OLEDs Have Gained Brightness, Not Burn-In Resistance

August 17, 2026 by Maya Posch 17 Comments

OLED displays solve many of the problems suffered by LC displays, including color fidelity, dynamic range and power usage. That said, especially in the early days OLED gained a reputation for dim screens, short lifespans and burn-in. Over time better organic dyes were developed, along with burn-in prevention methods that have made OLEDs much closer to LCDs in terms of longevity. In a recent comparison between OLED TVs by RTings it’s however clear that between 2017 and 2023 there haven’t been any major advances beyond bumps in brightness.

The relatively dim screens were a major problem, as they prevented OLEDs from displaying HDR content. This issue has been well and truly addressed, as confirmed by RTings’ testing, but after an over 10,000 hours stress test that simulates about 10 years of regular use at maximum SDR brightness, especially static elements like the CNN TV banner happily burned in even on the newest models with all burn-in prevention measures enabled.

Here the biggest take-away is probably that even if the expected panel lifespan at full brightness is still the same, this higher brightness budget means that you can gain some lifespan by cranking the brightness way down. It’s also essential to keep features like pixel refresh cycles enabled, as demonstrated by [Hardware Unboxed] and their abuse of a QD-OLED monitor where a worst-case 6,000 hour stress-test managed to create some impressive levels of burn-in from uneven subpixel wear.

Giving Resin 3D Printers Another Shot After Six Years

July 21, 2026 by Maya Posch 26 Comments

My initial experience with a 3D printer came in 2020, when I got access to a buddy’s Creality LD-002R SLA printer. This was one of those awkward transition phases for SLA printers, where inefficient RGB LCDs finally got replaced by monochrome LCD panels, thus massively reducing the required exposure time and increasing the LCD panel’s lifespan.

The closely related Creality LD-002H is a monochrome SLA printer, but as this wasn’t the one that this friend opted for we had to learn the ropes on this more old-school printer. In terms of specifications this meant a build volume of 119 mm x 65 mm x 160 mm to play with and a claimed 26.1 µm resolution. Despite some struggles along the way, this machine churned out impressively high levels of detail with whatever cheap resin we threw at it, and even the post-printing processing became easy once we added a flex plate to the build plate and tweaked the cleaning and curing steps.

Despite all these positives, we both drifted away from resin printing, mostly due to the still messy and smelly printing process. FDM printers seemed like a better deal, especially after said buddy got his mittens on a used IDEX FDM printer. I would eventually go through a rather loathsome Creality Ender V2 experience before ending up with my current-day Elegoo Neptune 4, and resin printing seemed to be a thing of the past for me. Until recently, that is.

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Review: The Tanmatsu, A Year On

July 1, 2026 by Jenny List 10 Comments

About 18 months ago, we brought you a sneak peek at a handheld that started life in the Dutch conference badge scene. At the time it showed promise, but its software wasn’t ready for a fair review. Now it has both a stable operating system and a growing software library. It’s time to put it through its paces and see what it can do.

A Handheld Computer For Hackers

The Tanmatsu PCB, showing all the different parts. — The bare PCB, with the expansion connector bottom centre.

The Tanmatsu (Japanese for “Terminal”), is a general putpose palmtop computer based around an ESP32-P4 application processor from Espressif. It takes the form of a PCB and PETG 3D printed sandwich, with the front face PCB sporting a silicone QWERTY keyboard and an 800×480 MIPI DSI display. The keyboard should be familiar to many readers, being the same moulding as the Solder Party KeebDeck which has appeared on other devices.

Under the hood that P4 has two 400MHz RISC-V cores and 32MB of PSRAM with 16MB of Flash, and there’s an ESP32-C6 for WiFi, BLE and IEEE 802.15.4 mesh networking. There’s an Ebyte LoRa module with an SMA antenna too, which can be had in 868, or 915MHz versions depending on where in the world you live. Continue reading “Review: The Tanmatsu, A Year On” →

Testing Expensive Graphene-Reinforced Nylon Filament

March 24, 2026 by Maya Posch 11 Comments

Although usually nylon (generally PA6) filament is pretty cheap, there are some more exotic variants out there, such as the PA12-based Lyten 3D graphene filament that comes in at a cool $150 for a 1 kg spool. Worse for [Dr. Igor Gaspar] here was that the company doesn’t ship to the EU, and didn’t respond to emails about obtaining a sample for testing. Fortunately he got a spool via a different route, so that he could test whether this is the strongest nylon filament or not.

The full name for this filament is PA1205, though it’s not certain what the ’05’ part stands for. PA12 is a less moisture-sensitive version of PA6, however. Among the manufacturer’s claims are that it’s the strongest nylon filament, as well as very lightweight and heat-resistant. Interestingly the datasheet recommends printing with an 0.6 mm nozzle, which is the only major deviation from typical nylon FDM filaments. Of course, printing with an 0.4 mm nozzle had to be tried.

With a standard PA-CF preset in Bambu Lab’s slicer the printing of test parts worked without issues, which was promising. With load testing the filament made a good showing compared to average PA filaments, though as with most fiber reinforced filaments it’s more brittle than the pure material. Compared to PA-CF this PA1205 was much less brittle than PA-CF, however. Overall it’s not a bad filament, but for the asking price it’s a tough ask.

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Testing A Soviet 1000 Volt Insulation Tester From 1985

March 17, 2026 by Maya Posch 8 Comments

Although the term ‘Iron Curtain’ from the Cold War brings to mind something like the Berlin Wall and its forbidding No Man’s Land, there was still active trade between the Soviet Union and the West. This included devices like the M4100/4 insulation tester that the [Three-phase] YouTube channel recently looked at, after previously poking at a 1967 USSR resistance bridge.

This particular unit dates to 1985, and comes in a rather nice-looking case that somewhat looks like bakelite. It’s rated for up to 1 gigaohm, putting out 1,000 V by using the crank handle. Because of the pristine condition of the entire unit, including seals, it was decided to not look at the internals but only test its functionality.

After running through the basic usage of the insulation tester it’s hooked up to a range of testing devices, which shows that it seems to be mostly still in working condition. The first issue noticed was that the crank handle-based generator was a bit tired, so that it never quite hit the maximum voltage.

With no parallax correction and no known last calibration date, it still measured to about 10% of the actual value in some tests initially, but in later tests it was significantly off from the expected value. At this point the device was suspected of being faulty, but it defied being easily opened, so any repair will have to be put off for now. That said, it being in such good condition raises the prospect of it being an easy repair, hopefully in an upcoming video.

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Last Year In SBCs

March 9, 2026 by Al Williams 8 Comments

While it might not be comprehensive, [Bret.dk] recently posted a retrospective titled “Every Single Board Computer I Tested in 2025.” The post covers 15 boards from 8 different companies. The cheapest board was $42, but the high-end topped out at $590.

We like the structure of the post. The boards are grouped in an under $50 category, another group for $50-100, and a final group for everything north of $100. Then there’s some analysis of what RAM prices are doing to the market, and commentary about CIX P1, Qualcomm, RISC-V, and more.

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The Tragic Demise Of The Technirama Prism-Based Anamorphic Lens

March 7, 2026 by Maya Posch 5 Comments

A commercial Delrama prism-based anamorphic lens for large cameras. (Source: Mathieu Stern, YouTube)

Although to the average person a camera lens is just that bit of glass you stick on the front of the camera to make stuff appear in focus, there’s a whole wide world out there of lens designs and modifications with enough variety to make your head spin. Some of these designs make a big impact, while others fade away again, sometimes at the whims of film makers and photographers. Prism-based anamorphic lenses are an oddity that recently [Mathieu Stern] got his hands on. (Video, embedded below.)

During the 1950s and 1960s there was a bit of a competition between anamorphic formats, which use special lenses that ‘squeeze’ a larger image so that widescreen movies could be recorded on standard 35 mm film. By using the same lens for recording and playback, the result was a mostly distortion-free image. Here the Technirama format by Technicolor who teamed up with Dutch company De Oude Delft (‘Old Delft’) to produce the prism-based Delrama lenses that fit on existing lenses for cameras and projectors.

The last gasp of the Delrama anamorphic lenses. (Credit: Mathieu Stern, YouTube)a

Despite having a clearly superior, distortion-free image than the cylindrical lenses of the competition, Technirama got pushed out of the commercial market, leaving De Oude Delft to try and interest the consumer market for Delrama with 8 and 16 mm adapters. These latter are the ones that [Mathieu] got his hands on and tried out with a DSLR camera.

Troublesome with these Delrama adapters is that their silver mirrors tend to degrade over time, and they also turned out to be rather fragile, which are both things that made consumers sour on them. Another challenge was the fixed four meter focus that’s great when you’re using it with a projector, but terrible for up-close shots. All of these issues resulted in Delrama fading from the market by the 1970s until all that remains are these remnants of a format that once was used to film some of the biggest Hollywood movies.

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