Author Archive

Night light teardown

Here is a teardown of cheap mains powered LED night light from LIDL. After few years of use this light became very dim and so useless. I opened it to see what is in it and what was broken. Let’s open it. Circuit board details Here is the circuit diagram. This is quite typical transformerless →

Deadly malware and other software

Ransomware has become deadly! It does not kill just company profits, it has started also to kill people. Ransomware attack at German hospital leads to death of patient https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/ransomware-attack-at-german-hospital-leads-to-death-of-patient/ “A person in a life-threatening condition passed away after being forced to go to a more distant hospital due to a ransomware attack.” German Hospital Hacked, →

Friday Fun: 2020′s Ig Nobel Awards

Drunk Earthworms, Frozen Poop Knives, And Alligators On Helium Win 2020′s Ig Nobel Awards https://www.iflscience.com/physics/drunk-earthworms-frozen-poop-knives-and-alligators-on-helium-win-2020s-ig-nobel-awards/ A project of the Annals of Improbable Research, the Ig Nobel awards initially mocked work that “Cannot or should not be replicated,” but has since expanded to cover any science that “First makes you laugh, then makes you think.” Like →

Koronavilkku Finnish COVID-19 exposure tracking app

Finnish corona-virus tracing app is named Koronavilkku. The Koronavilkku smartphone app is published to help break infection chains. Users in Finland can download Koronavilkku to a smart phone (iOS or Android) free of charge from the most popular app stores and the app can be instantaneously downloaded via the links on the koronavilkku.fi website. Koronavilkku →

FPGA dev boards

An FPGA Developer’s Guide to Cheap Development Boards https://www.hackster.io/news/an-fpga-developer-s-guide-to-cheap-development-boards-8f1782bb271a Finally, a detailed and all-encompassing guide for those of us with an addiction to buying new FPGA development boards. Joel Williams’ list starts off by outlining the criteria that he looks for in an FPGA development board. He makes the great point to consider what peripherals →

Friday Fun: Smart toilet that scans your…

Everything in our lives is connected to the internet, so why not our toilets? Naked security on-line publication tells about a smart AI toilet that scans your anus to identify you. In fact, it will also capture both your pee and your stools on video and process them with algorithms. You can imagine many reasons →

Mains surge suppressor teardowns

I saw a request for circuit diagram in Facebook electronics group: Hello feds. Required surge protector circuit. Working on 220v. 50hz 10amps load. I first offered this reverse engineering of one commercial mains surge protector “Ahlstrom 23 368″. The manufacturee component codes of the exact components used. S20K250 is a varistor for 250V AC / →