Piss Off batteriser

when doing the admin part of this site,nothing infuriates me more than having a company trying to advertise their snakeoil products in the comments section.
I often get comments where someone has copied a bit of the text from my blog post and then shoved a link to some crappy product after it and usually I just delete it but given the fact that Batteriser has been so underhanded and dishonest about everything they do and claim - I thought I would call this one out.

Dave Jones from the EEVblog has debunked their product in just about every way imaginable and they've done some hilarious reply videos to him where some "engineer" is sat at a table with an oscilloscope hooked up to its own 1Khz reference/cal signal (with very badly compensated probes), some wires and boards and a suspiciously new and cheap looking soldering iron; explaining why Dave is wrong. then, when that failed they just paid people to downvote his videos.

so Batteriser, do not advertise your shitty, useless products on my site.

Daves Videos

Very Accurate 10volt and 5volt Reference For Testing Multimeters etc. Stripboard Layout

I thought this would be a good project to keep around to see if my digital multimeter has drifted out of calibration.

I power it from a normal bench power supply but it would probably be better if you used 2 9v batteries in series.

The LED on it displays when over 100mA is being drawn from it - basically if the LED is lit disconnect it or things will be getting very hot!

I tested it in free air with open windows over 2 hours and it was very stable so I can rely on it.

Linear Tech do a few different drop references for this IC
the 2 I've tried are the 10 volt reference and the 5 volt reference
the part numbers are
10 volt reference; LT1021BCN8-10
5 volt reference; LT1021CCN8-5

it stayed at 10.0006 for over 2 hours - the least significant digit moved around but that's 10's of uVolts!

Frequency Meter Stripboard Layout

I built this as a rough frequency meter to make sure a bunch of oscillators were oscillating in the right ballpark frequency.
it uses the lovely 555 timer IC.

it responds best to squarewave signals (maybe triangle too, I forgot to test it with triangle waves)

Quick And Dirty Laser Driver Stripboard Layout

This was just a quick little circuit I built to test all the salvaged CD/DVD lasers I have.
essentially it is a adjustable constant current power supply.

the Vin is 7.2 volts.

Simple Audio Mixer Stripboard Layout

this is a quick project I made for another project I'm working on but I'm sure people will have uses for this so here you go.

it's also worth noting (as I have before) the purpose of C1 is to limit the bandwidth of the Op-Amp - in this case I've used a value to stop any hiss however you can experiment with the values and make a low pass filter - the higher you go the more it cuts off.

Proper Op Amp Termination

I've been designing a sampler recently (sorry, there won't be a stripboard for that, it's way too complicated!) however I was using a quad opamp for a part of it but I only needed 3 of the op-amps which gave me the idea to post a little tutorial on the correct way to terminate unused op-amps and a brief explanation why (I'm sure there are very in depth youtube videos/documents elsewhere)

the extremely brief reason to terminate a op-amp correctly is that it may draw extra current or it will pick up noise (or both)

2 Watt Transistor Guitar Amplifier Stripboard Veroboard Layout

When I was young (about 9 or 10) - this is one of the first "big" projects I successfully completed and still actually use to this day so I thought I would build a new one for everyone to enjoy.

Bi-Polar (BJT) Through Hole Transistor Package Types

I found this cool little info thing from the 1970's so I though I would share it:

ADSR Envelope Shaper Stripboard Veroboard Layout

I've been a bit busy recently so I thought I'd scan this interesting looking project in from a magazine from the 70's

Blue Wizard Overdrive / Distortion Stripboard Veroboard Layout

This is the Blue Wizard - part of my "wizard" design series (Green Wizard HERE) - this is a very harmonic rich overdrive/distortion that uses 2 BC182L transistors (cause I have a load of them) - this is the same transistor used in the Brian May treble booster HERE

it has a bias pot onboard and I find it's best to adjust it till it sounds good to you.

anyway - below is a quick sound sample - the 1st bit is the gain all the way up and the 2nd bit is the gain half way up.

Boss OD-1 Original RC3403 Quad Op-amp Stripboard Veroboard layout

This is something I've wanted to re-visit for a while, I was never happy with my original layout - you couldn't use the proper op-amp in it and it was a bit crappy looking too.

I have added 2 parts to this build, neither affect the sound - they protect the circuit from the wrong polarity supplies which is necessary if you use the original RC3403 op-amp because it costs a fortune.

you can of course use a jellybean quad op-amp like a TL074 or LM324