Reverse engineering and "unlocking extras" in a Hantek 1832C LCR meter

For some time I've felt the need to have a piece of equipment allowing me to measure inductance, impedance and a broader range of capacitance values. For the rest of the relevant types of measurements I've already had a digital multimeter and an oscilloscope, which have proven sufficient so far.

Attempting to repair a Vorwerk TM31 Bimby / Thermomix

At the beginning, when in my house we decided to purchase this kitchen food processor/blender almost 10 years ago, I considered it to be somewhat of an overpriced consumer asset in spite of the multiple features that it enclosed. Still I went with the hype and gave some credit to how much it could make life easier, in particular when it came to cooking meals and otherwise more complicated recipes.

Yet another product safety issue - a self-balancing electric scooter, a.k.a. "Hoverboard"

Considering all the fuss about this particular type of personal transportation gadget having been responsible for numerous fire incidents, given that it is already part of a distant past (by modern perception), I took the chance of buying one of these units, going for a cheap one. My expectation was that this industry had some time to mature and learn with all the beating they received from the press and these incidents:

Dealing with dishwasher failures

Albeit 10 years of flawless operation can be considered quite good for a home appliance, still when it finally fails, there is the brief criticizing thought of "why didn't it last longer? Bloody programmed obsolescence in modern industry!" ..and so on and so forth.

Well, the truth be said, 10 years of operation without a single glitch is either a product of sheer luck (i.e. one golden batch in the production line), or the brand really went serious with quality and the strategy at the time didn't include the need for recovering the same consumer soon in the product life cycle.

I can say this from the Whirlpool dishwasher model ADP 6837/1 that I have been using since 2009. During 10 years it never complained, while we threw dirty dishes at it on a daily basis.

Once again bumping into questionable product safety standards

About 6 months ago, I replaced the manual plastic pump I used to have for dispensing water from 5+ litre jugs, with what would in principle be a more sophisticated and convenient approach: looked for an electric water dispenser, and without much searching, found several options. Most, if not all were unfortunately designed to fit into the 19 litre office water bottles. Without any alternative, ordered one of these, considering that I would have to come up with some custom adaptation if I wanted to use it with the 5 litre bottles. Ended up ordering the one below, for its minimally elegant design and compact dimensions:

Adding metalurgical capability to a biological microscope - part 2

Like I had previously explained, I was able to obtain from eBay (for a minimally decent cost), just the bare vertical illuminator, which didn't include any accessories. The light house was not an exception. The vertical illuminator consists the main body:

and the light house, which in the original device would be based on a halogen bulb of at least 15-20 Watts:

After-market safety treatment of low cost products

There was a time when it was not possible to obtain a proper pure sine wave inverter (12 V DC -> 220 VAC 50 Hz) without shelling out hundreds of Euros or USD.

Today, with the massification of supply and demand, and with the sheer scale of the chinese industry producing these types of devices for consumer and industrial applications, prices necessarily went down.

Until recently I had a modified sine wave inverter, which given its limited compatibility with different types of loads, I have discarded (resold) and went looking for a cheap pure sine wave (which intuitively I expected to be much cheaper in current days).

Through Aliexpress, I found a 500 Watt/1000 Watt peak for 38 Euros (roughly the price I paid for the modified sine wave model years ago - and it was only rated to 250 Watts):

Teardown of a laser printer

In this age of mass consumption  and programmed obsolescence, it is not surprising that a few years after you shell out money for a printer, the availability of its consumables starts to decrease, followed by an increase of the associated price.

Induction Stove

Some days ago my father asked me to check if I could repair this single element induction stove. I disassembled the device to inspect its inner workings. I was a bit curious because I have never taken apart this kind of apparatus.

Modded for long range and glitch free communication

After assembling my quadcopter, one major issue I stumbled upon was the (lack of) quality of my radio system.