insideGadgets

About 1-2 weeks ago I bought a cheap power adapter with an output as a USB connector from Ebay which says it does 5V @ 1000mA. I would be drawing about 500mA – 700mA from it.

I’ve heard about bad stories about cheap power adapters (the “one hung low” kind) and straight away measured the voltage output and it did seem to be at 5V. I used the USB cable provided which I found to be terrible – it had a voltage drop of 2V – threw it out straight away.

For a few days the adapter seemed to work – then all of a sudden I heard a pop.

It looks like the resistor had fried and lost it’s connection.

On closer inspection, a diode lost it’s connection too.

I’m now using an Apple charger which is rated at 2A so I should be good now.

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Element14 has given me another opportunity to review a product from their website, this time I chose the Element14 XL_STAR Development Board which is based on the Freescale MC9S08MM128 MCU that can run at 48MHz and has 128K flash, 12K RAM, 16-bit ADC, 47 I/O pins, SPI, DAC, RTC, to name a few features.

The XL_STAR’s main feature is the interaction between a 3-axis Freescale MMA8451Q accelerometer and an assortment of 48 LEDs around the accelerometer. This allows you to easily prototype ideas for your project ideas that which involve a 3-axis accelerometer.

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I was given the chance by the kind folks at Element14 to select a part from their website and do a review on it. I chose the Olimexino STM32 board as it’s the next step up from the Arduino and can act similar to an Arduino. The Olimexino STM32 uses an ARM microprocessor running at 72MHz which is 4.5 times faster than the Arduino’s 16MHz. You can find the Olimexino range of products at http://au.element14.com/olimex/.

It has the following key features packed into the one board, to see more of the features click here.
- Allows 9V to 30V input
- microSD card capability
- Ability to use and recharge a Li-Ion battery
- ARM 32-bit processor with 128K flash, 20K SRAM, 12-bit ADC, 16-bit PWM, 39 I/O pins, SPI, i2C, CAN, RTC, etc
Note: The ARM micro doesn’t feature an EEPROM like AVR micros do.

As the Olimexino STM32 is based on Maple (or seems to be) we can use the Maple’s IDE (which is a re-brand of the Arduino’s IDE) to start writing and uploading code with ease, most Arduino functions have been ported to the IDE. We have the blinking LED sketch shown below.

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So as you’re here you can already tell that we’ve moved our blog to our new domain name www.insidegadets.com, I’m surprised it wasn’t already taken!

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Welcome to Inside Gadgets!

In this blog I’ll show you tear downs of various gadgets (e.g. routers, TV tuners, etc) that I can grab my hands on; most if not all will be old gadgets. The tear downs will show various pictures and (try to) identify the main components.

I have a basic understanding of electronics so don’t expect the tear downs to be too much in depth

It’s always good to show the inside workings of electronic devices

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