mailbag Monday 105

72 cents had free shipping then still does now next thing in appears to have come from russia uh oh belarus okay close enough to russia sorry physically close not you know whatever um anyway in here we have wow well it says 20 lots and lots of tape on it okay getting some of this out oh connectors in parts okay uh let’s get a representative sample of these out of here okay yeah there is 20 of them like the scribble in the bag suggested and i thought what i was ordering when i ordered these was like 10 ml and 10 female but they appear to be all the same these are douche dutch something like that connectors um meeting the usa there’s the part number and they are a weatherproof type of automotive connector now then the reason that i ordered these was just to have a you know uh inexpensive weatherproof or weather resistant uh connector for outdoor lighting and whatnot i’m going to have to dig a little bit deeper into these and find out exactly how they work 20 times original dude something dt series 2a plug connector kit there’s some part numbers and stuff for you got these from enter 2000 2012 who is located apparently in mince i bought these at auction and i got them for 39 cents that’s why i wasn’t too stressed about the type of connector or the gender or anything else of them i figure i can uh i can afford to hunt around for the mating connector if i need to for you know i said 40 cents canadian essentially for 20 pieces 2 cents a connector yeah i can afford that and there is what’s in the package 40 pins i assume 20 shells 20 of that part 20 of that part whatever that is okay um i’m gonna have to lean on a couple of automotive uh people that i know to uh let me know what these mate with and what they actually are used for under normal circumstances next thing in is it doesn’t say oh yes it does it says it’s a module okay let’s see what that is this time looks like a bunch of surface mount components and judging by the labels on them got a w a g an r a b and a y those are going to be leds that about two millimeters across by about four millimeters long something like that i guess we’ll have to find it in the listing to figure out what size these things really are 500 pieces smd led kit 1206 805 603 red green blue white yellow five times 100 pieces pack got these from top bazaar they’re currently selling for 1291 canadian back when i bought them they were 1046 canadian with of course free shipping and it is in fact the 1206 size that i got not a huge amount to say about them they’re leds a different colors of leds as always take a different forward voltage but they’re all rated for 20 milliamps anywhere from the red ones being somewhere between 1.

8 and 2 volts up to the white and blue ones being between 3 and 3. 2 volts and the green one as well next in we have well we don’t know what this is because it came through the drop shipping warehouse in mississauga so total surprise oh header pins okay just standard male 1 40 pins but you can snap them off at whatever length you want header pins chop stock just restocking uh because i’ve used a bunch in various projects recently five pieces 2. 54 millimeter 40 pin male single row pin header strip good quality they wouldn’t say crap quality would they even if it wasn’t anyway i got these from plc engineer um they cost 99 cents canadian for five pieces i bought two packages or two uh of those so 10 uh which cost me 1.

98 and the price hasn’t changed in all this time apparently there isn’t any available at the moment but i’ll put a link to this anyway and you can just use the search term you know and now the last and biggest one this one is somewhat of a mystery i don’t know what’s in it but i do know where it came from because it says underneath that tape there this is something that another maker sent me all the way from the lens of uh alligators and uh happy cartoon mice i don’t know what he’s put in here he told me it was coming but that’s about it thanks for so many hours of entertainment hope this stuff in this box is entertaining and useful sorry for the thousand envelopes cool thanks man let’s oh hey model railroading stuff so these are as it says on their kd brand magnematic couplers for model railroad stuff hang on here so typical train set cars come with this type of coupler on them it’s referred to as a horn hook it’s fairly generic it’s not patented which is why pretty much every train set car comes with them on it most model railroaders hobbyists who are more into motor railroading and want more reliable operation and more accurate look replace them with kd branded or some generic clone of them couplers like this um they operate and look more like the real thing and they have the you know this which looks like the brake hose on a typical uh train car but it’s also magnetic so if you put some magnets under the track in the right spot you can actually remotely open the coupler and disconnect cars so that’s what all of these ones are and holy hell man you found a lot of them those are not cheap i’m going to assume based on who he is another maker has access to an awful lot of uh of good deals and he’s almost as cheap as i am uh he will he will seek out deals and uh and buy in bulk when he finds them so i’m guessing that these are part of one of those kind of buys that he’s made i’m gonna pull these out and see what else is in there okay there is another brand of uh of the replacement knuckle couplers these ones are from bachmann as i was mentioning katie’s not the only one that makes them but they were the first one but uh yeah other brands are available oh this is the uncoupling magnet okay so you install this magnet underneath the track and i’ve actually got one in the track in one spot in my yard already now you install it under the track like that and when the coupler comes over it it uh move it moves the it grabs onto the the air hose and pulls it sideways so i have one of those under track magnets here right beside my buddy who’s standing there specifically to help me remember where it is when a train’s coming through normally with a couplers under tension nothing happens but when you stop over top of it the train or the couplers let go and then you can push it backwards with the couplers let go like that but now that the this car is outside of the magnet’s sphere of influence is back into it and couple on and pull right through all hands-free that’s the beauty of those magnets and a few other coupler types as well uh number 58 number five there’s a bunch of different ones in katie’s line with different physical characteristics the number five is kind of the generic one that goes in most places you can see here it’s showing the dimensions of it and the coupler is center set on the shank you can also get ones where the coupler is above or below just so they made up properly on on adjacent cars you want that all lined up uh properly for everything to operate reliably okay so i think that’s all the kd couplers out of there a couple bits of foam that’s a nice dense foam too keep that uh more kitty stuff oh what’s in there an energy stick steve spangler’s amazing batteries not replaceable energy stick i don’t know what makes this thing go but it seems to it’s got some flashing colored leds in it it’s got a little noise maker i can see down the bottom of there this little speaker on the circuit board well that’s an interesting toy um it looks like it’s got a 2032 in there and i’m thinking that as it was bumping around in the mail system it may have weirded out more than one postal employee which is even better than the thing itself okay carry on what do we have in here a grove beginner kit for arduino oh wow oh wow he’s so another maker has featured this on his channel before i’ll put a link up in the corner to that and i’ll put a link down in the description to his channel in general as well this is a cool little arduino kit because it comes with oh let me just pop it open quickly on second thought uh once i get the box empty then i’ll dig into this a little bit further hang on a pair of oh these are also a kd tool for model railroading these are an adjuster for adjusting that trip pin hang on so these pliers are for putting the proper band into that little trip pin um see they’ve got uh a pin on one side and a sort of a recess on the other side now you can’t see that because it’s out of focus so you put the trip pin just in between there and squeeze it to bend it up in a nice gentle curve or flip it over to put the reverse bend into it or flatten it out a little bit you got different radii on there that is a handy little tool for a very specific purpose and stuck to that when i pulled it out of the box was this little magnet here which is in fact the uh the kde uh non-delayed uncouplers these go into uh these set in between the tracks and uh do the same thing by kicking the the drip pins sideways to uncouple the cars okay what else is down in here a little container full of kd couplers coupler springs that little pill has the springs that go into the knuckle oh and there is a coupler height gauge in there as well so this coupler height gauge you plonk it onto a piece of track and it actually has little notches on there which will help you gauge the proper space in the track as well but anyway you point it down onto there and then you roll your locomotive or car up to it and the coupler needs to be at exactly the same height as this one so you can standardize your entire fleet and then the trip pin on your locomotive or your car needs to clear that little shelf down at the bottom of the gauge that way when you’re going across uh grade crossings and various other bits and pieces in your track work it doesn’t catch and cause a derailment that’s a very handy tool for anybody who’s standardizing on this type of coupler and what else do we have in here let’s see what this big wooden box is in oh wow dude this is a very old piece of test equipment this is a westin brand galvanometer a galvanometer is a very sensitive ammeter you can see i think that this one is uh sensitive to 10 to the minus 6 amps million microamps pico amps something in that range really really tiny tiny currents so your positive and negative attachments and then just a button to cut it into the circuit because you don’t necessarily want this thing running in the circuit full time you just want it temporarily there and then a zeroing calibration up there which is just the mechanical zeroing on the uh on the meter wow i’m gonna have to dig into that one in the future thanks man and the last thing in the box that is an electronic or electrical solenoid uh striker for a doorwalk you apply uh what do we have here dc 12 volts to that coil there and it will unlock this little door latch so you can control this with basically anything um a swipe card or some kind of an electronic keypad walk or any kind of a remote control or something that you control by wi-fi through an arduino any number of things as long as you can provide it with a fairly high amount of current at 12 volts that is cool and all this stuff and this came from our friend another maker um as i said i’m gonna put a link down in the description to his channel and uh there will be at least one link up in the corner to one of the videos that he did actually probably to two of them the one for that one and the one for this grove beginner kit oh yeah i said i was gonna pop that open didn’t i hang on so how the grove is sort of the standard for these four pin cables to go between modules so you can connect between the arduino which is what this is it’s a slightly non-standard form factor although it does have the pin headers for the shields there but you can connect from this arduino board here to any of these different modules using these so you don’t mess around with uh getting the polarities and pins right this is just very beginner friendly just plug and play to whatever module you want uh what do we have here an led a buzzer an oled display a push button a rotary encoder no a potentiometer sorry um another led uh microphone we have a dht 11 temperature and humidity sensor we have an air pressure sensor and a three axis accelerometer so that may these alone make it super beginner friendly but this particular kit is even more beginner friendly because the way it’s presented in this uh frame here everything is already pre-wired so this led is connected to d4 this buzzer is connected to d5 through these little tracks and whatnot you can break them out those are just little mouse bites you can pop them out and use them separately or as a demonstration or as an education piece you can just use these all together as they sit right now i could have saved another maker’s box for its very own mailbag but uh oh well here we are so in addition to the generous donations to the channel from another maker who apparently wants to see me do more modern railroad stuff i guess we should also go through quickly the shipping times for the things that i ordered uh these dutch deutsche connectors that i ordered got cheap at auction took 38 days to get here from belarus uh the leds took where’d my note go uh 140 142 days to get here from china i ordered them in june they got here in november man um the header pins took 14 days to get here and the zip sockets took 25 days and actually this box from florida took damn near a month to get here partly from christmas shipping partly from you know plague involved shipping problems i don’t know partly from the post office just being the post office anyway this is an amazing haul and it’s going to take me quite a while to get through everything and and get it all sorted out and catalogued and put away and figure out which projects they’re going to show up in but i can guarantee all this stuff is going to show up at some point in the future thanks everybody for watching thanks another maker for your ridiculous generosity that’s i’m just speechless at that um thanks my patreon supporters who helped me buy the stuff for my my mail regular mailbags and keep the channel running and of course keep my beer fridge going that’s an important thing that they do um comments and questions down below as always i’ll talk to you later.