150 W Electronic Load from China

This is a simple electronic load that uses a beefy transistor to simulate a load for testing devices like power supplies or batteries. The maximum current is 10 A and the maximum voltage 60 V. The device has separated terminals for the load and for voltage sensing. There is a big CPU cooler with a…

Hobbywing Quicrun WP Brushed ESC Programming

This is a “cheatsheet” I wrote for myself, because I didn’t wanted to search for the large manual sheet, each time I wanted to program one of these ESC. There is a brief description for each option and, for some items, some recommended values to use for crawlers (since this is a particularity popular ESC…

Hobbywing Quicrun WP Brushed ESC Programmierung

Das Quicrun WP 1080 ESC ist ein beliebter elektronischer Geschwindigkeitsregler (Electronic Speed Controller) für Crawler mit Bürstenmotoren (Brushed Motors). Letztere sind in diesem Bereich aufgrund ihrer technischen Eigenschaften nach wie vor sehr beliebt. Das ESC lässt sich mit Hilfe einer mitgelieferten “Karte” (eigentlich mehr ein Kasten) programmieren. Eine kurze Beschreibung ist direkt auf der Karte…

Edifier Remote Control RC10 Wrong Battery

A while ago, I got some stereo speakers named “R1280T” from Edifier. These came with a simple, three button, remote control labeled “RC10“. I always had problems using this remote, the range was poor and I needed to hold it directly in front of the left speaker to work (because that’s the one with the…

USB 3.0 PCIe Extension Cards

When it comes to USB 3.0 extension cards, using the PCI Express bus, only some come with an additional header, that allows connecting a power plug from the power supply (PSU). Why is that? There are several reasons, actually. Usually a x1 PCIe slot (the small ones) only delivers up to 25 W, per specification….

Make a 24 V power supply from two 12 V supplies

Server power supplies, like the HP DPS-750RB, are available for a low price, especially if they have been used before. This makes them ideal for powering chargers that allow for or even require a DC input voltage. The downside is, that they only produce 12 V output voltage. Most chargers claim to be able to…

Make a floating ground 12 V server power supply

This article describes how to make a power supply with a so called floating ground from a regular server power supply. This is needed for example when connection multiple DC power sources in series to reach a higher voltage. To understand why this is necessary, please check out my other article about making a floating…

Turning on a HP DPS-750RB server power supply

There are many tutorials and how-tos on the web, that use a resistor or wire to connect two pads on the top of the rear edge, to turn on the power supply. I found this a little bit odd, since regularly, one needs to pull a certain pin to ground (GND), to turn on the…

Powering the TS100 Soldering Iron Using a 18 V Power Tool Battery

The portable, STM32-powered TS100 soldering iron has a wide input voltage range from 12 V to 24 V. Since the resistance of the soldering tips doesn’t change, the power consumption will vary from about 17 W at 12 V to about 65 W at 24 V. To power the iron from a Lithium polymer (LiPo)…

4WD Steering Using a Servo Reverser (or not)

Some RC cars or model kits allow to add the steering of a second (mostly rear) axis, using a second servo. This is, for example, true for the Tamiya CR-01 or G6-01 chassis. Tamiya recommends using a remote control system and an additional channel to set this up. If you don’t already own such a…