Up Close And Personal With Some Busted Avionics

July 10, 2021 by Tom Nardi 1 Comment

When he found this broken Narco DME 890 that was headed for the trash, [Yeo Kheng Meng] did what any self-respecting hardware hacker would do: he took it back to his workbench so he could crack it open. After all, it’s not often you get to look at a piece of tech built to the exacting standards required by even outdated avionics.

DME stands for “Distance Measuring Equipment”, and as you might expect from the name, it indicates how far the aircraft is from a given target. [Yeo Kheng Meng] actually goes pretty deep into the theory behind how it works in his write-up if you’re interested in the nuts and bolts of it all, but the short version is that the pilot selects the frequency of a known station on the ground, and the distance to the target is displayed on the screen.

Inside the device, [Yeo Kheng Meng] found several densely packed boards, each isolated to minimize interference. The main PCB plays host to the Mostek MK3870 microcontroller, an 8-bit chip that screams along at 4 MHz and offers a spacious 128 bytes of RAM. It doesn’t sound like much to the modern AVR wrangler, but for 1977, it was cutting edge stuff.

Digging further, [Yeo Kheng Meng] opens up the metal cans that hold the transmitter and receiver. Thanks to the excellent documentation available for the device, which contains extensive schematics and block diagrams, he was able to ascertain the function of many of the components. Even if you’re unlikely to ever go hands on with this type of technology, it’s fascinating to see the thought and attention to detail that goes into even seemingly mundane aspects of the hardware.

Hungry for more airworthy engineering? We’ve taken a close look at some hardware pulled from a civilian airliner, as well as some battle-hardened electronics that once graced the cockpit of an AH-64 Apache attack helicopter.

StarLink Terminal Unit Firmware Dumped

July 7, 2021 by Al Williams 17 Comments

There’s a lot of expense in what telephone companies call “the last mile” — delivering service from the main trunks to your home or business. StarLink wants to avoid that cost by connecting you via an array of low-orbit satellites and some users are already using the service. In Belgium, [Lennert Wouters] managed to dump the terminal’s firmware and has some interesting observations.

The teardown is actually more than just a firmware dump. His “level 1” teardown involves exposing the board. This can be tricky because there are apparently different versions of the terminal out already, so advice from one source might not match your hardware, and that was the case here.

Continue reading “StarLink Terminal Unit Firmware Dumped” →

Lightwave Multimeter Teardown

July 6, 2021 by Al Williams 2 Comments

You tend to think of test equipment in fairly basic terms: a multimeter, a power supply, a signal generator, and an oscilloscope. However, there are tons of highly-specialized test equipment for very specific purposes. One of these is the 8163A “lightwave multimeter” and [Signal Path] tears one part for repair in a recent video that you can see below.

If you’ve never heard of a lightwave multimeter, don’t feel bad. The instrument is a measuring system for fiber optics and, depending on the plugins installed, can manage a few tests that you’d usually use an optical power meter, a laser or light source, and some dedicated test jigs to perform. Continue reading “Lightwave Multimeter Teardown” →

Review And Teardown Of Economical Programmable DC Power Supply

June 24, 2021 by Donald Papp 14 Comments

[Kerry Wong] isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty, and is always more than willing to open things up and see what makes them tick. This time, he reviews and tears down the Topshak LW-3010EC programmable DC power supply, first putting the unit through its paces, then opens it up to see how it looks on the inside.

The Topshak LW-3010EC is in a family of reasonably economical power supplies made by a wide variety of manufacturers, which all share many of the same internals and basic construction. This one is both programmable as well as nice and compact, and [Kerry] compares and contrasts it with other power supplies in the same range as he tests the functions and checks over the internals.

Overall, [Kerry] seems pleased with the unit. You can watch him put the device through its paces in the video embedded below, which ends with him opening it up and explaining what’s inside. If you’ve ever been curious about what’s inside one of these power supplies and how they can be expected to perform, be sure to fire up the video below the page break.

Speaking of power supplies, most of us have ready access to ATX power supplies. They are awfully capable pieces of hardware, and hackable in their own way. Our own Jenny List will tell you everything you need to know about the ATX power supply, and how to put it to new uses.

Continue reading “Review And Teardown Of Economical Programmable DC Power Supply” →

Teardown: Franz Crystal Metronome

June 22, 2021 by Tom Nardi 16 Comments

I wish I could tell you that there’s some complex decision tree at play when I select a piece of hardware to take apart for this series, but ultimately it boils down two just two factors: either the gadget was something I was personally interested in, or it was cheap. An ideal candidate would check both boxes, but that’s not always the case. This time around however, I can confidently say our subject doesn’t fall into either category.

Now don’t get me wrong, at first glance I found the Franz Crystal Metronome to be intriguing in its own way. With that vintage look, how could you not? But I’m about as far from a musician as one can get, so you’d hardly find a metronome on my wish list. As for the cost, a check on eBay seems to show there’s something of a following for these old school Franz models, with ones in good condition going for $50 to $80. Admittedly not breaking the bank, but still more than I’d like to pay for something that usually ends up as a pile of parts.

That being the case, why are you currently reading about it on Hackaday? Because it exploits something of a loophole in the selection process: it doesn’t work, and somebody gave it to me to try and figure out why. So without further ado let’s find out what literally makes a Franz Crystal Metronome tick, and see if we can’t get it doing so gain.

Continue reading “Teardown: Franz Crystal Metronome” →

19 Coils Make Charging Wireless

June 20, 2021 by Al Williams 57 Comments

Wireless charging is conceptually simple. Two coils form an ad hoc transformer with the primary in the charger and the secondary in the charging device. However, if you’ve ever had a wireless charging device, you know that reality can be a bit more challenging since the device must be positioned just so on the charger. Xiaomi has a multi-coil charger that can charge multiple devices and is tolerant of their positioning on the charger. How does it work? [Charger Lab] tears one apart and finds 19 coils and a lot of heat management crammed into the device.

The first part of the post is a terse consumer review of the device, looking at its dimensions and features. But the second part is when the cover comes off. The graphite heat shield looks decidedly like an accidental spill of something, but we’re sure that’s just how it appears. The coils are packed in tight in three layers. We have to wonder about their mutual interactions, and we assume that only some of them are active at any given time. The teardown shows a lot of the components and even pulls datasheets on many components, but doesn’t really go into the theory of operation.

Still, this is an unusual device to see from the inside. It is impressive to see so much power and thermal management in such a tiny package. We wonder that we don’t see more wireless charging in do-it-yourself projects. We do see some, of course. Not to mention grafting a charging receiver to an existing cell phone.

Apollo Shift Register Is Discrete

June 19, 2021 by Al Williams 10 Comments

We’re unabashed fans of [Ken Shirriff] here at Hackaday, and his latest post about an Apollo-era transistorized shift register doesn’t disappoint. Of course, nowadays a 16-bit shift register is nothing special. But in 1965, this piece of Apollo test hardware weighed five pounds and likely cost at least one engineer’s salary in the day, if not more.

The incredible complexity of the the Apollo spacecraft required NASA to develop a sophisticated digital system that would allow remote operators to execute tests and examine results from control rooms miles away from the launch pad.

This “Computer Buffer Unit” was used to hold commands for the main computer since a remote operator could not use the DSKY to enter commands directly. Externally the box looks like a piece of military hardware, and on the inside has six circuit boards stacked like the pages of a book. To combat Florida’s notoriously damp conditions, the enclosure included a desiccant bag and a way to fill the device with nitrogen. A humidity indicator warned when it was time to change the bag.

There is a lot more in the post, so if you are interested in unusual construction techniques that were probably the precursor to integrated circuits, diode transistor logic, or just think old space hardware is cool, you’ll enjoy a peek inside this unusual piece of gear. Be sure to check out some of [Ken]’s previous examinations, from tiny circuits to big computers.