projects, they have to start somewhere. One day I hope to make a foundry for melting and casting metal, and the logical place to start was the fire. After an amount of research and parent nagging the babington oil burner build was commenced... Here's the not very well documented build log for it.

"Green" cars

With the advent of all these greenies protesting to stop being so destructive to the environment with cars and their emissions, car manufacturers have taken on different methods of propulsion, marketing them as green and no emission technology.

For one, this is just downright false, and two, the new cars are likely to have even more resources invested in them compared to the ones already on our roads.

Games

This year I've tried to put more effort into finding people with interests similar to me. From this venture, I've noticed that an ever increasing number of people are using games, and television to pass their spare time (and even list these as their interests!).

ZVS Flyback Driver

Well, on route to one of my many other projects I needed a form of ignitor, couldn't get my hands on any neon sign transformers (the three local sign places either didn't have any, or wanted $100 a piece), and MOT's were too low voltage for my needs. My attempts at winding a step up transformer also resulted in a step down transformer due to lack of wire. Here's how I managed to create a ZVS driver and not electrocute myself in the process!