Mailbag Monday #107

1 millimeters yeah so the reason that won’t work is because these couplings here grip onto the outside of it so that’s not going to work for this application however some people do buy or build dry boxes uh basically just what it says a box to keep your filament from getting humid um and then run tubing over to the to the extruder so this might not be an entire loss i might be able to use that for this and i’m hoping it was fairly cheap it probably was two millimeter three millimeter ptfe f4 tubing pipe for 3d printer 1.

75 millimeter filament riprap rock stock so when i bought this i bought it at auction for 99 cents i bought it back in october so i can’t show you the item listing because it doesn’t exist anymore but 99 cents with free shipping even if this was a mostly a waste of money it’s not much money to waste really i’ll link you to a listing that finds a whole bunch of them pay closer attention than i did to the size that you want you’ll want at least a four millimeter od but make sure that you’re matching up with the fittings that you’ve got you win some you lose some on these cheap auctions let’s see what i got in this one it doesn’t say at all okay ah where’s my other knife a little bit sharper i’m using that scalpel far too much and it’s dulled it’ll still cut tape oh remember that led light bulb kit that i built a few months ago i enjoyed it so much that i got some more so i can build more light bulbs with different types of leds well looks like there’s three of these where’s that one that i built before there it is there there’s what it builds up into this particular one i used uh sort of blacklight not actual uv but near uv leds but i figure i can do some different colors just for fun and games and of course they’re not that expensive energy saving 38 leds lamps diy kit electronic suite one set d uh okay i got these from diy box i did in fact pay a dollar ninety six each for them for the and then i bought three of them i did not pay shipping because it was free shipping way back when i bought these please no beads not included beads are what they call leds for some unknown reason um anyway it takes 38 leds uh not included the overall circuit is draws 2.

4 watts runs anywhere from 85 to 277 volts ac and luminous flux depends completely on what type of leds you put on it theoretically the plastic shell is flame retardant i should maybe try that to experiment and just see how flame retardant it is now somebody who isn’t a cheapskate would just replace the blade with a fresh one but i’m too cheap for that see what’s next in here this says it doesn’t say it’s from kyrgyzstan though oh yeah there we go like a new one this is three different led rings two different types um and two of the smaller one that one is 12 leds in the ring and that one is 16.

these are ws 2812 leds aka neopixels i bought these two to replace stock because i used the one that i had when i made my octoprint monitoring device and as i was shopping i decided to buy a slightly larger one as well just to add to the collection because i think i have a few different sizes of these yeah a few which one is this this one is 12 as well oh okay that’s 12 but in a different size all right and what is that one that looks like about eight i think yeah okay so now i have an assortment of sizes uh that’s why i buy a lot of this stuff not necessarily because i have an immediate project goal for it it’s just nice to have what you need in stock when when inspiration strikes and you feel like making something then you’ve got the parts that you need right handy blackboard 16 bit ws 2812 5050 rgb led ring plus integrated drivers for arduino i got this and the other ones from world chips i did pay 2.

97 cents but the shipping was a whole bunch less at the time and the other one 12 bit rgb led ring ws28 12 50 50 rgb led integrated driver module for arduino also for from world chips uh 239 each looks like there’s still a few sellers that have it for more reasonable shipping fees some of these are just outrageous like more shipping than the thing costs that’s nuts anyway i think we’re fairly familiar with these you’ve seen enough of these ws2012 leds come through my mailbag there’s a control chip built into each 5050 ic package that drives the rgb leds independently with one control signal line coming from an arduino or a dedicated controller next thing in doesn’t say what it is because this was uh delivered from the dropshipping warehouse in mississauga so oscilloscope probes two of them two matching ones more importantly i do already have two probes for my scope but they are completely unmatched and different so i figured i would treat myself to a matching pair of scope probes now i have no illusions that these are the highest quality probes in the world um but they do claim to be capable of handling 600 volts and of being accurate up to six megahertz or 200 megahertz in ten to one mode we shall see about that i guess but they are switchable one times in ten times um the ground clip is removable it’s reasonable enough i guess there is a little tweaker for adjusting the flatness where is that down in there there is an adjustment capacitor all nicely shielded to compensate for the uh for the probe and what else do we have here so like every probe they come with this little springy hook piece which pops off there’s a couple of little kind of condoms so that you don’t you can still probe stuff without shorting out there is the little spring ground thing which goes onto that ground and provides you with a little ground touch point right beside there those come with just about every probe i don’t think i’ve ever seen anybody use them um there’s some little colored bits that you can put on there and there when you’ve got multiple probes so you can tell at a glance uh which one’s the oil and which one’s the blue one which channel they’re on on a more advanced scope than i’ve got you can actually color your traces to match that as well if you choose to and this looks like ah yes that slips over there and then you can go on to i think that fits a b and c yes it does you just slip over b and c or i guess a tnc connector as well so you can measure things like that very standard assortment of accessories with it two pieces 200 megahertz oscilloscope probe test lead kit accessory for tektronix rigel fluke or you know any type of scope really uh i got these from gulchin elect something like that i can’t pronounce these names i can barely pronounce english properly i got the two of them as a package for 21.

81 so uh 10. 75 or thereabouts per which is a smoking deal if they’re any good at all and free shipping so again it’s calling them 200 megahertz probes the two probes that i’ve got right now both call themselves 100 megahertz so even if these aren’t good up to 200 megahertz they’re still probably as good as what i’ve got and more importantly they’re both the same just for reference my scope isn’t anything especially fancy it’s uh old used 300 megahertz analog tektronix oscilloscope an awesome scope in its day but compared to those fancy digital ones these days it’s a little bit dated but these uh these cheap probes are probably going to do just nicely and they are sort of the big brother of one of the two probes already got which is this one that’s on channel two which is a hundred meg and this one is a tektronix branded one that came with the scope but i have no providence and it’s you know decades old to the uh the cable’s been repaired yada yada so it’s it may still outperform the ones that i just got but again they’re matching so when i’ve got when i’m sampling two different uh signals in the same circuit i can compare them apples to apples and the last thing is another one that doesn’t have any description on it at all because it was reshipped from mississauga a whole oh one piece is optical power meter this is a piece of fiber optic test equipment admittedly a really cheap shitty one from china but a piece of test equipment nonetheless so it comes with two different connectors for different types of fiber there’s a bunch of different uh fiber ends that are standard that is not one that we typically use at work however the other one is this one is an sc connector which we do have a bunch of at work that’s nice um power auto off uh zeroing backlight and a decibel okay peel that guy off no you don’t get a soul sex appeal i don’t do that little kickstand on there it claims uh minus 70 to plus 10 db range uh plus or minus 0.

2 claims to work between 850 and 1625 nanometers and i can’t tell anything else about it takes two double a batteries there it is okay so it comes up in low battery already it is showing no signal and low signal which is correct because i’ve got the cap on and there’s no i don’t have a fiber source right now it came up set to 13 10 nanometers set it for 1490 1550 1625 850 980 1310 all the standard ones that you would expect to find in a meter like this there’s the backlight can you see that yeah you can um and okay you can have it another nanowatts or db okay um for zeroing you can use that to uh to get a delta basically you hook your light source up to it calibrate the light source up to it zero it and then put a link the fiber in there to see how much loss is in it um that’s handy and auto off or just powered off i guess what does this manual have to say for itself nothing i can read it’s all in chinese it has the same uh stats on it as was on the back of the thing so that doesn’t tell me anything let’s go check the listing fiber optical power meter cable tester networks fcsc connector minus 70 to plus 10 dbm i got this at auction for six dollars and 74 cents with free shipping uh got it from this guy alex underscore xu10 um i’ll put the link to this listing even though it’s a one auction um if the uh listing’s fully expired you can at least use the search terms not a lot of information down here what you see is what you get okay then but i didn’t actually expect that i would get it for a six dollars and seventy-five cent be it i really didn’t i mostly just bid on it on a lark so the ones that we actually use at work this one in particular uh are a whole hell of a lot more expensive even used so i figured for less than 10 bucks it was worth a gamble i’m not actually going to use it at work i just want to compare it and and play with it and see what it’s like and tear into it and see what’s under the hood because i’m obviously not going to take apart any of the tool the calibrated tools i actually use at work that would be one of those career limiting moves well that was a fun one and only one real bust in the whole thing but oh well it cost me less than a buck let’s just quickly check on the transit times the scope probes took 34 days this tubing took 72 days the led rings took 34 days the power meter took 14 days because it was reshipped from the canadian warehouse and the three light bulb kits took 45 days to to get here so i don’t it seems that uh transit times are starting to calm down a little bit i’ve got one outlier for 72 days but you know a month to a month and a half seems to be about what china normally is so yeah uh fun assortment to play with looking forward to seeing what i can what i can do with some of these and giving this thing a test anyway thank you so much for watching as always thanks to my patreon supporters for helping me fund this silliness and buying me a beer or two now and again i appreciate that um questions and comments down below in the comments section i’ll talk to you later.