I simultaneously love and hate
Aliexpress which for those who don't know is a website where you can order
all kinds of products directly from China. What I hate about it is that
the search engine is sometimes completely broken and shipping
can also at times take forever. But normally you get your stuff within
2 to 4 weeks and what is so great about the products especially the electronics
ones is that they are offering the newest boards and technologies based around brand
new ICs that you often find nowhere else. And that is of course super exciting for someone
like me which is why I recently searched through Aliexpress to find the most intriguing products
which of course includes electronics circuits but also pretty much everything in
between that I think could be useful. So in this video I will have a
closer look at those products to ultimately decide whether you should
check them out or simply ignore them. Let's get started!
INTRO This video is sponsored by JLCPCB who not only
make PCBs for you and populate them if you want but they also offer a 3D printing service.
So if you do not have a 3D printer at home or want maybe another stronger material; then they
offer SLA, SLM, SLS, FMD and MJF which initially sounds a bit confusing but trust me those printing
methods are worth it. So check out the link below to upload your 3D model files and enjoy their
low prices as low as 1$ and fast delivery time. To start things off I got myself this
interesting looking 5V Super Capacitor Power filter cube that cost me almost 30€.
At first sight I was honestly not sure what to use it for and the product description was certainly
not helping by stating that after using it, the detail and dynamic range will increase.
I think what they are trying to say is that when for example using this thing to power an
audio amplifier, it can increase its detail and dynamic range a bit since the filter is getting
rid of the noise of the input power supply. You see, as a power source we often use small
switched mode power supplies, which like the name implies, do a lot of switching on the inside
to create a useable low DC voltage at the end. But the switching of course creates quite a bit of unwanted noise that is especially
noticeable when drawing current. So this filter might be capable of getting
rid of that by simply charging up its internal super capacitors out of which
we can then draw clean noise-free power. Let's try that by connecting the 5V power
supply to the input, a constant load to the output and let's observe the output and
input voltage while for example drawing 500mA. And yes, the filter does in
fact reduce the noise problem. But while going up with the current draw I noticed
that the output voltage dropped a bit while the filtering still worked out just fine.
The reason is that the supercapacitors obviously come with a limited capacity
which reduces their voltage level at a higher output current meaning this product
is only suitable for low power filtering. Of course besides the filter feature this product
can also be used as kind of a buffer if for example your Raspberry Pi requires small current
spikes that your power supply can not offer. And yes, I only know that because
someone on Twitter told me about it. So overall this product is not half bad
if you are facing filter or buffer problem and since its overall build quality
is also rather professional I kind of recommend it even though I think
you could DIY it for a bit cheaper. Now the next product which got me interested
was this Water Flow Hydro Generator for around 10€ which as you would expect you only have
to add to your faucet and turn on the water to generate voltage at the output wires.
Initially I wanted to use such a generator for my Online Water Tracker project because
the description of the article stated that it can output max. greater than equal 220mA.
Not entirely sure what they meant by that but I hoped that it would be enough for the
100mA current demand of my water tracker which coincidentally also requires 5V to
work that the generator can also output. So after doing a practical test with a 1W high
power LED I was very disappointed to find out that the generator can at best only output around
380mW which is quite a bit lower than advertised and certainly not enough for my water tracker.
That also means directly charging a mobile phone with it is definitely not possible
because the generator is not build in a way to produce lots of electricity.
But what did I expect from an article that interrupts its product pictures with a picture
of a mill, overall definitely not recommended. And speaking of water flow; next I got attracted
to this Electric Drill Powered Water Pump because why should I always fire up my big mains powered
water pump when I only have to water some plants. I got it for 19€ from Aliexpress and while
its online description didn't say much; the packaging told me a quite a bit about
its features which seemed reasonable. So after opening it and having a closer
look at it, I connected a hose to its input, attached my drill and threw the other side of
the hose into my pond to give it all a try. Aaaaand yes it seems like my 1m deep pond
was too deep for the water pump but it can certainly create some bubbles in it.
And since I am not looking for a way to distribute the water from my watering can,
I can not really recommend this product. But the rabbit hole of drill powered things was
not closed for me yet because I pushed my luck next with an Electric jigsaw adapter for 12€.
In a nutshell attaching it was super simple and using it was also pretty straightforward
and worked surprisingly well. I basically only have to get used to that
you need two hands for this thing meaning next time I should clamp the wood piece down.
But the cuts itself look pretty good and this positive trend actually continued with
the last drill attachment I got which was this chainsaw one for around 18€.
Now assembling it took a bit longer with around 5 minutes but its cutting power
was way more brutal than I anticipated. So both products definitely delivered here even
though I can not say for sure how long they will hold up, but either way I would recommend them.
But getting back to electronics with this 3A Lithium battery Charging board
that you can get for only 70 Cents. I got interested in it because so far I
was pretty much always using a Lithium battery charging board based around the
TP4056 IC which do work without a problem. But as you can see the IC dissipates quite
a bit of heat while charging up a battery and its charging current is limited to 1A which
sometimes takes forever with bigger batteries. The reason is that the TP4056 works in a
linear fashion meaning it simply gets rid of the excess voltage by dissipating it as
heat which is of course also not efficient. This new board though is based around
the IP2312 IC which utilizes a switching regulator to efficiently convert the 5V
input voltage to the required Constant Current Constant Voltage for the battery.
The product description also explains nicely how the board functions, how
we can decrease the charging current, what efficiency it should be able to reach and
how we can set the cut off output voltage by either shorting or opening up the VSET pins.
And so I connected a battery to the board to take it for a test riding while
measuring its input and output power. Now at first I was disappointed that the
input current was not 3A but as it turns out without my power meter in the way
it can easily reach this value, awesome. The board also didn't get hot while charging
up the battery, reached pretty great measured efficiencies and in the end cut off the
charging at the right point meaning I can highly recommend this board to anyone looking
to efficiently charge up lithium batteries. Moving on though next I got attracted to this 20W Emergency Hand Crank Generator
that you can get for around 43€. Its description and how to use it is pretty
straightforward by simply selecting what kind of voltage you want the USB ports and
left binding post to output and then simply start cranking with the given handle which
you obviously have to attach beforehand. And yes the system does certainly output
the correct voltages while cranking but I feel like it should be illegal to output
more than 5V through a USB port because that can certainly destroy some devices.
But anyway I was curious to find out whether this thing can really output
20W of power aka 4A of current at 5V which I tested by attaching a suitable
resistor to the output and start cranking. Now as you can see I only reached a max
output power of 8W before the handle broke. Needless to say this weld connection was
way too weak and because of that you can not really do much with the generator any more.
So even though its internal structure with DC motor, gear system and switched mode power supply
is not half bad, I can not recommend this product unless you maybe want to use it with a drill
like with the other attachments before. And the last product I want to have a look
at in this video is this Anti Spy RF Signal detector that you can get for around 20€.
As the name implies it is supposed to detect wireless signal in the range between
1MHz to 8000MHz, but the description of the product itself is also not sure about that.
Only problem is that no matter what signal source I presented it to, it never reliably triggered
and most of the time was just randomly beeping So even though the internal build quality
is not terrible I feel like this two Op-amp circuit is just not up for the task which means
I can not recommend this product but I at least got a new LiPo battery for future projects.
So all in all the featured products in this episode were mostly not half bad and I was
pleasantly surprised with this selection. But of course there are way more
interesting products on Aliexpress which I already have partly lying around so
look forward to another episode very soon. Until then feel free to let me know what
other products you would like to see here. Also consider supporting me through
Patreon to keep the show going. And as always don't forget to like, share,
subscribe and hit the notification bell. Stay creative and I will see you next time.