A very good morning to you all. it's post bag. let's try this one again. So this is another identical although it was brought from a different seller um voltage and current monitor unit which I bought on AliExpress Let's take a look at it.

Yes here it is battery capacity DC Power detector oh where's my pen? uh zero to 300 volts zero to 100 amps 0 to 30 000 Watts 30 kilowatts I'm not sure I'd want to put 30 kilowatts through this but um, this is a very similar one. No, it's identical actually because it says a torch on the back so it's identical to the one I bought before but it's from a different seller I'll put up the uh screen grab of the seller in a moment but let me just dig out the other one because the other one doesn't work. Oh well, of course it doubly doesn't work now because of course I robbed the LCD out of it this thing to fix my in shed voltage and current monitor which now does work courtesy of the new LCD Um but yeah, these two units are essentially identical. They both have the same barcode on which say a torch.cn a torch.cn so they're the same.

so the first thing I need to do is put Power to this see if it Powers up this one didn't um make sure I get my connections the right way around this time because I think I reverse polarity this one although looking at the circuit I don't think that mattered or shouldn't have caused a failure so maybe this never worked at all. Doesn't matter because I bought it for the LCD and that did work right? Let's get this right this time. so this is V plus so I'll put my crop clip in there and screw down on it I Know it's a bit naughty I'm just going to crush the crop Clips aren't I and this is V minus in so I'll put the black one on there right. apply some power.

I shall use this. uh, 12 volt pack of batteries. Does it work? No, it doesn't. Well on the back of here it says eight to three hundred volts in.

There was a brief flash when I connected that battery pack. Maybe the batteries are flat, but anyway, let's try this. 18 volt power tool battery. Uh, it's marked negative and positive.

That's more like it that's booting up and we've got some stuff on the display. So yes, it's about power supply really, isn't it? Now this unit was supplied with this cable which makes you think power cable and yet I don't remember there. There's a little red connector there I don't remember it saying on this one that the red connector was specifically a power input. Yes, I think I was confused because it says shunt there but I think that applies to these four resistors.

Now on here. the red connector is 4 to 30 volts input to directly power this thing up and that's used if um, the incoming voltage is less than eight volts because then it can't run from the incoming voltage and I'm guessing it's exactly the same on this and therefore exactly the same on this. So going back to this box of batteries I think I can power this directly from this. Let's give it a try.

Plug that in. Oh yeah, that's a lot easier, isn't it? So now I can do the sort of review of this thing and what it does just with this box of batteries. So much easier. Well, we'll just look at the screen.

So we've got the Chinese screen. We've got the large numbers at the top. Oh, three decimal places. That's not the case with this one.

I'm pretty sure these are only two decimal places. I mean how accurate the A to D converter is? Not sure. Uh oh. Another variant.

We got carbon dioxide and nonsense like that on there. Another variant of the large numbers at the top. Backlight on. Uh oh.

Price per kilowatt hour? That's interesting. You can do price stuff. Oh, and back to the Chinese screen. That's interesting.

Uh, you haven't got all the different layout options that this version gives you. Yeah, that is interesting. Okay, before I go any further, let's do um, the screen grab of where I bought this on AliExpress So this is the item on AliExpress Now interestingly it says sorry this item is no longer available which is a bit of a shame. now.

this one is from the high Dance official store. Uh, if my point is working, that's up there. So perhaps I'll go to the other item which I actually bought from the uh, a torch official store. Um, this item is no longer available either.

So if they've run out of these things, in which case, this whole post bug is rather pointless. Um, I'm not sure these were the only two I could find that had this type of LCD and I wanted it to replace the LCD in my unit. Well, I Suppose I have two of those LCDs Now Um, yeah, sorry, this item is no longer available. Why is that? Is it an old design? Yeah, maybe it is.

Well, okay, back to the unit then. Um. I Seem to remember these were about 15 or something like that each. You've got the Chinese screen.

You've got the English screen with large numbers. Now this gives you what's amp hours, kilowatt hours, cost and temperature. This gives you uh, kilowatt hours and then carbon dioxide equivalent cost, temperature. Then you've got the settings.

How long you want the backlight to be on permanently on. Now this is where I think you have to press and hold it. No, that doesn't work. It's one of these one button interfaces and it's hugely confusing.

Let me learn it first, right? Let's try again. So double click and then I think press and hold to change, possibly not. treble click to go downwards, press and hold to scroll. So let's go for 35 seconds and then I Think a single click simply moves you on to the next screen.

So now the backlight should go off in 35 seconds. Um, and back to the starting screens. So just a comparison with this unit and my original Shed unit. Um, you've got the large numbers at the top on this one.

You've then got the large numbers top left on this one and there's none of the CO2 and not so much of the energy accumulated stuff on this. There's a timer temperature sensor. now. this one has its own input for a um, what's it called a thermistor which is in the shed.

This one appears to have a built-in thermistor because it shows the temperature right there on the screen rather than just zero. And then the next screen is backlight on. But then you've got these alarms greater than 100 volt alarm less than zero volt alarm greater than 12 amps alarm And back to the Chinese screen. This one doesn't seem to have any of those alarm settings now.

just put the power to this old one and I've put my old broken LCD on it. And although you don't see anything on the display, if I double click I must be in the wrong display, let's go to another one. Single click to go to another one has a single click to go to another one. Oh, it's not doing it now.

Right now, it's doing it. Double click and it resets. So this unit is actually working and I've Got A Feeling I've just noticed in the listing on AliExpress that they say if the voltage across these two input connections is less than 30 volts, you need an external power supply. Now that wasn't the case with this unit, it was if the input is less than oh I can't remember.

Now let's have a look. Yeah, I Think this one's saying if it's um four to Thirty volts no V V in. that's right, 4 to 30 volts on there I Can't remember I Think it was a lower voltage something like 8 volts. um below that on these input connections and this wouldn't work now.

Interestingly, Um I'm using this on my solar panel. On the solar panel can sometimes be less than 30 volts, so this one wouldn't actually be as useful as this old one. And you can't buy this now. and you can't buy this now.

Well now if you power this from this input connector here, Um, the positive went up to this point here that goes through a diode and into the main power supply circuit. If you power it from the measure input it comes in through these two diodes goes into this capacitor which is actually marked 400 volts somewhere. Yes, here it's a 400 volt capacitor. so that's to take the up to 300 volts that you could put on the input and then that goes into this tiny little three pin slot 23 device which is actually a 300 volt input.

Buck converter. So it's a buck converter that generates I don't know what on the output? perhaps 5 volts though? Looks like there's a device on here I Think it's this device that's got three three written on it. so that's probably the 3.3 volt regulator. So I guess this is Bucking down to 5 volts, but 300 volts on the input on this tiny little device and it does exist I'll get the data sheet for it.

Well, this device is an Ft-8430 so it's that little tiny sock 23 device there. Um, the only reference I can find to this on the Internet is on a website called Avdweb and it's copyright so I can't really show it. but I will put a link to that in the description below so you can check out this uh butt converter with up to 300 volts of input capability. So it's a very simple circuit.

It's just this 300 volt Buck circuit. There's the inductor there, 400 volt capacitor, an additional a regulator for 3.3 volts. microcontroller. Oh I Can't remember what this device was.

Oh yes, this is an energy monitor. Um, a purpose-designed energy monitor chip with its own Crystal which does measurement of the presumably voltage, current, and other stuff. Where's the shunt? It's there. Yeah, you can see the shunt? connections run back into this Energy Monitor chip.

Um, here's a big string of I think they were 270k resistors. Yeah, 2703s and they're all in a long string and then on the bottom one, it's tapped off and goes into the microcontroller. So I guess this is where the microcontroller is measuring voltage. Um, and then of course there's this Bluetooth module.

Now this is one of these devices where the app for your phone or tablet is not on the Uh Play store or the Apple equivalent and therefore you have to install it a different way and you have to bypass the security checks. I'm not going to do that now because all I imagine it'll show you is a copy of what you can see on the screen anyway and probably have recording and data logging capabilities so you can create graphs and whatnot. But yeah, that's the Bluetooth module which allows you to get the data out of this thing and put it on your phone. That's really what this device is.

it is very similar to my Um original one I bought which as I say you can't get any more which I'll be using the shed I've now got the new display which I robbed off this this display being the old not working one and another display for when that one fails and then that's it I'll have to find something else. but uh yeah, that's essentially what's in this uh, voltage and current monitor. Well, apologies that this unit is no longer available. Let's power it up again.

Welcome screen I mean I suppose this is rather an old style LCD Now I mean you can get a plethora of different versions of this sort of thing uh with color LCDs Um, basically LCDs that are just better than this. So really, this is just going to go in my parts box as a spare LCD for when this one inevitably fails again because I'm sure moisture will get in again I'm sure that's what caused the problem. Um yeah, basic voltage and current monitoring device. and uh yeah, that just reminds me that um, it was a kurka who said, actually, you can buy just the LCD and it comes with the backlight.

You see the uh LED legs there for 4.36 from the same seller, a torch uh Innovative manufacturing. So I think I'll order uh, five of those and then that'll keep me in LCDs Um, including a replacement one for that uh unit that appears to work now for the future and these are still available. So even if the voltage and current monitor has gone unavailable, the LCD is available. so let's get some in right now.

Yes, no longer available. Cheerio.