Good Morning All! Um, is this a completely pointless product? I Got this from Lidl I think it was around 10 pounds or something like that. And the idea of this thing is that it measures a slope. so if you put it on a flat surface, it should say zero and then if you tilt it, it will give you the incline in degrees, percent millimeters per meter, or inches per foot. That's weird.

so let's have a look at it and I am going to take this apart. Um, very interesting packaging here. They've used the fact that a block of paper when curved gives you a sloping Edge and they've put the battery down in there, which I Think it's genius really. So let's put the battery in it single.

AAA Cell Tronic again. I'm thinking Tronic must be a partner brand to Lidl not specifically Parkside but Lidl Generally I'll take that off and I'll get a screwdriver to undo these three screws. battery insert do we have? Oh, that's actually quite nice Arrow Um. backlit display.

Oh, quite a narrow range of viewing angles on that. And why have I got an error? I've got an error because this thing doesn't like being tilted back. If I tilt it forwards I then get now that says ABS so absolute in degrees I presume and its degrees to two decimal places. which is pretty amazing really.

Um, which way do I need to go to get zero? I need to go to there. So yes, zero degrees I might have to reposition this camera to get this display on camera. So that's saying that this desk is 0.35 degrees. Now there's a zero button here on off ref.

So let's do a ref. Oh, and that zeros it out. So now, if I tilt it slightly to the left, we've got one degree. Uh, positive.

Why would that be positive? I Would have thought positive would be a clockwise rotation? Oh no, it's positive in both directions. Okay, um. very high level of precision: 0.01 degrees? Uh, well. yes, that's what we're seeing on the box here.

Uh. Accuracy: 0.1 degrees at zero degrees and 90 degrees plus or minus: 0.2 degrees. Other Angles: Interesting Resolution: 0.05 degrees. That's what we're seeing.

It moves in steps of 0.05. Now let's press the mode button so that's degrees. Next one is percent. Then we've got millimeters per meter.

Who would work in that? and um, inches per foot. Oh yes, and it's all fractional. That's actually quite good. Okay, let's go back to degrees.

And the third button here is a hold button so you can hold it and then move it and it won't lose your reading. That seems to be pretty much all it does. Enormous manual. Um, okay, lots of languages.

and I've no doubt it's mostly safety information. Scope of Delivery You will need technical data Here we are: safety information children don't give it to. Children Risk of Injury: Danger of explosion, Danger to life Leakage of batteries. Oh, they do leak.

Don't they wear gloves? Why don't you wear gloves? Well I suppose if you're holding a hammer while measuring an angle. Um, so stick the battery in, switch it on and off with the on off button modes to give you degrees, percentage, millimeters, and inches per foot. pitch. relative angle measurement.

So absolute is when it's not relative and absolute disappears if it is relative and a hold function. Arrow Indication: Yes, what was that? When the product is placed in a level position, up down indicates the relative position of the left and right side of the product. Does it I'm not sure I noticed that. Okay, well, that's pretty much it.

Now the reason I say is this a pointless product? Um, it's because I've loaded this thing clinometer which I found on the Play Store onto my tablet. and well, that does essentially the same thing. Oh, it's nowhere near as accurate. or at least the display is nowhere near as accurate.

I mean I'm pretty sure the Mems chip does have a similar accuracy because all these Mems chips are probably much the same. but you can you? I mean there is enough Hardware in a tablet or a phone to do exactly the same job as is in this product and it's got a much nicer display. Well, it looks like in absolute mode, my desk is not actually completely level. it's 0.4 degrees off level.

I'm just going to slip this folded piece of paper from the manual under the right hand side. Oh, and now it's 0.2 degrees. So yes, my, well, probably my entire house is slightly on the tilt. Now just a word about the Um camera: I'm using the Moto G31 and I Bought these some Sony headphones and they're designed for Mobile use and there's this little button which you can press to start and stop music, but it's also got a microphone in there.

and oh, that's not near enough to my mouth, is it? But anyway, that's the microphone I'm using in conjunction with Open Camera app, so hopefully this is going to be a bit louder this time, right? Let's take this apart. We'll start with these three screws to get the battery out, and then there are these four screws which does make it look like this is going to come apart quite easily. Okay, and now to the four corner screws. Let's get them out, see if this comes apart, and see if it's nice Not with wires everywhere.

That makes it difficult to take the two parts. The two halves apart. Well, there are wires from the battery compartment, but inside, we've got a few bits and pieces here. There's a 101 which is probably uh, 100 micro Henry's induction.

Now my guess is that's a boost converter to take the 1.5 volts up to. well, probably 3.3 for the blob chip. You can see the outline of the blob chip there. and there's the mems device.

Here is what looks like the backlight for the liquid crystal display, but it does look like all of that is accessible from the front, which would mean peeling this front thing off I may do that. but actually I think I can probably read the model of the Mems chip. There Mems incidentally stands for miniature Electromagnetic System I believe which? I'll just check that. But let's get the number off that chip and look at the data sheet.

Well now the back comes off as well as the front comes off and then the middle is just this, um, well, middle section and we get a better view of what's going on on here. So as I say, this is probably a boost converter to bring 1.5 Volts up to something usable. Three, there's an eight megahertz Crystal There there's a little uh, five pins top 23. not sure what that is yet.

Uh, blob chip that is the main microcontroller. uh V G R T C S So VCC ground. Oh I don't know. receive, transmit, and uh, control and something or other.

The programming header almost certainly for this thing. Actually, that's surprising. I'm not sure I've ever seen a programming header on a blob chip before, but there it is. Um LCD is going to be zebra stripped onto the underside of this board.

in some way. these are the connections for it. There are three full-size switches here. um, soldered onto the board for the three buttons on the front LCD backlight here lead minus lead plus and the Mems chip is there, but it doesn't have anything written on it.

It's behind the power cable I Can't get any numbering or lettering off that in any orientation. So I think that's anonymous. Just found a macro mode on this camera. Oh, which seems to just digitally zoom in a lot.

This chip here says C33 so I'm guessing it's a 3.3 volt boost regulator. The five pin chip up there says y j 28 is it or YJ 2B Not entirely sure what that is, but yeah, definitely no markings on the Mems chip. So I think I'm going to have to just get a data sheet for any old Mems chip. They're probably all very similar.

Well, now, this isn't the one that's in this inclinometer, but it's going to be very similar. Um, this was one of the cheapest ones I could find on eBay You can get these things this: MMA 8452q on a PCB for around one pound fifty. and you can bet that the one in here is going to be fairly cheaply available in quantity. So it's um, three point up to 3.6 volt power supply, so 3.3 would be fine.

Uh, I squared C interface to the microcontroller and I mean there's masses of data here. But looking at the block diagram, you've got um, three transducers for X Y and Z You've got a C to V converter that's interesting. What's C to voltage converter? Then you've got a 12 bit ADC resuming a multiplexer in here somewhere and then you've got some embedded DSP functions for free fall and motion detect. So if it detects that something's falling on the floor like a laptop, it can put the hard drive into, um, a resilient mode so it won't get damaged.

Transient detections for fast movement so Shake detect orientation detection for portrait landscape, that sort of thing, shape detection, single double, and directional tap detection. So if you tap the chip on one side, it will detect that. so all those functions are built into the DSP then you've got an I squared C interface and you've got SDA and Scl to go to the microcontroller like I Say this isn't the chip that's in that device because I think that only adds six pins plus two pins coming out of the sides. This seems to have a lot more pins.

Uh, this is also quite interesting. Current consumption: anywhere from six microamps to 165 microamps, presumably depending on what mode it's in. It must have various sleep modes and stuff like that. So what do you think? Do you think this is, um, a pointless product trying to get that down to zero? No, I can't quite do it.

Maybe I can I Don't know. Um, do you think it makes more sense to just use a tablet or a smartphone? Or does this thing actually have a use case? Let me know in the comments below. Cheerio.