In this video, Steve builds a 6 digit LED clock from some Kingbright SA23-12SRWA 7 segment displays and a Microchip PIC18F26K20 microcontroller. You can build one for yourself with the schematics posted under my LED clock page
Acoustic Solutions Hi-Fi Amplifier Repair and Teardown – Error U52, U53
In this video, Steve performs a Hi-Fi Amplifier repair and teardown on an Acoustic Solutions SP101 Hi-Fi Amplifier that displays Error U52 or U53 on the display. The amplifier is unable to store tone and balance settings and doesn’t always respond to changing the volume with the rotary encoder.
The video walks through the design of the amplifier, the repair and also the replacement of the rotary encoder.
46″ Samsung LCD TV Repair
In this video of a Samsung LCD TV repair, Steve investigates the cause of some odd picture quality issues on a 46″ TV. Primarily the TV seems to have lost any colour depth, brightness and contrast, yet the controls have very little effect despite the backlight output not being affected.
LCD Monitor Repair and Teardown – BenQ 19″ LCD Monitor
In the following videos, Steve performs an LCD monitor repair on a faulty BenQ 19″ Monitor that would not power up correctly and regularly displayed the ‘Auto Adjust’ message.
The Peak Atlas ESR70 meter is used to test suspicious electrolytic capacitors in the power supply.
Designing a Constant Current LED Driver – Part 2
In this video Steve interfaces the DC-DC converter circuit with a Microchip dsPIC33FJ16GS502 microcontroller to create a microcontroller-based constant current LED driver.
The dsPIC33FJ16GS502 microcontroller has four analogue comparators which allow expandability to 4 independent constant current channels.
Designing a Constant Current LED Driver – Part 1
In the first episode of a complete video series, Steve begins the design of a constant current LED driver. This aim of this project is to create a four channel high power LED driver that can interface with an RS-485 or IEEE 802.15.4 MiWi™ network. This will allow control of multiple light fixtures or multicolour mood lights from one or more lighting controllers.
This first episode focuses on the design of the DC-DC converter which is optimised for use on a 24V power bus which a high switching frequency for small size. The components can be changed for other applications (different supply voltages or switching frequencies) using the concepts introduced in this video.