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Showing posts from November, 2017

Non-genuine battery in Lenovo X230

I wanted to refresh the battery in my travel laptop and decided that 70€+ might be a bit too much. So I've settled onto a 20€ battery, +1€ shipping, from Amazon. Here's the affiliate link:  http://amzn.to/2AUSIUW - but read before you decide to buy it. If you are ordering from outside Germany, returns will be difficult, as LiPo batteries fall under a special shipping clause. Second, the battery is suited for an X220 model, not X230. Third - and most importantly - the battery is a fake, with less than the advertised capacity. If you still decide to continue, then read on. Some nice people have managed to decrypt the EC firmware inside the Lenovo laptops and allow for a way to rewrite it: https://github.com/hamishcoleman/thinkpad-ec You can go through all the trouble of compiling it, but, to save you 5 minutes, here's the ready-built image that I've used myself, for X230  and the file for X230T , tested by readers: https://www.dropbox.com/s/pgd6o6gn3xkvl2e/patch

Inside stuff: battery-powered glue gun

I use a glue gun from time to time and was getting annoyed with the cable, finding a free power socket, was always in the way, ... So I bought a cheap battery-powered glue gun . It takes 7mm sticks instead of my old one - which takes 11mm ones. It also takes a little less space and has a better stand. The old one is rated at 15W while the yellow toy has 8W written on its label. No surprise in finding a standard 18650 cell in there. The glue stick feeds through a rubber o-ring. The only electronic intelligence can be found in the board at the bottom of the unit. The bottom of the board features a standard (90 degree) micro-USB socket and three LEDs. The LED diffuser is pictured bottom-left, while the hand-soldered "ON" switch is center. The bottom of the board has a TP4056 battery charger IC . It can supply up to 1A of charging current (and it does) and is produced by the NanJing Top Power Corp. While it looks like the same part number and provides sim

CTC / MightyBoard wireless conversion attempt

This is not a "howto" as I couldn't get it to work. But if you want to know why, read on. I've been using MatterControl instead of MakerBot for my CTC Bizer (Dual) for a while know and have been really satisfied with it. However, the best results (and control) I got with a direct USB connection. Having a 2m-long USB cable dangling is not my style so I've searched for a solution. TCP-Serial bridge There are several options here, but I've settled on ESP8266 (NodeMCU) and one of these projects: https://github.com/jeelabs/esp-link https://github.com/beckdac/ESP8266-transparent-bridge https://github.com/luc-github/ESP3D So basically the ESP8266 acts as a server which then forwards everything to and from the hardware serial connection. The first two projects work (probably) fine, but MatterControl has currently (Nov 2017) an issue with virtual serial ports. I've tried both com0com and VSPE. It runs fine for a few commands (2-5) and then it fai

Floureon BYC17.GH3 thermostat teardown and impression

I recently bought a Floureon thermostat for my electrical floor heating . and. took it apart. for your appreciation. Later edit: a lot of the users are complaining about the clock advancing a few minutes per day. You need to decide if you can live with that or ask the seller to provide details. I couldn't test this, as my unit runs from an intermittent supply. Edit 2: see a hand-drawn schematic at the end to help you with wiring. The thermostat can switch both heating and cooling loads, but the product page does not list any instructions. Fortunately, I have a cell photo of those: Outside In the box, the thermostat comes with the leaflet above, the unit, two drywall(?) screws and an external sensor. The pinout is listed on the back and this is where you should pay attention: