Here is an old chemical dosing system for industrial washing machines. These units are 4-pump models, with dual pumpheads. The motors are reversed to operate alternate pumps in the same head.
From 2006, this is a fairly old unit, and made in the UK.
Main controller PCB, with interface to the power electronics via the ribbon cable, an external serial port for programming to it’s left. Powered by an ST microcontroller. The LCD is below this board.
Main power supply, sense input & motor driver boards. The PSU outputs +5v, +12v & +24v. The inputs on the lower left connect to the washing machine & trigger the pumps via the programming on the CPU. The motors are driven by L6202 H-Bridge drivers from ST.
Motor & gearbox assembly on the back of the pumphead. These are 24v DC units with 80RPM gearboxes.
UPDATE:
As it seems to be difficult to find, here is the user manual for this unit:
[download id=”5557″]
After seeing these on eBay for £8.99 I thought it might be a good deal – interfacing with the RasPi’s GPIO & it has built in power supplies.
As a kit, it was very easy to assemble, the PCB quality is high, and is a fairly good design. It worked first time, the regulators hold the rails at the right voltages.
However there are some issues with this board that bug me.
The documentation for the kit is *AWFUL*. No mention of the regulators on the parts list & which goes where – I had to carefully examine the schematics to find out those details.
The 4x 1N1007 diodes required weren’t even included in the kit! Luckily I had some 1N4148 high speed diodes lying around & even though they’re rated for 200mA continuous rather than the specified part’s 1A rating, the lack of heatsinking on the regulators wouldn’t allow use anywhere near 1A, so this isn’t much of a problem.
Component numbering on the silkscreen isn’t consistent – it jumps from R3 straight to R6! These issues could be slightly confusing for the novice builder, and considering the demographic of the RasPi, could be seen as big issues.
On the far left of the board are the 5v & 3.3v regulators, well placed on the edge of the board in case a heatsink may be required in the future. However the LM317 adjustable regulator is stuck right in the middle of the PCB – no chance of being able to fit a heatsink, & the device itself seems incredibly cheap – the heatsink tab on the back of the TO-220 is the thinnest I have ever seen. Not the usual 2-3mm thick copper of the 5v & 3.3v parts – but barely more than a mm thick, so it’s not going to be able to cope with much power dissipation without overheating quickly.
As the adjustable rail can go between ~2.5v – 10v, at the low end of the range the power dissipation is going to shoot through the roof.
The GPIO connector – this could have been done the other way, at the moment the ribbon cable has to be twisted to get both the Pi & the GPIO board the same way up. Just a slight fail there. See the image below
The power rails are not isolated out of the box – there is no connection between the 5v & 3.3v rails & the Pi’s GPIO, but the GND connections are linked together on the board.
Getting the ribbon cable through the hole in the ModMyPi case was a bit of a faff – the connector is too big! I had to squeeze the connector through at a 45° angle. The case is also remarkably tight around the connector once it’s fitted to the board – clearly the designers of the case didn’t test the an IDC connector in the case before making them!
Everything does fit though, after a little modification.
Here is the unit all built up with the case. The top cover just about fits with the IDC connector on the GPIO header.
More to come once I get some time to do some interfacing!
Finally, some protection for my Raspberry Pi! The PCB fit is slightly loose, but that was quickly sorted with the application of a couple of spots of hot glue in the corners.
Unfortunately, the case is a couple of mm too small to fit the main board from the Pico Projector inside, so I won’t be butchering that into the case with the Pi as yet. What is required is an interface to the display engine from the Pi’s DSI interface.
The pi all boxed. up. The only thing that this case would now require is a lightpipe to direct the LED’s light to the openings in the case, as they are very difficult to see at present.
Here’s the teardown of the projector itself! On the right is the info label from the projector, which covers the flex ribbon to the VGA/composite input board below.
This unit is held together with Allen screws, but is easy to get apart.
Here’s the insides of the projector, with just the top cover removed. The main board can be seen under the shielding can, the Micro HDMI connector is on the left & the MicroUSB connection is on the right. The USB connection is solely for charging the battery & provides no data interface to the unit.
On top of the main board is the shield can covering the PicoP Display Engine driver board, this shield was soldered on so no peek inside unfortunately!
The laser module itself is in the front of the unit, the laser assemblies are closest to the camera, on the left is the Direct Doubled Green module, in the centre is the blue diode, and the red diode on the right. Inside the module itself is an arrangement of mirrors & beamsplitters, used to combine the RGB beams from the lasers into a single beam to create any colour in the spectrum.
Here is the module innards revealed, the laser mounts are at the top of the screen, the green module is still mounted on the base casting.
The three dichroic mirrors in the frame do the beam combining, which is then bounced onto the mirror on the far left of the frame, down below the MEMs. From there a final mirror directs the light onto the MEMs scanning mirror before it leaves through the output window.
A trio of photodiodes caters for beam brightness control & colour control, these are located behind the last dichroic turning mirror in the centre of the picture.
This is inside the green laser module, showing the complexity of the device. This laser module is about the size of a UK 5p coin!
And here on the left is the module components labelled.
Here is the main PCB, with the unit’s main ARM CPU on the right, manufactured by ST.
User buttons are along the sides.
Other side of the main board, with ICs that handle video input from the HDMI connector, battery charging via the USB port & various other management.
Here is a 2Gbit Fibre Channel transceiver from Cisco Systems in SFP module format.
Here the shield has been removed from the bottom of the module (it just clips off). The bottom of the PCB can be seen, with the copper interface on the left & the rubber boots over the photodiode & 850 nm laser on the right.
Here the PCB has been completely removed from the frame, the fibre ends slide into the rubber tubes on the right.
Top of the PCB, showing the chipset. There are a pair of adjustment pots under some glue, next to the chipset, presumably for adjusting laser power & receive sensitivity. The laser diode & photodiode are inside the soldered cans on the right hand side of the board, with the optics required to couple the 850nm near-IR light into the fibre.
Here are the viewfinder electronics from a 1984 Hitachi VHS Movie VM-1200E Camcorder. These small CRT based displays accept composite video as input, plus 5-12v DC for power.
Here is the front face of the CRT, diameter is 0.5″.
Closeup view of the PCB, there are several adjustments & a pair of connectors. Socket in the upper left corner is the power/video input. Pinout is as follows:
Brown – GND
Red – Video Input
Orange – +12v DC
Yellow – Record LED
The potentiometers on the PCB from left:
H. ADJ
V. ADJ
BRIGHT
FOCUS
PCB Part Number reads: EM6-PCB
This unit utilises the BA7125L deflection IC.
Reverse side of the PCB, very few SMT components on this board.
Here is an overall view of the CRT assembly with scan coils. Tube model is NEC C1M52P45.
Closeup view of the CRT neck, showing the electron gun assembly.
The old CCTV camera used to feed a composite signal to the CRT board. Sanyo VCC-ZM300P.
Connections at the back of the camera. Red & Black pair of wires lead to 12v power supply, Green & Black pair lead to the CRT board’s power pins. Seperate green wire is pushed into the BNC video connector for the video feed. video ground is provided by the PSU’s ground connection.
Finally the connections at the CRT drive board, left to right, +12v, Video, GND.
This is a small 120W power inverter, intended for small loads such as lights, fans, small TVs & laptop computers.
End cover of the unit, 12v DC input cord at the top, power switch & indicator LEDs at the bottom.
Opposite end of the unit, with the standard 240v AC 50Hz Mains output socket.
Cover removed from the top of the unit. Main power transformer is visible in the centre here, MOSFET bank is under the steel clamp on the left, the aluminium case forms the heatsink.
On the right is a KA3525 switchmode PWM controller & on the left is a LM324N quad Op-Amp IC. The buzzer on the far left is for the low battery warning.
PCB removed from the casing, with the MOSFET bank on the right hand side. Two potentiometers in the centre of the board tweak the frequency of the switcher & the output voltage.
Here is a label maker, bought on offer at Maplin Electronics. Full Qwerty keyboard with 1 line dot matrix LCD display visible here. Power is 4 AAA cells or a 6v DC Adaptor.
Rear cover removed. Battery compartment is on the left hand side, space for the tape cartridge on the right. Ribbon cable leading to the thermal print head is on the far right, with rubber tape drive roller.
PCB under the top cover with the main CPU, a MN101C77CBM from Panasonic. This CPU features 48K Mask ROM & 3K of RAM. Max clock frequency is 20MHz. 32kHz clock crystal visible underneath a Rohm BA6220 Electronic speed controller IC.
This is used to drive the printer motor at a constant accurate speed, to feed the tape past the thermal head. Miniature potentiometer adjusts speed.
Ribbon cable at the bottom of the board connects to the print head, various wiring at the left connects to the battery & DC Jack.
Printer drive mechanism. Small DC motor drives the pinch roller though a gear train. DC Jack & reverse polarity protection diode is on the right.
This unit uses a centre negative DC jack, which is unusual.
Thermal tape cartridge, black text on white background.
Here is a cheap no frills microwave oven, which died after a few weeks of normal use.
Cover removed, showing the internals. Front of the microwave is on the left.
Closeup of the timer unit. Cheap & nasty.
Magnetron removed from the oven. Antenna is on the top, cooling fins visible in the center. White conector at the bottom is the filament terminals.
Chokes on the magnetron’s filament connections. These prevent microwave energy from feeding back into the electronics bay through the connections.
Magnetron cooling fins, tube & magnets removed from the frame.
Bare magnetron tube.
This PCB does some rudimentary power conditioning, power resistors are in series with the live feed to the power trasformer, to prevent huge power up surge. When the transformer energizes the relay, which is in parallel with the resistors, switches them out a fraction of a second after, providing full power to the transformer.
Standard RFI choke & capacitor at the top of the board, with the input resistor.
Power transformer to supply the magnetron with high voltage.
Power output is ~2kV at ~0.5A. Pair of spade terminals are the low voltage filament winding.
HV Capacitor. This along with the diode form a voltage doubler, to provide the magnetron with ~4kV DC.
HV diode stack.
Internals of the HV fuse. Rated for ~0.75A at 5kV. The fuse element is barely visible attached to the end of the spring. Connects between the transformer & the capacitor.
Cooling fan for the magnetron. Drive is cheap shaded pole motor.
This is an old CO alarm, which was totally dead, having been connected to the wrong PSU.
Here is the front of the unit, with the Test button & indicator LEDs.
Front of the PCB, 3 1.5v cells powered the unit, Piezo sounder & sensor cell in the centre of the board.
This is an old cordless landline phone, with dead handset batteries.
Here’s the handset with the back removed. Shown is the radio TX/RX board, underneath is the keyboard PCB with the speaker & mic. All the FM radio tuning coils are visible & a LT450GW electromechanical filter.
Radio PCB removed from the housing showing the main CPU controlling the unit, a Motorola MC13109FB.
The keypad PCB, with also holds the microphone & speaker.
Bottom of the keypad board, which holds a LSC526534DW 8-Bit µC & a AT93C46R serial EEPROM for phone number storage.
Here’s the base unit with it’s top cover removed. Black square object on far right of image is the microphone for intercom use, power supply section is top left, phone interface bottom left, FM radio is centre. Battery snap for power backup is bottom right.
PSU section of the board on the left here, 9v AC input socket at the bottom, with bridge rectifier diodes & main filter capacitor above. Two green transformers on the right are for audio impedance matching. Another LT450GW filter is visible at the top, part of the base unit FM transceiver.
Another 8-bit µC, this time a LSC526535P, paired with another AT93C46 EEPROM. Blue blob is 3.58MHz crystal resonator for the MCU clock. The SEC IC is a KS58015 4-bit binary to DTMF dialer IC. This is controlled by the µC.
Underside of the base unit Main PCB, showing the matching MC13109FB IC for the radio functions.
This is a little security measure you get with Internet Banking with the Co-Op, generates codes to confirm your identity using your bank card. About the size of a pocket calculator, this is the keypad & screen.
The rear of the unit, the card slots into the top, manufactured by Gemalto Digital Security.
Outer back cover removed, showing the 8 contacts for the chip on the bank card, the 2 contacts below that switch on power when a card is inserted. Power comes from 2 lithium coin cells in the compartment on the lower left.
PCB removed from the casing, showing the internal components. Two large pads at top left are battery connections, while the only IC on the board is the main CPU, under the card connector. 6MHz oscillator & 32Khz crystal on board for processing & timekeeping. LCD screen connection at far right.
Reverse side of the PCB, with the keypad contacts. LCD on right, with programming interface pads at side of keypad.
This is an old USB 1.1 hub that was recently retired from service on some servers. Top of the unit visible here.
Bottom label shows that this is a model F5U021 hub, a rather old unit.
PCB is here removed from the casing, Indicator LEDs along the bottom edge of the board, power supply is on the left. Connectors on the top edge are external power, USB host, & the 4 USB outputs. Yellow devices are polyswitch fuses for the 500mA at 5v each port must supply.
This is the USB Hub Controller IC, which is a Texas Instruments TUSB2046B device. Power filter capacitors next to the USB ports are visible here also, along with 2 of the polyswitches.
The power supply section of the unit, which supplies regulated 5v to the ports, while supplying regulated 3.3v to the hub controller IC. Large TO-220 IC is the 5v regulator. Smaller IC just under the power selector switch is the 3.3v regulator for the hub IC. The switch selects between Host powered or external power for the hub.
Here is a cheap chinese made flash drive given out for free by Westlaw UK. Capacity 512MB
Here is the PCB removed from the casing, USB connector on the left, followed by the clock crystal for the flash controller, a CBM2092, which is a Chipsbank part. 512MB flash memory IC, unknown maker. Access LED on far right of the board.
This is a device designed to reset Epson brand ink cartridges that are reportedly out of ink, so they again report full to the printer Here is the front of the unit, with the guide for attaching to a cartridge.
Back of the device removed. 3 button cells provide power to the PCB. Indicator LED sticks out of the top of the device for reset confirmation.
Row of pads on far left edge of the PCB are presumably a programming header for the uC on the other side of the board.
Here is the front of the PCB, main feature being the grid of pogo pins to connect to the cartridge chip. IC on lower right of that is a MSP430F2131 uController, a Texas Instruments part.
The IC directly to the left of the pogo pin bed is a voltage regulator, to step down the ~4.5v of the batteries down to the ~3.3v that the uC requires.
Another phone from the mid 90s. This is the nokia 7110.
Here the slider is open showing the keypad.
Here the battery is removed, a Li-Ion unit.
The battery cell & protection circuit removed from the casing.
This is the rear of the PCB removed from the housing. Data & charging ports on the right hand side f the board.
Front of the PCB with the RF sections at the left hand side & the keypad contacts on the right.
Closeup of the RF sections of the board, big silver rectangular cans are VCO units.
Closeup of the top rear section of the PCB, with SIM cnnector, battery contacts, IR tranciever at the far left. Bottom centre is the external antenna connector.
The logic section of the board, Large chip is CPU, to right of that is the ROM storing the machine code. Other chips are unknown custom parts.
The Mic & the loudspeaker removed from it’s housing.
LCD from the front of the unit, SPI interfaced. Flex PCB also contains the power button, loudspeaker contacts & a temperature sensor.
The scroll wheel removed from the front housing.
Tiny vibration motor removed from the rear housing, alerts the user to a text or phone call.
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