What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!

[Swainster]

Likely you can swap it with a standard wafer switch, they are not that uncommon, just have to get one with 10 ways from around that vintage.

If it's standard then there's a good chance I can get something suitable from my local electronics components mall (shout out to Sim Lim Tower in Singapore), however I seem to recall from a YouTube video that this particular wafer connects custom assemblies of electrolytics in weird ways in order to make up the selected values... come to think of it, as I'll have to discard at least 3/4 the old lytics, it may make sense just to totally rewire that switch.

[Zeyneb]

Quick somebody call me nuts for buying an old xbox 360 S on ebay with a RROD for practicing reballing on. $50.95 (Shipping included in price)

Alright, let's comply with bigfoot22 request. You're nuts bigfoot22.

[w.v.s.]

Finally found and offer where I could not resist any longer to get one of those. Have been looking at them for several years, now.

Some people replace immediately the big caps in the PSU section, because in the K200x meters they leak very very often.... so they do not wanna risk a K2400....

Thank you for the hint. I would definitely agree for every 2001 or 2002 being bought, because it is a known weakness and there are many out there with severe damage by leaky caps. I also changed the caps in my 2010 to be on a safer side. But with the 2400 the risk seems more limited. I would guess comparable to other devices with electrolytic caps.

You can get an impression here:
https://xdevs.com/fix/kei2400/

[paulca]

I had a run of bad luck.

First the STM32H750 dev board arrived from china after a month, containing an STM32H7B0.  Not the same calibre of chip at all.  No point sending it back either.

Then I screwed up, twice.  I quick scanned for WS2812B pre-built light controllers which either came with WLED installed or could be flashed.  Found the first forum post saying that the SP108E hardware available currently on amazon worked with WLED.  So I ordered one.  It arrived and after opening it and going "WTF?", I googled it and it's a fiasco.  It has a TI MCU doing the LED control and the ESP8285 is only running their proprietary interface code for their wifi app.  You can get it to work, but it involves disabling the other micro and soldering about 8 mod wires to it.

So I hunted the junk box and found an old controller that never worked, gave it one more go and... it worked.  So I jumped on Amazon and ordered 2 more, as I need 3 for a project.

They arrived and ... FAIL.  Hit Buy Now too quickly.  I ordered the analogue RGB variant (4 wire), from the same manufacturer and in the same box.  I could return them, but they were like £7 each.  I actually have 1 or 2 RGB strips.  It's probably not worth the hassle.

I did at least manage to score an STM32H743VIT6 which should keep me busy.

[Mortymore]

Vive la résistance!

Bought some 0.01% precision resistors, RS92N series, from a French Ebay seller.

[nctnico]

I just bought myself a DIY kit for putting solar panels on the roof. 12 panels that make for 4500Wp in total. Nowadays electricity prices are so insanely high over here that they'll pay for themselves in less than 1.5 years. If all goes well, the panels should deliver over half of my electricity use.

No pictures yet; it will take some time before the panels are delivered. The only item that has arrived to far is a safety line (with a brake system) so I won't die from falling from the roof.

[Swainster]

I didn't actually buy these yet, but while searching for replacement e-caps for my Sencore Handy The Substitutor, I nearly sprayed coffee all over my keyboard:

Risky click?

[Gary350z]

tinySA Ultra
The build quality seems very good.
It seems to work good, but I have limited experience with spectrum analyzers. I also have a Rigol DSA815-TG Spectrum Analyzer which goes up to 1.5GHz.
It's good fun for the price.

Specs
Frequency range
   100kHz to 800MHz in normal mode.
   Up to 6GHz with ULTRA mode enabled.
   The maximum frequency in ultra mode can be set to 12GHz with less accuracy.
4 inch diagonal screen.

More info and specs here:
Wiki for tinySA and tinySA Ultra
https://tinysa.org/

I bought it from here:
R&L Electronics - tinySA Ultra - $130
https://store2.rlham.com/shop/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=75872

Be aware of this safe place buying list in the wiki, or your are likely to get a poorly functioning clone which are all over the internet.
https://tinysa.org/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.Buying

[RAPo]

A Tektronix 2246 (inc probes) will arrive Friday.
And a Peaktech 4110 measuring station will come next week:

1. Function Generator, capable of generating seven (7) forms of wave, i. e. Sine, Square, Triangle, Skewed Sine, Ramp, Pulse and TTL level square in the seven frequency range sourcing from 1 Hz to 10 MHz.

2. Universal Counter, capable of measuring the frequency ranges from 5 Hz to 1.3 GHz.

3. DC Power Supply, capable of generating the voltage carrying with 5 V/2 A, 15 V/1 A fixed and 0-30 V/0-3 A variable.

4. Digital Multimeter, capable of measuring DC/AC voltage up to 1.000 V DC/750 V AC (true rms), DC/AC current up to 20 A, resistance up to 40 MΩ, capacitance up to 400 µF, and logic test (C-MOS/TTL). This section can be hooked into data acquisition system run on Personal computers, printers or pen-plotters etc., through a RS-232 C serial interface connector.

[thm_w]

I just bought myself a DIY kit for putting solar panels on the roof. 12 panels that make for 4500Wp in total. Nowadays electricity prices are so insanely high over here that they'll pay for themselves in less than 1.5 years. If all goes well, the panels should deliver over half of my electricity use.

No pictures yet; it will take some time before the panels are delivered. The only item that has arrived to far is a safety line (with a brake system) so I won't die from falling from the roof.

How are you going to do the grid connection?

[deadlylover]

Well I rolled the dice on an unknown condition Wacom Cintiq Pro 16...the bottom 25% pen detection zone is faulty (annoyingly that's where some of the calibration targets lie so now the stylus is off by 1-2mm). For ~USD170 I'm not tooooooooo disappointed, I'll just pretend it's a Cintiq Pro 12.5 ultra widescreen. 

It's actually an absolute joy to use as the only other pen display I've tried is an iPad Air w/ Apple Pencil. This is much more precise and it's great to be able to use full desktop software. The fan is a bit annoying and it gets surprisingly warm even at low brightness (surface temp 35C in a 25C room after only 15 minutes). Sigh I've fallen in love with it already so I'm gonna save up for a new one, they're like two grand. 

[beanflying]

Boring but a bit of a bargain. Needed a few filters for some jobs I am doing scored 10 for way under the cost of one of them from Mouser.

Two trays left Ozzie bargain shoppers eBay auction: #172307753446 

[rsjsouza]

Those filters are awesome! Last year I got three similar sized ones for an incredible low price and they do their job incredibly well.

[YurkshireLad]

I don't have it yet but I just order a Wi-Fi enabled Raspberry Pi Pico. Earth shattering, I know!

[Ed.Kloonk]

A scientific calculator. Sharp, 35 years old as a exact spare for the beat-up one on my bench.

Bought on eBay before xmas and it's crawled it's way halfway across the world.

But I have a problem.

This thing has arrived in perfect full foam packaging and is in absolute mint condition. Not kidding.

I felt dirty just powering it on to check vitals.

[vk6zgo]

In my first job, far too many years ago, we received a shipment of 200/450 radial electrolytics, complete with metal mounting brackets.
I chucked the metal bits into the parts bin, followed by the caps, only to be greeted with a series of large "zaps"!

It seems the manufacturer tested them at full voltage before release, but this time forgot to discharge them!

[McBryce]

In my first job, far too many years ago, we received a shipment of 200/450 radial electrolytics, complete with metal mounting brackets.
I chucked the metal bits into the parts bin, followed by the caps, only to be greeted with a series of large "zaps"!

It seems the manufacturer tested them at full voltage before release, but this time forgot to discharge them!

At least you discovered this with the brackets rather than with you fingers as I usually (unintentionally) do.

McBryce.

[bingo600]

A fully working HP 6266B PSU
Local pickup $50 

/Bingo

[Terry Bites]

Finally said goodbye to my old PC and indulged in a Dell Precision Tower 7920.
3x SSDs and 128 Meg. GeForce graphics card. Works like a dream.
I suppose I could have gone DIY but cases are so ugly and seem have infantile lighting attached.

[paulca]

A GL.Net MT300N mini travel Wifi swiss army knife.  £28.
https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-mt300n-v2/

I have a previous model of one of these with the antenna servicing the garage / garden Wifi items.

Not bad, this one appears to have 2 radios or the chipset is presenting 2.  A 2.4bgn and a 2.4bg only.  So it would seem, at least without further research that it will be capable of proper Wifi bridging.  Assuming those radio interfaces don't mind being added to a bridge.  Sometimes you can't add a client to a bridge on certain chipsets.

Anyway I only wanted it to patch a whole in the 2.4Ghz in the office.  For that it works fine.

[themadhippy]

cases are so ugly and seem have infantile lighting attached

And without lights and windows seem to cost much more. For anyone looking for a decentish plain ole case that wont break the bank i'd highly recommend the corsair carbide silent.

[Calambres]

2TB external USB disk from Amazon. It appears on my list as already delivered although it never arrived home 

[RAPo]

Surprise, both toys came in today. Some calibration is needed.

[jonovid]

something to put beside the hantek scope
a  junteks signal generator

[PlainName]

Also bought 5x #3 and 5x #8 for cleaning PCBs with isoprop

You might find a battery toothbrush with oscillating head better for tight electronics (the brush linked there I have no idea about - it's cheap and on Ali). I use a Lidl clone of an Oral-B model simply because clone Oral-B heads are plentiful and cheap.

Cleaning with IPA is more about dissolving stuff than brushing it off. Dissolve, soak up with kitchen towel, done. Washing off uses a lot more fluid, and you still need to dab with the absorbent tissue else the evaporating IPA will leave some stuff behind.