Kerry D. Wong

I bought a Sony A6000 mirrorless digital camera last year to replace my Cannon PowerShot Elph 300 HS point and shoot camera for my YouTube videos. While its fast auto focusing capabilities is great for my teardown and project videos, the A6000 also has some drawbacks. Namely, you cannot shoot video while the camera is hooked to the charger or computer via the USB port. And because of this limitation, continuous shooting could be a challenge as the battery would be depleted rather quickly. Continue reading ‘Battery Adapter Teardown and Sony A6000 Power-Off Current Draw’ »

I picked up an HP 7044A X-Y recorder on eBay recently. This one was made in the early 1980’s and by today’s technology standard it is rather ancient. And because of this, it is very easy to interface with as the input is completely analog. My plan was to do some experiments down the road using the X-Y movements capability of this HP recorder. Continue reading ‘HP 7044A X-Y Recorder Teardown, Lorenz Attractor’ »

Till recently, I have been using custom circuitry whenever I needed to backup some firmware. But the process was rather tedious as for each kind of EPROM or EEPROM I needed to study the protocol and timing requirements and then come up with the required circuitry on a breadboard. And wiring can easily become an issue with a high pin-count chip. So I finally got myself a proper EPROM programmer (it’s a TL866A) along with a $15 generic UV EPROM eraser so I could program EPROM/EEPROM’s quickly. While it was fun to build a programmer circuit each time, I think the effort can be put into something more useful. Continue reading ‘Cheap UV EPROM Eraser Teardown and Spectrum Analysis’ »

I got this broken Beats Solo2 BT wireless headphone from one of my colleagues. In fact, it was broken once before around two years ago and I fixed it for him back then. The issue was because of a broken signal wire due to repeated flexing of the collapsible headphone band. This time around though, I am not going to fix it although I suspect that the cause remains the same. In fact, quite a few of my friends with the same Beats headphones had experienced similar problems. So I wanted to take it apart and take a closer look inside. A video of this teardown can be found towards the end of this post. Continue reading ‘Beats Solo Bluetooth Headphone Teardown’ »

I finally got my hands on a Rubidium frequency standard. I have been wanting to get one of these for my lab for quite some time now but have not encountered a good one at a reasonable price. Most rubidium oscillator modules on the second hand market these days come from decommissioned equipment used in cell towers. A good used lab grade rubidium standard is even more expensive. Continue reading ‘Datum/Symmetricom 8040 Rubidium Frequency Standard Teardown’ »

I picked up a non-working Racal-Dana 1992 Frequency Counter on eBay a few weeks ago. The symptom is that only channel C seems to work correctly and neither channel A or channel B produces any measurements. Since the majority of circuitry is shared among all three channels, it is most likely that the fault is localized within channel A and/or channel B. In this blog post I included many teardown pictures taken during the repair and a video detailing the process is included towards the end. Continue reading ‘Teardown and Repair of a Racal-Dana 1992 Frequency Counter’ »

I just picked up a charger along with a couple of NP-FW50 spare batteries for my new Sony Alpha A6000 mirrorless digital camera. The Sony branded charger is ridiculously expensive, so I opted for an aftermarket Vivitar branded one (VIV-QCB-104), which retails for under $10. The charger is rated at 8.4V with maximum charging current of 600mA. Spec-wise, it looks fine for the NP-FW50 1Ah 7.4V battery pack. Continue reading ‘Teardown of a Vivitar Rapid Battery Charger’ »

I just picked up another high voltage power supply, this time it is a working Bertan/Spellman 225-20R 20kV one. Unlike the Bertan 205A-05R that I did a teardown with last time which was entirely analog, this one can be controlled digitally either via the front panel or via GPIB from the back. In this blog post, let me share some of the teardown pictures with you. If you are interesting in seeing some cool experiments with this high voltage power supply, you can scroll down and watch my video towards the end. Continue reading ‘Bertan/Spellman 225-20R HV Power Supply Teardown’ »

I got a non-working Bertan 205A-05R 5kV high voltage power supply and did an attempted repair video a while ago (see video towards the end). But I forgot to post my teardown pictures somehow. So here we go, better late than never. Continue reading ‘Bertan/Spellman 205A-05R High Voltage Power Supply Teardown’ »

I recently was given a broken Epson PowerLite 84 projector. The projector would not turn on when plugged in and there was no sign of life. So I decided to take a look at what was wrong with it. The potential reward is high since I do not have a projector yet and I could definitely use one for my home theater setup. A video of this teardown and repair is linked towards the end. Continue reading ‘Epson PowerLite 84 Multimedia Projector Teardown and Repair’ »

I picked up a Wavetek 395 arbitrary waveform generator on eBay a few weeks ago. Wavetek 395 is a single channel, 12-bit resolution DDS AWG with a maximum clock frequency of 100 MHz. While the operation manual is readily available, I could not find the service manual anywhere. So I was curious to see the construction inside. In this post, I will show you some of the teardown pictures. If you want to see a video of the teardown along with some analysis, you scroll towards the end of this post. Continue reading ‘Wavetek 395 Arbitrary Waveform Generator Teardown’ »

My workplace was throwing away an old SMART UF-55 DLP projector. The projector had many stuck mirrors and the lamp had already surpassed the rated useful life span. I had always wanted to take a look at a DMD chip so I decided to take it home and do a detailed teardown. You can find my video of this teardown towards the end of the post. Continue reading ‘Teardown of a SMART UF-55 Projector’ »

I bought a non-working Lambda LQ-521 linear power supply on eBay a couple of weeks ago. Usually I avoid knowingly buying something that is broken unless I am certain that I could obtain parts for it at a reasonable price. But buying broken linear power supplies is another story as most of the problem can be fixed with readily available components. Continue reading ‘Lambda LQ-521 Power Supply Teardown and Repair’ »

I did a teardown video of a microwave range (8-10 GHz) RF isolator last week. As a follow up, I will post some of the high-resolution pictures I took during the process here (click to see larger images). Continue reading ‘Teardown of an 8-10 GHz RF Isolator’ »

The latest addition to my lab is an HP 8566B spectrum analyzer. This isn’t just any spectrum analyzer, it was perhaps the best spectrum analyzer money could buy back in the late 80’s. While it was discontinued in 1997 and has long become obsolete, its performance remains quite impressive even by today’s standards and still rivals that of many of its modern counterparts. Continue reading ‘Some Pictures of My HP 8566B Spectrum Analyzer’ »