EEVblog 1656 - MAILBAG: ElectroPermanent Magnet, DIN PSU's, Sponge, Beelink EQ14 N150 PC

[@ZubaxRobotics]

Thanks, Dave, for reviewing the magnet! One little correction: the analog control input does not actually require a 5.1k resistor, you can drive it directly. There is a built-in pull-up/down 5.1k resistor that pulls the input according to the current state of the magnet: up if it's on, low if it's off, so you can use that as a minimal way of state feedback from the magnet, and also it ensures that the magnet will hold its current state if the input signal is lost.

[@ehfCannon]

Electropermanent magnets look ENORMOUSLY useful. Thank you for sharing this, Dave. Thanks for all you do.

[@digitalpowersystemsgmbh]

Dear Dave, thank you for showing our DIN PSU's!

[@alexwang007]

I've been watching you for 9 years and i almost forgot what your bench looks like! I can see it now!

[@imajeenyus42]

Fun fact: the scroll wheel detent in a Logitech MX Master 3 mouse uses an electro permanent magnet to be able to switch between smooth and clicky scrolling. It’s really cool to see this demonstrated - I really want to try making one from scratch!

[@Pete292323]

At this rate Dave won't ever need to buy a new PC again.

[@WindedExplanations]

Keep the worn pad with all the scratches, looks cool and has lots of character!

[@EEVblog]

Yeah, wouldn't get rid of it, would just put a new mat over the top just for the video backdrop.

[@aurthorthing7403]

Those magnetic graplers are great as long as no debris gets between the magnet and the item being grabbed. You can place a piece of magnetic wire between the magnet and the object being retrieved and it will have much less holding strength. You can completely disable a magnetis lock on most doors with a paperclip... but the door appears to be secured.

[@tom23rd]

Dave, with 3 mini PCs, you can juggle now!

[@GregBrown-v3m]

Dave with a clean bench? What is this world coming to?

[@mikeissweet]

My favorite segment! Been watching well over a decade

[@mikeissweet]

2 decades, i reckon.

[@mrb5217]

it's everyone's favorite segment actually 😆

[@digitalpowersystemsgmbh]

+1

[@zebo-the-fat]

I like that magnet thing, I have no use for it... but I want one!

[@gblargg]

5:46 By having the output a bit above 5V you keep the variation under load more centered around 5V, instead of it all being at 5V and below, even though the device can tolerate it above and below.

[@XSpImmaLion]

24:39 - 640kb is enough, I remember it... being a myth without proof that Gates spend a substantial part of his life denying, no one ever finding credible evidence that he ever said this, and him even explaining bit by bit why it'd make no sense for him to ever say this since at the time he was actively pushing for computers to have more and more memory. xD That permanent magnet thinguie is super cool though. And I personally agree... the N100 and N150 are basically unbeatable bang for buck right now. Also on the power for performance I guess. People were recently talking about the new Raspberry Pi 5 on a keyboard thing, which is a great kit for a devboard, but for those looking for a mini desktop with as much power as possible with low budget... those mini PCs are where it's at now. Particularly for basic computing, something like a home theater PC, dedicated applications and whatnot. And if the budget is really super tight, you could even go with a Celeron N4000 mini PC which are still around the same power of a RaspPi 5 for less. What you get with RaspPi 5 is community, support, great educational material, tinkering with electronics, and stuff like that. Then, the price is easily justified.

[@EEVblog]

Don't let the facts ruin a good story.

[@Conservator.]

7:10 I had a quick look at our favourite Chinese online store and they sell USB isolators for €6.11. They seem to transfer isolated power too and have an on-off switch. For €0.07 extra they’ll put a case around the board but you’ll lose the switch.

[@brookerobertson2951]

The people of Ukraine would really make use of this technology. @14:04

[@EFazy]

When you showed us this mat on your desk, I just bought my new big bench, so I ordered a few meter of this. Now, more than 5 years later, the mat have it's wear, but this makes it real. So I like your used bench mat.

[@YoutubeBorkedMyOldHandle_why]

28:36 "But uh yah. Please don't send any more!" ... It must be nice Dave ;-) I love the magnets!

[@turbochargedbrick]

Faded green is pretty drab but very “lab”

[@SatyajitRoy2048]

7:07 Color coding of these wires little weird. Black is VCC and Yellow is GND even though there is Red in the group.

[@BkR090]

I believe beelink is sending them out of respect. You've got a fan there.

[@MKSense1]

The Estonian magnet can be used in warfare to drop bombs .

[@leandrohb9211]

There is a quite good bus charging system from abb which lowers an charging arm onto the roof of the bus while it is sitting on the end of line.

[@PapasDino]

It's amazing what UV light does to workbench ESD mats, mine look the same, especially under something that's covered all the time!

[@mikewillis1592]

45 seconds in and Dave admits he has tidied his bench by act of moving the junk to a different bench.

[@zaprodk]

In Denmark we have a bus line in copenhagen that charges at end stations with a overhead pantograph. Apparently works well and the infrastructure isn't that complicated.

[@KeritechElectronics]

Drone delivery of EEVBlog DMMs? Hey, I'm interested - after you get a drone to fly all the way to the opposite part of the world, haha! Time to make SpongeBob Squarepants mascots now. Nice teardown of that Beelink. Again, they sure do deliver! I'm impressed by how this little gizmo is built.

[@unmanaged]

That magnet would make the best water balloon gag on the face of the Earth, get a ai camera that drops a balloon from top of a door for only a specific person hehe 😉

[@fogelmclovin6815]

Holiday mailbag! Yay!

[@hermannschaefer4777]

I run Beelink mini PCs for 2 years now and they are.. well.. cheap and just work. Totally fine for holiday homes and such. But I have Ryzen CPUs inside just for casual gaming.. ^^

[@frysauce2]

I really need to go through all the episodes and make a playlist of the sponge “action”! I think they did rather well for being so thin, but I’d like to see about 1.5x the expansion these ones had.

[@jaro6985]

sponges are obsolete trash

[@doomprophet]

That was some disappointing sponge. I turned on 4K for THAT. lol

[@reverend11-dmeow89]

EPM??? Whazzizat!!! did not need yesterday MUST PURCHASE Half A Bakers Dozen NOW if not sooner!!!!

[@justthisguyyouknow666]

TIL electropermanent magnets exist, and are cool as heck.

[@TheCommuted]

I think we know what the payload is for the electromagnet. Could do without it...

[@mototola86]

Estonia is here

[@WreckDiver99]

Michigan does have a "Test Bed" induction charging road that Ford Motor funded a big chunk of it because the government said "Hey, you guys want to do this?"...so...why not. LOL... I see my FB Feed flooded with "Sweden is the first country to have wireless charging roads". I pointed MANY to your debunking video and they all say the same "Oh, he's a hack, these are REAL scientists doing REAL work"...OMFG...the stupidity of the masses scares me.

[@Taliesen.]

It's a 1mm width PCB when installed on the DIN rail. Perfectly logical.

[@XTSM1]

Come on guys 1M for Dave. Hit that button!

[@HectorLopez-jw2ke]

Grey great color!!

[@imranahmad2733]

I use to use the antex branded sponges but they used to turn to mush after 6-8 months, the cheapo ones seem to last alot longer.

[@teslatrooper]

That's a capacitive isolator not optical. I've designed one of these myself but used a magnetic isolator and added an isolated DC-DC converter so the other side doesn't need its own power source.

[@razpootis5802]

I see a multimeter hanging by a string. Much concern. 🥺

[@ElliottVeares]

2:10 Me face palming as "mains voltage" is low voltage, I think what Dave means is extra-low voltage. Low voltage covers up to 1000V AC and 1500V DC.

[@richardbrobeck2384]

Good video !

[@IvyMike.]

Your ''That's not a knife!' is ripping rather than slicing, definitely needs a tickle.

[@kd1010163]

It'd be nice if you would use Geekbench to benchmark PCs. Its usage is more widespread.

[@bennyattar8862]

Don't be in such a hurry to knock the Electreon charging system. It does work, is being trialed for busses successfully.

[@jethrobo3581]

What's the occasion? Dave is always barefoot in his lab - today's different!

[@EEVblog]

I just got back from the dunny.

[@unmanaged]

Keep the pad for the workbench if you do keep the darker material

[@EEVblog]

Yes, I would put a grey one on top and use it as a decorative backdrop for filming.

[@akak5128]

You make your place look any nicer Im leaving! How could you tidy up? Why?

[@ibex485]

Definitely time for the old mat to go, it looks awful. Shocking how much it discoloured, and how quickly it went. 😞

[@fantozzi30]

Hi...Does anyone knows what happened with the TOV (The offset volt) channel? Every single one of his videos just disappeared...

[@zaprodk]

Didn't you also have one of those ElectroPermanent magnets in the mailbag a handful of years ago?

[@MatthewSuffidy]

I've got into mission creep with what mini pc devices are supposed to do. In most cases my big guns, the desktop with the rtx and ryzen 5900 is the thing to use. I paid something like $50 Canadian for 2 Odroid C1s that are kind of like Raspberry pis, and I conclude there is not a lot of use for them except they are like Arduinos that can be hot programmed with a support OS to do things easily. To me there seems to be bugs with its usb ports and also micro sd port. Someone gave me an old mac mini that I put Fedora Core on just to be a nerd.

[@glennodfx]

What is the monitor/keyboard/touchpad solution that the Beelink is plugged into in the video?

[@TheEPROM9]

Lets see what cool stuff you got given

[@alexwang007]

What do you think those 1 ohm resistor on those filter caps are for? (In the DIN rail USB PSU)

[@teresashinkansen9402]

Wow another use for Alnico magnets, at this rate in 70 years I might have to use my other hand to count how many uses Alnico has were even ferrite is not better than it.

[@petegaslondon]

Hey I just thought.. I've seen these magnetic grabby things for quite some time -- but this is different - here's my guess.. strips of rare earth perm magnets that move.. when the outer metal stripes are in-between N and S there's near zero field, when the magnets move about half the strip pitch, it lets the magnetism through If it uses no moving parts and really does just use a coil, I'm pretty impressed - how does this work?

[@gweilo8888]

They couldn't be much clearer in their description: "The design is entirely solid-state, with no moving parts inside". And I can't remotely begin to think how that could be achieved, so I'd love someone to explain it!

[@zachbrown7272]

@@gweilo8888 the wikipedia page does a decently good job. a way you might think of it is a diode in parallel with a resistor and a DC source. With the diode in one direction all the current (magnetic flux) travels through it, so no current (flux) travels through the resistor. when you flip the direction of the diode though, all the sudden current can't flow through it anymore and it flows through the resistor (the thing you're grabbing). the "Multiphysics Simulations" section of the wikipedia page in particular helps IMO.

[@gweilo8888]

@@zachbrown7272 What I'm not grasping is how you can turn on or off a permanent magnet without moving parts and with no current during either the off or on states, only in the transition.

[@zachbrown7272]

@@gweilo8888 because you're flipping the magnetic polarity of soft iron. when you magnetize a piece of soft iron, it doesn't take a constant current to keep it magentized, you align the domains once and for the most part they stay aligned. then you can flip the current and you'll end up flipping the domains around in the opposite direction.

[@gweilo8888]

@@zachbrown7272 Interesting, thanks! I'd never have guessed that effect was capable of inducing such a strong magnetic charge from such a small device, but clearly it's able to!

[@yoppindia]

how did you get desktop picture in laptop? remoted into desktop, capture card or some magic setting in usb?

[@cannesahs]

Does that electro permanent magnet require the canbus adapter control for controlling from gnd/vcc with resistor? I wonder what the idle current is without canbus adapter attached?

[@Matlalcueitl]

It does not, as you can see in the video.

[@cannesahs]

​@@Matlalcueitl Dave kept it connected even using analog input. I checked documentation now. Yes it works. (And dave shouldn't have used resistor.) Overall I would have wanted to see idle current measurement without CAN-dongle consumption

[@Matlalcueitl]

@@cannesahs Ah, I know what you mean now.

[@integerofdoom69]

It's been a hot minute since you pulled the old bag out.

[@joeylegaspi3515]

Perhaps its a magswitch with solenoids to flip the switch

[@michael.a.covington]

Are those sponges the ones that fit a Weller soldering station?

[@mrDarktrooper]

I guess they are using that gigantic film capacitor to pulse the magnet.

[@unmanaged]

Dang I could have used this when I made a crosswalk controller on din mount..

[@dedamarsovac]

Quallcomm power adapter has some weird transistor-looking symbol on it. What does it mean?

[@gblargg]

20:24 Won't have to determine whether something is sponge-worthy anymore.

[@Kevin75668]

People actually buy special soldering sponges? I replaced the one in my Hakko with a piece cut out of a grocery store 6-pack, and it's outlasted the original by years now. Haven't even used the second side yet.

[@punchar4161]

Tampons do a better job than the sponge

[@johnsonlam]

Oh God, the Beelink website is awful, it look beautiful but when I want to search and compare the product, the result is a mess, and the price is totally wrong when comparing different model. The quality control still not good enough, website represent a company's toward's public, their website did more harm than good.

[@elmaverikf]

the mini pc is connected to a dummy notebook ?

[@punchar4161]

6w tdp max must be accurate., cause the SSDs, fans, RAM also consume during operation.

[@youbecha64]

Is that an external keyboard screen thing...or a laptop with hdmi input?

[@EEVblog]

External screen thingo from Elecrow, see previous email.

[@youbecha64]

@@EEVblog That was it!

[@simonstergaard]

Unbelievable !

[@cjay2]

Windows 11? Isn't that the OS that sends all your keystrokes and files to MS and other data collection places?

[@justthisguyyouknow666]

Windows Home (10 and 11) keylogs by design. I don't know why people trust MS.

[@manuelh.4147]

TDP is only the CPU. There is a whole system running.

[@Lee2.0h]

2:40 Dave you seem a bit shaky there everything ok?

[@unmanaged]

I have some more PCs for Dave.

[@EmmanuelNwachukwu-cr5ob]

Amazing

[@Electronics-Rocks]

The USB PSU I put money on is FAKE as so many are to TAKE APART! I have been given 8 units as not charging new gen mobiles. I personally purchase from very reliable sources only but now teach others to do the same. The problem is even some big stores are being caught out in UK!!!

[@ZomB1986]

14:55 that thing just screams "Hey it's broke, show the world what crap quality cheap chargers are made out of"

[@EEVblog]

Already done an entire video on that reverse engineering one. And it looked new in the bag.

[@ZomB1986]

@EEVblog don't underestimate how many people don't remove the protection foils

[@sebellblue]

@@EEVblog Ever thought that it might not be a proper charger but one with a few extra chips with some spy or malware since its so randomly sent to you with no information? Sounds like a good reason to take it apart to me.

[@tonyk.8580]

@@sebellblue This is what I was thinking.

[@ctid107]

Yeah a variant on the evil usb stick?

[@alch3myau]

Woooo! whoa. what.

[@tubical71]

Hi Dave, great magnet stuff 👍 But I'm a little bit distracted, it's Christmas season and how on earth can you get away wearing shirts and shorts..? -8 deg C at the moment. So what's that widtcha..? And don't tell me you're in Australia 😉🙃🙃 🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎅🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄

[@alch3myau]

Wonder how different that electromagnet is different to those magnetic fire door locks... Mmmmm Hm, sure Deviant did a video on that

[@rocketman221projects]

Magnetic door locks are just regular electromagnets. They require power to stay locked.

[@mx0r]

@@rocketman221projectsAlso, by design. When the power goes off, you can exit the building. Useful in case of fire or simple power outtage.

[@electronics.unmessed]

Clean bench is killing creativity!

[@szymek7794]

Hi, best greetings from Poland! 🤍❤ Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2025 to everyone!

[@petersage5157]

"They're cheap as chips." You pay 22 quid for chips?

[@Reprint001]

I think you'll find that grey is the drabbest colour

[@drmetpepper6630]

That Zubax magnet may be in use in Ukraine?

[@orange422]

A small servo that releases a hook or similiar is cheaper and has been used for a long time in the RC world.

[@maksimdrachov2383]

Not yet.

[@bertblankenstein3738]

Sponge-a-polooza!

[@hillppari]

Is that magnet designed for dropping bombs?

[@jerry1333]

6W is just CPU ;) but it's still very low power pc for it's capabilities.

[@lw7992]

Why does your voice go up a 1/4 octave as you get excited? Hahaha

[@MrRelevance02]

these little pc’s bro

[@radarmusen]

They were not sponge worthy.

[@AdegokeIbori]

nice video, These past few days watching my portfolio decline is very disheartening. Holding doesn't really profit much, any idea how on how to earn better on the short run?

[@Elias_Chung]

All you might need is an expert assigned by a brokerage company that will trade for you and handle your capital professionally and give your weekly Returns of investment (ROL) without any extra fees attached

[@Elias_Chung]

Well I currently trade with Mrs Mila Jacob . She is the best when it comes to investment

[@DarrellBond]

Thanks for the recommendation,many traders are having this issue as well, please how can I connect with her

[@UzomaTinibu]

Please how do I contact her?

[@MchumbaJakande]

Thank you for this. Will definitely reach out to her now. Thanks again

[@plusmanikantanr]

That BeeLink with no upgradeable memory and soldered on chips. I'll pass. Imagine if you want to swap out the RAM or re-purpose the SATA or M.2 connectors with replacement h/w. MiniPCs with all-soldered parts are just e-waste in 2 to 3 years with builtin expiry date.

[@EEVblog]

They aren't your main desktop PC, they are very useful for the single purpose thing you set and forget.

[@simon7719]

Probably wouldn't buy intel stuff without at least looking into AMD alternatives as they're generally outclassing intel these days. Maybe that's why it's cheap.