Test of 5 AC-DC PSUs cheaper than $1.5

Posted on 2021-06-302021-06-30 by Ivan

I need 220AC to 5V PSU for exhaust fan controller, the trickiest part – it should be as small as possible. The main load is LEDs, same time supplied voltage should be clean enough for analog to digital conversions doing by attiny85. So I bought and test 6 different PSU. Because of seller mistake one of them turned up to be 220 to 12V PSU, so only 5 of them were tested.

TL;DR
All of them produces awful output exception of #1 and #3 (hilink)
The winner is #1, it’s one of the smallest (12X25X18 mm), one of the cheapest ($0.77), rated at 5V 700mA power supply.
No one of them (with exception of hi-link) doesn’t look safe enought to be treated as galvanic isolated PSU.
Here is a table for quick comparison, but out of the box (without changing capacitors or adding filters), only #1 and #3 worth to buy:

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Repairing of kitchenaid phase control board

Posted on 2021-02-04 by Ivan

It’s a story how I spent thee days troubleshooting 9 elements circuit when 7 of them are passive. I didn’t found what’s wrong, but fixed it.

Foreword:
I have control board marked as W10354309, it’s European 220V model of phase regulator.
I don’t really understand the rules how kitchenaid marks their parts, because I found several part numbers for 220V version: 3184417, 4163707, 4163712, 9701269, 9706596, W10217542, W10538289, W10911442, W11174552, WPW10538289
(110V version have same idea and same schematic, just different values and ratings for same elements)
I don’t know why they do that. Probably because they use the same part on different models and/or under different brands.
So, I have 5ksm125 mixer and W10354309 phase control.

Service manual says, that at the first speed planetary shaft should have near 60RPM, but in my case it had near 120RPM and I was unable to decrease it by tuning control plate.

Here I should make a digression, these mixers have ability to maintain constant RPM under different load. I was surprised when I learn how do they do that. One of the main component comes right from the steam engine era, it’s centrifugal governor which is placed on the shaft of the motor, here it is:

Yellow thing is the governor itself, black cylinders highlighted with green – weights, central pin stroked with blue is a pin which provides feedback to control plate. It works simple, the more RPM motor have the more pin extends.

Next component is so called control plate, in fact it has simple main switch and a T shaped contact. The main switch just break circuit when you move switch lever to off. T-contact plate just shorts contacts on a plate in 3 different configuration. The white tab on a picture above is a dielectric tab on T-contact, governor’s central pin pushes this tab and changes which contacts are closed on control plate. Here is control plate from the other side:

And the last component is a phase control board, it’s basically dimmer if you google for ‘dimmer circuit’ you will find the same scheme as used in phase control board with one exception, usually dimmers have variable resistor for smooth regulation, phase control board has resistors network in which resistors shorts by control board in 3 different configuration. You can see it behind top edge of contral board on the picture above and on closeup photo on picture below:

So, how its work together? Here is schematic from repair manual with comments and nominals added by me:

As I sad before control plate can be in 3 different states:
The first: the motor has too low RPM or doesn’t turn at all. T-contact fully closed, it shorts resistor network (R1, R2, R3, R5) completely and feeds motor with almost full sine wave (DIAC Q2 opens at around of 30V, so the start of the wave is chopped a little bit)
The third: the motor has too much RPM. T-contact fully opened, resistors network has maximum resistance, phase control board feeds motor with minimum amount of energy (manual says that it should provide 40V RMS, I don’t understand why it’s true for both 110V and 220V version, but looks like it is).
The second: this state is somewhere in between too low RPM and too much RPM, control board shorts R1, equivalent resistance is ((R5+R3)* R2)/(R5+R3+R2), manual says that it should provide 80V RMS.

The more RPM motor have, the more central pin of centrifugal governor extents, the more it shift T-contact. When T-contact shifting, it opens circuit with bottom contact first and with upper contact next (check schematic above). When you select mixer’s speed you change distance between control plate and governor, the more distance it has the faster motor should spins to get equilibrium between the first and the third states.

Finally I can tell about my issue.
Usually when phase control is broken mixer doesn’t cho-cho at all or doing it on max speed, my story was slightly different, it had near 120 constant RPM on the first 3 speeds, next speed or two increased RPM to the maximum, and other speeds did nothing.

When I saw schematic, I was pretty sure that I just need to replace DIAC. In circuits like this, if something works wrong in 99 cases of 100 it caused by broken semiconductor. When TRIAC failed it usually stays open or shorted (motor shouldn’t run at all or run at full speed).

I changed DIAC but nothing changed, motor had RPM above nominal, but not the maximum. RPM was enough to extent governor’s central pin to the maximum and open both contacts on control plate.

The next suspect was TRIAC, here is only two semiconductors, if one of them is OK, the other one is broken, right? Wrong. I tried two different TRIACs without success. BTA12-600SW (it has the same characteristics like original one. Logic level gate, gate’s current 10mA , snuberless, but rated for 12A instead of 6A) and BTA06-600CW ( it isn’t logic level and had gate current around 35mA, it produced visible sparks during re-commutations on control plate, so don’t use it).

What should be suspected next? Capacitors? Both had less than 5% difference of capacitance from their nominals. I tried other capacitors, RPM of motor changed, but not significantly (in theory failed capacitors may have noticeable different capacity under high voltage, but I tested them with low voltage LCR meter).

After that I started to go crazy, I even de-solder every resistor, but they had correct values.
I spent near 3 days trying to find what’s wrong.
I had a lot of theories: failed resistor which heats when voltage applied and changes its resistance, semi-broken wires, semi-broken motor etc.
I even found a topic in which people had the same issue, but no one find the solution: https://www.electronicspoint.com/forums/threads/kitchenaid-mixer-phase-control-board-problem.241021/page-2

Soon after I started my experiments, I found that everything works as expected when I put R4 with increased value, but I wanted to find why circuit which had right elements didn’t work as it should.
At the end of the third day I gave up. I tried to replace every resistor, every capacitor in circuit and it didn’t helped, I tried to solder wires in parallel with existent,
In the end I decided to put 3.6KOhm R4 instead of original 560Ohm.

Here is my observations:

Manuals says that you can check phase control by putting sheet of non conductive material (like papper) between T-contact and contact which it touches, if it’s OK it should provide around 40V, but I got 50V. When I lovered voltage to 40V I got response from control plate regulation.
Motor starts spinning at around 9V DC.
Coils of stator has resistance of 7.8 Ohm each, rotor has resistance near 4 Ohm between nearest contacts, resistance of motor (between red and white wire) near 40 Ohm.
Circuit is sensible to element’s values, even when I tried to put capacitors with the same value I got slightly different RPM. My circuit has 1% R5, old scheme from manual has 3 resistors in series, usually this approach used when resistors have breakdown voltage less than voltage drop on them or when you want to use few cheap 5% 10% resistors instead of precise one.
Probably phase control boards with different part numbers more stable. I found photos of others boards and saw that resistors have values different from values that observed. Here is an example from amazon:

Unravel unknown thermistor

Posted on 2018-02-282018-03-01 by Ivan

Recently I made mistake and made PCB for arduino module where connect temperature sensor to A7 PIN. I’ve envisaged that sensor could be analog (diode) or digital. Soon I’ve learned that diode doesn’t provide enough accuracy even for ±5℃ (2mV/℃) and surprise-surprise A7 pin is only analog input so I can’t use DS18B.
I had haven’t any other temp sensors, fortunately I’ve remembered that I have broken battery controller from laptop and it should have some sort of temp sensor, here it is:
I’ve poked it with multimeter few times to be sure that it isn’t semiconductor sensor, but NTC with near 10K Ohm resistance at 25℃. I’ve decided to use it, but don’t know how much Ohm/℃ it has. I’ve planned to use linear approximation to convert resistance to temp, so i measure few points and here what i got:

Here is ADC value on X-Axis and temperature on Y-Axis. Pure perfect, i could use it with one pair of a and b coefficients in temperature range which i want.

KIS-3R33 calculator

Posted on 2014-09-252019-09-30 by Ivan

Half year ago i wanted to get in car PSU to charge my smartphone or to power devices like camcoder. I wanted to build powerful power supply, first i tried to build it on chip NCP3155, but has failed. I lurking around to find another chip and found complete module KIS-3R33 based on MP2307 chip. I found it very interesting and cheap, after i got few i started to find way how to change output voltage from 3.3V to 5V. I found many guides how to change Vout, by replacing internal components and all of them ignore the fact, that module have Adjust pin. I wanted to find way how to change Vout without replacing internal components.
KIS-33R3 very similar to typical application:

Datasheet give ratio for calculation of Vout depend of R1 and R2:
Vout = 0.925* (R1 + R2) / R2
According to scheme of module that i found into the internet, Adjust pin connected to FB in series with resistor of 3.3kOhm:

R1 = 25.5 kOhm (two 51kOhm resistors in parallel), so it is possible to vary R1 in range 25.5 kOhm – 2.9 kOhm and R2 in range 10 kOhm – 2.48 kOhm it give output range 1.19V – 10.43V. If you need voltage more than 5V, you need to remove zener diode first (D2 on scheme), because this diode limit Vout to 5.1V. Also voltage range of output capacitor (C2 on scheme) is not know, so it is good idea to replace it with capacitor that can handle your output voltage.
I wrote simple calculator for KIS-3R33 that compute resistor that you must connect between Adj pin and GND or Vout to get desired voltage. Don’t forget, that result will correct only for KIS-3R33 that have 3.3V output (i seen version that have 2.7V output, so be careful).

NaN

STM32 performance test or how fast you can serve input signal

Posted on 2014-03-312014-04-01 by Ivan

Finally, i decided to try stm32, before i wrote firmwares only for AVR mega family (from now, when i say AVR MCU, i mean AVR mega family MCU), and was scared by tonns of code that you need for simply led blinking on STM32 MCU.
Now i can say, that programming of STM32 not so hard as it looks first time. After i understand logical structure of MCU core and how it work, it become easy.
OK, it was prelude.

Every time when i see comparison between AVR and STM32/STM8 MCU’s i faced with next arguments:
STM MCU’s have lower price, when they have more RAM, FLASH, GPIO pins and work frequency. Looks sweet. Today i want to tell the story about work frequency.

More than the operating frequency of the MCU, the faster it can handle events. STM32 MCU’s have maximum work frequency more than 20MHz (72MHz for STM32F103 that i have), when AVR MCU’s have only 20MHz. Is 72MHz a lot of or not? Two week ago i wanted to know, is it enough ~200MHz of STM32F4 to handle 10MSPS ADC on not? Two weeks ago i think ‘may be’. Now i think ‘not enought’.

Last Friday evening i blow the dust from oscilloscope and made little research.
My basic code poll pin, by software, configured for input and set same signal on output pin, the code is there:

while(1) {
         if( GPIOB->IDR & GPIO_IDR_IDR10 ) {
                        GPIOB->BSRR = GPIO_BSRR_BS8;
         } else {
                        GPIOB->BSRR = GPIO_BSRR_BR8;
         }
}

How many time MCU need to set same level on GPIO pin as on input pin? May be 140nS (near 10 clocks on 72MHz) will enought?

Nope. 480ns. It near 34 cycles. The period of 480ns has frequency of 2MHz, may be i forgot to change speed of gpio port?

Nope. May be i forgot to switch on external quartz or forgot to configure PLL?

Nope. Hmm, may be optimization can help? Let’s try to switch on -O3:

Much better, 170 ns. MCU need near 12 cycles, to detect signal and change state of one GPIO speed. Do not forget, MCU just pooling one pin and change state of another, it do not do valuable work.Okay, but what the maximum speed you can get, if you will just change the state of GPIO pin?
Is it possible to hit theoretical maximum of 50MHz (max clock speed of GPIO ports on STM32F103):

Just 6MHz. Let me switch on optimization for you:

Looks like there only 36MHz, let’s look on the code:

I can’t see why they can’t reach 50MHz. If you look on disassembler view, you can see, that MCU just store different values on constant address.
In fairness i must to say, if you set cursors on oscilloscope in different manner, you can achieve 50MHz:

It is hard to say what way of measurement is wrong, i think the second, because first time it is easy to see time of 2 periods. Without a doubt, the second way STM advertising department would have liked more.
BONUS:
A picture where is while cycle occurs:

Pulseview compilation

Posted on 2014-03-042014-03-04 by Ivan

Half year ago i wanted to make device that can be used to clone ski pass. I thought that ski passes use RFID 125kHz. First i bought itead module RDM6300 but it turned out that it can only read tags, so i bought EM4095 chip. At this time i also noticed, that most ski passes use MIFARE tags that operated at 13MHz.
Anyway i want to complete this project and build device that can read and write 125kHz tags (really there is to many different tags that operate on 125kHz and uses different protocols, so i want to start with EM4100 tags).That tags use manchester encoding to transfer data, also tags can use different bitrate. It is easy task to encode data into manchester, but it’s really pain in the ass if you want to decode them and does not know bitrate.
I have clone of saleae logic analizer so i decided to practice with decode manchester with libsigrokdecode. Sigrok have ‘official’ gui for libsigrok and libsigrokdecode called Pulseview.
I found that debian wheezy have old libsigrok and do not have pulseview at all, after that i decided to build sigrok and pulseview from scratch. It is really not easy quest, because additionally to libsigrok, libsigrokdecode you need to compile old libusb and libvisa.
Finally when i compiled all that stuff, i faced with errors when i tried to compile pulseview with decoders support.

First, libsigrokdecode need Python >= 3.0, Python.h placed in python3.2/Python.h, so you need to change it into libsigrokdecode.h:

./include/libsigrokdecode/libsigrokdecode.h:#include <python3.2/Python.h> /* First, so we avoid a _POSIX_C_SOURCE warning. */

Second, if you will got that error:

[ 40%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/pulseview.dir/pv/view/decodetrace.cpp.o
/var/tmp/sigrok/pulseview/pv/view/decodetrace.cpp: In member function ‘virtual void pv::view::DecodeTrace::paint_mid(QPainter&, int, int)’:
/var/tmp/sigrok/pulseview/pv/view/decodetrace.cpp:203:3: error: ‘hash_combine’ is not a member of ‘boost’
/var/tmp/sigrok/pulseview/pv/view/decodetrace.cpp:204:3: error: ‘hash_combine’ is not a member of ‘boost’
/var/tmp/sigrok/pulseview/pv/view/decodetrace.cpp:205:3: error: ‘hash_combine’ is not a member of ‘boost’
make[2]: *** [CMakeFiles/pulseview.dir/pv/view/decodetrace.cpp.o] Error 1

Then you need to add “#include <boost/functional/hash.hpp>” into /var/tmp/sigrok/pulseview/pv/view/decodetrace.cpp

Third, if you got that:

CMakeFiles/pulseview.dir/pv/data/decoderstack.cpp.o: In function `pv::data::DecoderStack::decode_proc(boost::shared_ptr<pv::data::Logic>)':
/var/tmp/sigrok/pulseview/pv/data/decoderstack.cpp:267: undefined reference to `srd_session_new'
/var/tmp/sigrok/pulseview/pv/data/decoderstack.cpp:283: undefined reference to `srd_inst_stack'

You need to add -lsigrokdecode into CMakeFiles/pulseview.dir/link.txt

I spent too many time to compile that stuff, so i decided to place here archive with complete libsigrok, libsigrokdecode, libvisa, libusb, sigrok and pulseview. I compiled it with preffix /opt/sigrok, so if you want to use it, place that stuff into /opt and run like that:

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/sigrok/lib /opt/sigrok/bin/pulseview

Enjoy: sigrok.tar
md5: 7bbb1d434959848c741230fe90a590c5 /tmp/sigrok.tar.gz
PS
Also you must install libboost-thread.

Arduino keyManager

Posted on 2013-10-31 by Ivan

Few months ago i started to developing iron for waxing my snowboard. Last season i bought regular iron and used it, but it can set temperature only in wide range, did not have overheat protection and can melt the base of the board. In university i learned of 8bit avr mcu, but all firmwares that we wrote, we wrote on ASM. Now it is my hobby and i decided to try C/C++ programming, early at school i wrote on C, but forget to many about C language, so now, after many years without practice, i decided to try arduino.
When i wrote arduino sketches i did not found library to manage keys. I wanted event based library that can produce events when key pressed, when key long pressed and when key released, also it must have program debounce.
Early to manage keys i just wrote tonnes of code right in sketches, but when sketches grow up, they started to looks like a crap, so i develop my own library.
They far away from to be excellent ( i am not very familiar with C, not to mention C + +), but they work.
Now code of the library have mixed russian and english comments ( hope i will change it in future ).
I tried to write library fast as possible and using minimal resources, because of that (and because i do not know C++ well) there to many hard coded defines for delay values in keyManager.h (debounce time, time to long press detection and time to regenerate long press event). I feel it is possible to make library better with C++ templates, but i did not found time to learn it well.
Last words, before i show example, library designed to be used with pull up keys, ie when key pressed, digitalRead() must return LOW.
I turned arduino blink example to work with key manager. There are two keys, one switched off the led, another on switch it on.

// Include library header
 #include <keyManager.h>
 
#define led 13
#define off_pin 10
#define on_pin 11
 
// Create keyManager objects, when you create key object, they
// initialize key pin as input 
keyManager on_key( on_pin, true );
keyManager off_key( off_pin, true );
 
void setup() {
  // initialize the digital pin as an output.
  pinMode(led, OUTPUT);
}
 
// Led state
uint8_t led_state = 0;
 
void loop() {
// This is main part, process() function must run at least once in every 255 micro seconds
// process() function is heart of the library based on FSM, they process
// key state changes and generate events
  on_key.process();
  off_key.process();
 
// Light led if on key pressed
  if( on_key.isPressed() ) {
    digitalWrite(led, HIGH);
    led_state = HIGH;
  }
// Swich off if right key pressed
  if( off_key.isPressed() ) {
    digitalWrite(led, LOW);    
    led_state = LOW;
  }
 
// If any key pressed long, led will change the state
  if( on_key.isLongPressed() || off_key.isLongPressed()  ) {
    if( led_state == LOW ) {
      led_state = HIGH;
    } else {
      led_state = LOW;
    }
    digitalWrite(led, led_state);
  }
}

Second argument of:

keyManager on_key( on_pin, true );

Select how keys will be driven. When argument is ‘true’ keys will managed in ‘event mode’ it means, that isPressed() will return true only once until you did no release key and did not press it again. Same for isReleased().
isLongPressed() will return ‘true’ first time, when key will be pressed longer than defined in keyManager.h (by default 1.5 sec) and after every repeat delay if key will not released (by default 0.1 sec).
Event generated every time when key changed their state, there is function isEvent() to check that. isEvent() return true until event will not received by isPressed(), isLongPressed() or isReleased(). In another words that functions will clear event flag after picked up their event.
keyManager can work in another mode, when second argument is ‘false’, functions isPressed(), isLongPressed() and isReleased() will not clear event flag, they return true every time when key in their state. Event flag will generated as before, but can be cleared only with clearEvent() function.
Now library use 4 bytes of ram to manage single button. In future i want reduce ram that used by timers, add more examples and simplify delays configuration.

There is link to github: https://github.com/IvanBayan/arduino-keyManager