Quality Control, Done Anywhere

Modern society has brought us all kinds of wonders, including rapid intercontinental travel, easy information access, and decreased costs for most consumer goods thanks to numerous supply chains. When those supply chains break down as a result of a natural disaster or other emergency, however, the disaster’s effects can be …read more

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Nixie Clock Failure Analysis, [Dalibor Farný] Style

We’ve become sadly accustomed to consumer devices that seem to give up the ghost right after the warranty period expires. And even when we get “lucky” and the device fails while it’s still covered, chances are that there will be no attempt to repair it; the unit will be replaced …read more

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Look what came out of my USB charger !

Quick Charge, Qualcomm’s power delivery over USB technology, was introduced in 2013 and has evolved over several versions offering increasing levels of power transfer. The current version — QCv3.0 — offers 18 W power at voltage levels between 3.6 V to 20 V.  Moreover, connected devices can negotiate and request any voltage between these two limits in 200 mV steps. After some tinkering, [Vincent Deconinck] succeeded in turning a Quick Charge 3.0 charger into a variable voltage power supply.

His blog post is a great introduction and walk through of the Quick Charge ecosystem. [Vincent] was motivated after reading about  …read more

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Unlocking 12V Quick Charge on a USB Power Bank

[Robert Nixdorf] frequently needs to use this high-end audio recorder, but it sucks dry a set of eight AA batteries in just a few hours. Obviously a longer lasting solution was required, and he started scouring the web looking for an answer. He bought a Quick Charge power bank and then hacked a Digispark to negotiate with the power bank to provide 12V output to Quick Charge his audio recorder.

Qualcomm’s Quick Charge system is designed to provide increased output voltages to reduce charging time in QC compatible devices such as mobile phones powered by their Snapdragon range of SoC’s. …read more

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