Hi Julian, the reason why the device is flashing is the voltage is too low. At 4.42V it is too low to support USB devices and the device will flash, and quite often shut down completely. The micro USB connector is for testing cables for their Voltage Drop. That connector can also be used in place of the attached standard USB plug. Phones and Tablets can be attached to the USB monitor directly using a micro USB cable. This is a nice feature not found in other USB monitors. I hope this helps. :) David
1. Double click - "change memory cell" mode. Single click - change cell. Double click again to exit from this mode. 2. If holding button approximately 3-5 sec, its clear NEXT memory cell (if you need to clear second memory cell, you need hold button on first cell). 3. Device start blinking if voltage is too high or too low. (Double click to disable blinking for current session) sorry 4 my English...all the best from Ukraine! ))
I much prefer the DS3231. It's more accurate, doesn't require a crystal, allows you to read the temperature. I've had some Chinese DS1307 modules with terribly inaccurate crystals. Only downside is that is doesn't have any battery backed memory like the DS1307. Luckily, because the IC doesn't do bounds checking (!!!), you can just (mis-)use the alarm registers, to store your own data. Thanks for yet another entertaining video Julian!
KCX-017, long hold on button - moves to next memory bank and clears it to zero, double click puts it in memory view mode (no erase) and then you click once to move to next memory, double click again to exit memory view mode. Maintains all 10 memories when power is off. Flashes below 4.6 volts to indicate under voltage and you should see an arrow pointing down of far left of display.
Great video again. You've become the 'go to' channel whenever I get Arduino stuff from Ebay :) Bet a few folks just knew you would check that fuse right out of the packaging lol
Wafer thin PCB's seems to be the latest cost cutting measure in the far east. I just bought a new computer full size atx motherboard and the pcb would be lucky to be 1.5mm thick and shows considerable bowing from the soldering process.. It is a "quality" brand name but I suspect the competition are also up to similar tricks.
Sometimes it is useful. I have had times where that extra half a mm meant the difference in something fitting in an enclosure and not, but that doesn't mean it is actually a GOOD thing most of the time xD
I have 6 of the USB Doctor and all of them ended up with broken cords. If you look at the cord at the device end, the cord is protected by a flex guard. There isn't a flex guard on the USB plug end. The ring like guard is so stiff, it eventually cuts the cable. There is a newer version that has flex guards on both ends. I found a seller on Amazon.com that has the new version, however, when I purchased 7 units, I received 5 old versions and only 2 of the new ones. :( I also use a USB power monitor from a company called Portapow. They are located in the UK, I purchased several units and had it shipped to USA. Its probably the most advanced USB Power Monitor available. It can handle 0-50 volts and 0-5 amps. Their website is "portapow.co.uk" I hope it is a gadget you can review on your videos. David.
USB LCD Doctor, double click LCD will flash, while LCD flashing click once to go to the next number, double click again lock to the select number....to reset the number click 5 sec will reset the next number to zero.
I guess it's the "4884 Joystick Shield" you'r using in your Arduino Clock - would you recommend it? Nice menu and love this way to set the seconds, really cool idea!
all the fun of postbags without me having to spend money! lol, i really like the cigar plugs with a switch, much better than the unfused rubbish ones i am using at the moment, the next thing i need is a decent 3 or 4 way cigar socket to mount near my 12v batteries, have you found any cool ones of those?
How well does the ciggy plug hold into sockets? I have quite a few where the spring on the tip just pushes the plug out, and there isnt enough grip on the 2 ground springs to retain it. Really great when you drive for 45 mins with the mobile not charging without noticing it.
pretty much the design flaw of the plugs and sockets really, some work together well enough, others fall out or dont work at all, theres no real standard i think, and yes nothing really holds it in except the friction of the outer connector , the actual lighters that once went into the car sockets were trapped in a springy catch (which got hot and released), but when they turned into accessory connectors and the required plugs, it was friction alone , and the sockets changed inside to not include the catch, many sockets are way too shallow now, is a large part of the issue
Richms raw footage It looks pretty good - the outer connectors are quite firmly sprung and the tip is quite softly sprung. It also has the barb at the front.
Id like to buy one of these usb testers to check a few cables and charges i have. For a complete layman how would i test which chargers and cables are the best for fastest charge.
hi Julian, i'm little bit curious about voltage usb meter, since you have so many type of usb meter, if you don't mind... can you plug all the meter on series and we'll see about the accuracy, and show it to us?
can it check voltage drop on a cable? I ordered one that looks just like it that claims it can show the voltage drop on a cable when plugged into the USB mini.
your videos are always interesting to watch. Cool stuff. But one little thing has become increasingly annoying. That is your camera is chasing the focus and exposure. Not sure exactly what device you are using to record your videos, but i am pretty sure if before you hit the record botton you tap and hold on the live screen on the subject you are about to record, it locks the focus and exposure.
Yup, he is using a Nexus 4. Told him a couple of weeks ago but I think he can't read all emails. Should just lock the focus which is possible with a couple of Android apps, not sure with the default Google camera.
Tiit Saul I use the MovieStudio app on my Nexus4 phone. It in turn uses the movie mode from the standard camera app. It never used to do the annoying re-focus 2 seconds into the shot - then Google changed something and now it does it every time.
Re: lcd usb mini voltage and current detector Found this on Ebay: www.ebay.co.uk/itm/LCD-USB-Mini-Voltage-and-Current-Detector-Mobile-Power-USB-Charger-Tester-Meter-/151383371403?pt=UK_BOI_Electrical_Test_Measurement_Equipment_ET&hash=item233f26ee8b Performance parameters : 1, input voltage : 3V-7V 2 , the input current :
Some more info regarding the mini usb: www.ebay.co.uk/itm/LCD-USB-Mini-Voltage-and-Current-Detector-USB-Charger-Tester-Meter-tool-/251638237442?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3a96cec902
Kenneth Rosenstroem Well, that's more information than the seller I got mine from provided in the listing. I'm not sure I understand things any better :) I think the important bits are that: * It can be powered from its integrated cable, or you can use an external cable and test the voltage drop in the cable. * Double clicking puts it into what I will call "data review mode." In this mode, each click advances to show the data in another slot. Double clicking again takes it out of data review mode. * Click and hold to clear the displayed data slot. It seems from those other descriptions that you might be able to calibrate the thing? That worries me, because I wonder if I accidentally miscalibrated mine trying to figure out how to operate it.
Almost fell over when I seen it. Saying that I did find one on sale where they have the batteries... £3! 2200mAh. Wasnt going to say no! Its in a nice Ali case too. direct.asda.com/Quby-Power-Bank-and-0.3M-Micro-USB-Cable/001141412,default,pd.html?dual=0
hmm Day ? There's no need to be able to set that individually from the day/month/year. you can fairly easily calculate the day of the week from the day. The algorithm to do this was developped somewhere in the 19th century, way before computers and even mechanical calculators. Zeller's congruence: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeller%27s_congruence (the trick is in the integer math). The principle is converting the date to a julian day (a number of days since a certain timebase (could be anything) then modulo that by 7.
There are equally a couple tricks for doing the bounds checking based on some calculations rather than lots of individual tests. Again, those basically come back to zellr's approach applied cleverly. (it's basically all in the wikipedia page, just find the 'gems' :)).
oreubens I wonder if the DS3231 uses that algorithmic approach - or just lookup tables. I still think the chip should have an increment/decrement option (with bounds checks) in its command set.
Julian Ilett PC's and the likes have RTC's too but you typically don't worry about them since it's the OS that interfaces with them and not user code... unless... you've been in the programming thing for a while and dealt with them in the past. From how they behave (on PC, I don't have a DS3231 to test) I don't think the RTCs use the approach of updating a global second counter and doing all the calculations based on that. If they did, you would see an invalid date correct almost immediately as it processes the next second. From observed and documented behaviour I would imagine that the RTC logic increments the seconds register, if it overflows to 60, resets seconds to 0and increments the minutes register, if that overflows to 60 increment the hours etc. so the difficulties don't start until it comes to checking if incrementing the day register overflows into a next month. That's probably handled with special purpose logic gates rather than compare/tests or a table lookup, I doubt these things even have anything you could call a 'cpu' within. RTC's have been around since about 1984 when it was made mandatory for the IBM AT and clones (older computers required you to set the date and time manually each boot). So considering that time, we're talking when every single transistor/gate counted. and RTC's have not really changed at all since. An increment/decrement type option with bounds check looks nice from the perspective of your particular app, but doesn't make much sense in a lot of different type apps like setting the date via a console command or from a dialog in a GUI. which is probably why it's not in there, they're essentially specialist but dumb devices and don't really have built in cpu's, and instead expect all that sort of checking to be done in software. RTC's make little sense without some sort of processor somewhere, so why make it smarter (and thus more expensive) than it really needs to be, that's a pretty common approach for most of the electronic devices. From what I remember, RTC's don't handle centuries right, you can't feed in the thousands, so it assumes 00 means 2000 which was a leap year, while typically a century ISN'T a leap year. So pretty much everything running of corrent technology RTC's will fail to properly increment 28feb 2100 to 1 mar 2100 and instead assume it's 29feb.
I tried with Arduino using loops and max7219 plus RTC lib ...kept loosing time and it comes with cr3032 which is wrong and should be lih3032 rechargeable I tried an 18650 until I found out it charges to 4.35 😂😆
Hi Julian, the reason why the device is flashing is the voltage is too low. At 4.42V it is too low to support USB devices and the device will flash, and quite often shut down completely. The micro USB connector is for testing cables for their Voltage Drop. That connector can also be used in place of the attached standard USB plug. Phones and Tablets can be attached to the USB monitor directly using a micro USB cable. This is a nice feature not found in other USB monitors.
I hope this helps. :)
David
1. Double click - "change memory cell" mode. Single click - change cell. Double click again to exit from this mode.
2. If holding button approximately 3-5 sec, its clear NEXT memory cell (if you need to clear second memory cell, you need hold button on first cell).
3. Device start blinking if voltage is too high or too low. (Double click to disable blinking for current session)
sorry 4 my English...all the best from Ukraine! ))
I much prefer the DS3231. It's more accurate, doesn't require a crystal, allows you to read the temperature. I've had some Chinese DS1307 modules with terribly inaccurate crystals. Only downside is that is doesn't have any battery backed memory like the DS1307. Luckily, because the IC doesn't do bounds checking (!!!), you can just (mis-)use the alarm registers, to store your own data.
Thanks for yet another entertaining video Julian!
beargun42 I had one of those inaccurate xtals too - lost about 3 seconds a day
KCX-017, long hold on button - moves to next memory bank and clears it to zero, double click puts it in memory view mode (no erase) and then you click once to move to next memory, double click again to exit memory view mode. Maintains all 10 memories when power is off. Flashes below 4.6 volts to indicate under voltage and you should see an arrow pointing down of far left of display.
Thanks!
The Micro-USB port on the charger tester is for power supplies with a permanent USB lead
nice you could also put a switch on the sorder bridge if you want to be able to switch more easily
Great video again. You've become the 'go to' channel whenever I get Arduino stuff from Ebay :)
Bet a few folks just knew you would check that fuse right out of the packaging lol
I hope you get on well with your postman! :)
Enjoying the postbag videos here :).
I can't believe how cheap that stuff is in the UK!
Wafer thin PCB's seems to be the latest cost cutting measure in the far east. I just bought a new computer full size atx motherboard and the pcb would be lucky to be 1.5mm thick and shows considerable bowing from the soldering process.. It is a "quality" brand name but I suspect the competition are also up to similar tricks.
Rob B We demand cheap stuff - they respond
Sometimes it is useful. I have had times where that extra half a mm meant the difference in something fitting in an enclosure and not, but that doesn't mean it is actually a GOOD thing most of the time xD
I have the same, USB LCD Doctor. Been using it to test the capacities on my batteries and what USB cables give the best charge rate.
I love pro micros and pro mini's. So damn useful.
Being extremely general, 22AWG wire is good for about 7 amps, so yes! Albeit barely...
I have 6 of the USB Doctor and all of them ended up with broken cords. If you look at the cord at the device end, the cord is protected by a flex guard. There isn't a flex guard on the USB plug end. The ring like guard is so stiff, it eventually cuts the cable.
There is a newer version that has flex guards on both ends. I found a seller on Amazon.com that has the new version, however, when I purchased 7 units, I received 5 old versions and only 2 of the new ones. :(
I also use a USB power monitor from a company called Portapow. They are located in the UK, I purchased several units and had it shipped to USA. Its probably the most advanced USB Power Monitor available. It can handle 0-50 volts and 0-5 amps. Their website is "portapow.co.uk" I hope it is a gadget you can review on your videos.
David.
USB LCD Doctor, double click LCD will flash, while LCD flashing click once to go to the next number, double click again lock to the select number....to reset the number click 5 sec will reset the next number to zero.
Julian Ilett do you have a video of you creating your own clock? I'm highly interested! Great content.
Julian keep the good work and dont give up at all
Dude i love ur videos and keep doing postbags they r the best
Temperature compensated, not temperature controlled, which would require lots more power.
I guess it's the "4884 Joystick Shield" you'r using in your Arduino Clock - would you recommend it? Nice menu and love this way to set the seconds, really cool idea!
all the fun of postbags without me having to spend money! lol, i really like the cigar plugs with a switch, much better than the unfused rubbish ones i am using at the moment, the next thing i need is a decent 3 or 4 way cigar socket to mount near my 12v batteries, have you found any cool ones of those?
set the time to 23:59 the previous day, wait a second, read it back and see if the dates match.
How well does the ciggy plug hold into sockets? I have quite a few where the spring on the tip just pushes the plug out, and there isnt enough grip on the 2 ground springs to retain it. Really great when you drive for 45 mins with the mobile not charging without noticing it.
pretty much the design flaw of the plugs and sockets really, some work together well enough, others fall out or dont work at all, theres no real standard i think, and yes nothing really holds it in except the friction of the outer connector
, the actual lighters that once went into the car sockets were trapped in a springy catch (which got hot and released), but when they turned into accessory connectors and the required plugs, it was friction alone
, and the sockets changed inside to not include the catch, many sockets are way too shallow now, is a large part of the issue
Richms raw footage It looks pretty good - the outer connectors are quite firmly sprung and the tip is quite softly sprung. It also has the barb at the front.
Excellent unboxing video. Your nice explanation made it very interesting and informative. Great work. Regards,
Hello Julian Ilett , how did you display big fonts on the Nokia 5110 glcd?
Id like to buy one of these usb testers to check a few cables and charges i have.
For a complete layman how would i test which chargers and cables are the best for fastest charge.
nice gadget. I wish the Chinese would include instructions. did you ever find a manual for it?
hi Julian, i'm little bit curious about voltage usb meter, since you have so many type of usb meter, if you don't mind... can you plug all the meter on series and we'll see about the accuracy, and show it to us?
how does it work at 3.3v with 16mhz? as far as i know for 16mhz it need 5v. or does it deactivate the ex. crystal when 3.3v is linked?
can it check voltage drop on a cable? I ordered one that looks just like it that claims it can show the voltage drop on a cable when plugged into the USB mini.
8;40 it started flashing when power output was 4.59 volts,its telling you voltage too low
I love that USB LCD Doctor, I got 8 of 'em :)
your videos are always interesting to watch. Cool stuff. But one little thing has become increasingly annoying. That is your camera is chasing the focus and exposure. Not sure exactly what device you are using to record your videos, but i am pretty sure if before you hit the record botton you tap and hold on the live screen on the subject you are about to record, it locks the focus and exposure.
it would make your videos smoother and even better than before. Thank you for all those videos.
Tiit Saul He uses his Phone. Nexus 4 or 5 I think.
Yup, he is using a Nexus 4. Told him a couple of weeks ago but I think he can't read all emails.
Should just lock the focus which is possible with a couple of Android apps, not sure with the default Google camera.
Tiit Saul I use the MovieStudio app on my Nexus4 phone. It in turn uses the movie mode from the standard camera app. It never used to do the annoying re-focus 2 seconds into the shot - then Google changed something and now it does it every time.
Sooo, which usb port tester do you recommend?
thanks
Hi!
Do you have that code for that clock program released somewhere in public? I would be interested to learn from that.
Hene193 I'll check with the co-author if it can be open sourced.
It started flashing right around when the voltage dropped outside of USB spec, could it perhaps be a warning?
SixSixSevenSeven Yes, it seems the backlights flash to indicate under and over voltage.
Based to picture from similar listing, if voltage is below 4.6v or is over 5.3v the display flashes
Yep, 5.3v.
I'm getting deja vu... Didn't you upload this video the other day?
It's explained in the description.
runner180fxr ah so it is. Thanks :)
Re: lcd usb mini voltage and current detector
Found this on Ebay: www.ebay.co.uk/itm/LCD-USB-Mini-Voltage-and-Current-Detector-Mobile-Power-USB-Charger-Tester-Meter-/151383371403?pt=UK_BOI_Electrical_Test_Measurement_Equipment_ET&hash=item233f26ee8b
Performance parameters :
1, input voltage : 3V-7V
2 , the input current :
Some more info regarding the mini usb: www.ebay.co.uk/itm/LCD-USB-Mini-Voltage-and-Current-Detector-USB-Charger-Tester-Meter-tool-/251638237442?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3a96cec902
Kenneth Rosenstroem Well, that's more information than the seller I got mine from provided in the listing. I'm not sure I understand things any better :)
I think the important bits are that:
* It can be powered from its integrated cable, or you can use an external cable and test the voltage drop in the cable.
* Double clicking puts it into what I will call "data review mode." In this mode, each click advances to show the data in another slot. Double clicking again takes it out of data review mode.
* Click and hold to clear the displayed data slot.
It seems from those other descriptions that you might be able to calibrate the thing? That worries me, because I wonder if I accidentally miscalibrated mine trying to figure out how to operate it.
ASDA are selling that red powerbank you used in white for... £20! :O
Callum Burns Ouch! It's good value at £4, but not £20.
Almost fell over when I seen it. Saying that I did find one on sale where they have the batteries... £3! 2200mAh. Wasnt going to say no! Its in a nice Ali case too. direct.asda.com/Quby-Power-Bank-and-0.3M-Micro-USB-Cable/001141412,default,pd.html?dual=0
hmm Day ? There's no need to be able to set that individually from the day/month/year.
you can fairly easily calculate the day of the week from the day. The algorithm to do this was developped somewhere in the 19th century, way before computers and even mechanical calculators.
Zeller's congruence: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeller%27s_congruence (the trick is in the integer math).
The principle is converting the date to a julian day (a number of days since a certain timebase (could be anything) then modulo that by 7.
There are equally a couple tricks for doing the bounds checking based on some calculations rather than lots of individual tests. Again, those basically come back to zellr's approach applied cleverly. (it's basically all in the wikipedia page, just find the 'gems' :)).
oreubens I wonder if the DS3231 uses that algorithmic approach - or just lookup tables. I still think the chip should have an increment/decrement option (with bounds checks) in its command set.
Julian Ilett PC's and the likes have RTC's too but you typically don't worry about them since it's the OS that interfaces with them and not user code... unless... you've been in the programming thing for a while and dealt with them in the past.
From how they behave (on PC, I don't have a DS3231 to test) I don't think the RTCs use the approach of updating a global second counter and doing all the calculations based on that. If they did, you would see an invalid date correct almost immediately as it processes the next second. From observed and documented behaviour I would imagine that the RTC logic increments the seconds register, if it overflows to 60, resets seconds to 0and increments the minutes register, if that overflows to 60 increment the hours etc. so the difficulties don't start until it comes to checking if incrementing the day register overflows into a next month.
That's probably handled with special purpose logic gates rather than compare/tests or a table lookup, I doubt these things even have anything you could call a 'cpu' within. RTC's have been around since about 1984 when it was made mandatory for the IBM AT and clones (older computers required you to set the date and time manually each boot). So considering that time, we're talking when every single transistor/gate counted. and RTC's have not really changed at all since.
An increment/decrement type option with bounds check looks nice from the perspective of your particular app, but doesn't make much sense in a lot of different type apps like setting the date via a console command or from a dialog in a GUI. which is probably why it's not in there, they're essentially specialist but dumb devices and don't really have built in cpu's, and instead expect all that sort of checking to be done in software. RTC's make little sense without some sort of processor somewhere, so why make it smarter (and thus more expensive) than it really needs to be, that's a pretty common approach for most of the electronic devices.
From what I remember, RTC's don't handle centuries right, you can't feed in the thousands, so it assumes 00 means 2000 which was a leap year, while typically a century ISN'T a leap year. So pretty much everything running of corrent technology RTC's will fail to properly increment 28feb 2100 to 1 mar 2100 and instead assume it's 29feb.
the micro usb is for data output
Wilson Lai That doesn't work on mine
I tried with Arduino using loops and max7219 plus RTC lib ...kept loosing time and it comes with cr3032 which is wrong and should be lih3032 rechargeable I tried an 18650 until I found out it charges to 4.35 😂😆