Categories
power bank

Tqka Power Bank 10000 mAh

In the future fast charging might get some common ports and protocols. And it seems it will be type-c with USB Power Delivery in use in most cases. But for the moment it is several standards that provide more power than a standard USB port. Those standards are mostly not part of USB specification. And it is kind of unusual to have charger or power bank that support multiple fast charge protocols for different devices. That cause slower charging of some phones using charger or power bank designed for another. For example, at the moment most Qualcomm and Mediatek based Android smartphones have different fast charging standards. It took some time for me to find MTK-PE+QC3.0+Apple2.4 charger and power bank.

So the power bank is Tqka BA058

List of supported protocols

  1. Qualcomm Quick Charge 2.0 (QC2.0)
  2. Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 (QC3.0)
  3. Mediatek Pump Express 1.0 (MTK-PE)
  4. Mediatek Pump Express 2.0 (MTK-PE2.0)
  5. Huawei Fast Charge Protocol (FCP)
  6. Samsung Adaptive Fast Charging (AFC)
  7. USB Battery Charging 1.2 (BC2.1)
  8. Apple 2.4A
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Categories
air quality

Awair 2

Awair 2-nd edition is a better version of Awair, that fix some known issues of first edition

Awair 2
Awair 2-nd edition

What was fixed and added

  • 24h time format
  • USB Type-C standard 5v power connector
  • USB 5v 2A standard power supply
  • Better display (resolution, no backlight)
  • Ambient light sensor (display auto brightness)
  • Microphone (not sure if it is good to have it on IoT device)
  • Better PM2.5 sensor
  • New buttons to switch the display mode
  • Better wireless connectivity (new antennas)
  • Better (active) airflow
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Categories
apple Devices

SeekThermal CompactPro

SeekThermal CompactPro (300~500$ on Amazon) is an accessory that allows you to shot thermal photos or videos. Available for Android and iOS devices

SeekThermal CompactPro

Example video (time lapse done in an external application)

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Categories
apple iphone

Umidigi Q1: iPhone X charging

Umidigi Q1. 15 Watt Qi charger for Umidigi Z2 Pro (that is not yet released). It should also charge iPhones with 7.5W max.

Umidigi Q1 15W charger

Apple iPhone X charging time:

50% 80% 100%
PC Port USB 2.0 03:00:00 04:40:00 06:10:00
Umidigi Q1 01:28:00 02:28:00 03:34:00
Apple 5W charger 01:25:00 02:05:00 03:25:00
Umidigi Q1 + extra fan 00:55:00 01:48:00 02:40:00
Apple 12W charger 00:35:00 01:05:00 02:10:00
Apple 29W charger 00:30:00 00:55:00 01:55:00

Charge in case without extra cooling
Qi Charging iPhone X

Charge with no case and with additional external cooling

Categories
air quality

XINTEST HT-501 CO2 Meter

Portable CO2 meter and data logger with battery and good CO2 sensor inside.

Xintest HT-501

The only really wrong thing about this device is it always show temperature higher than it is for about 2°C (for example 28.0°C instead of 26.0°C) and it is not something related to wrong sensor placement.

Pros

  • Portable
  • 20h work from a battery
  • LCD Color zoning
  • Datalogger
  • Setup time and alarms from PC
  • Sensair S8 CO2 sensor

Cons

  • Incorrect temperature measurements
  • No time and date on the screen
  • 30 sec warmup time
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Categories
air quality

uHoo

uHoo – most advanced air quality monitor, at least if consider a number of sensors. Including advanced sensor like CO, CO2, PM2.5, VOC, O3, NO2. And also traditional like temperature, humidity, and air pressure.  Measurements look accurate enough.

uHoo and iPhone

The device does not have any local indicators. Not a single color LED to show air quality status. The only way it communicates with the world is Wi-Fi and mobile application. The application (v 3.8) or backend infrastructure that makes it work is unfortunately unstable. Also, an interface is poorly adapted to iPhone X.

uHoo is not portable due to many reasons like no local indication, no battery, need Wi-Fi (and new connection setup will take time).

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Categories
Android Devices

Samsung S8 AFC charging time

Long time no Samsung. 🙂 Mostly because of the previous experience (read in Russian). But anyway did a test of Adaptive Fast Charging (AFC) from Samsung. Using Samsung S8 with AFC charger from the box.

Charging Samsung S8

What can I say?
I see some cheating with charging percentage displayed by the phone to get “Full Charge in 90 minutes” in reviews.

But the real numbers are more like 120 minutes.

Just to compare with a device that shows true percentage see image below

iPhone 8 charging

50% 80% Show 100% Real 100%
Apple iPhone 8 5v 12W charger 00:28:00 00:51:00 01:41:00 01:41:00
Samsung Galaxy S8 AFC 00:44:00 01:08:00 01:28:00 01:56:00
Categories
air quality

Green Day CO2 Monitor

One of the oldest devices I got for CO2 monitoring is AZ-7788 GreenDay. It is 4 years old now. The device is still good and accurate.

Green Day

Used as portable mostly because it has an LCD and not require setup.

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Categories
DVR

NextBase 612GW

First 4K/GPS/WiFi Dashcam on market.

NextBase 612GW

Metal body looks good. The device is relatively heavy. Weights distribution and center of mass are not perfect and it sometimes affects image quality (right side vibration). Compatibility with 412GW GPS connector (make upgrade easy and fast). A touchscreen is much better than sensor buttons on 412GW. A physical power button is also good. What is absolutely wrong about this dashcam is Wi-Fi speed. View of any HD video impossible. Copy 1 minute of 4K video (340MB) is taking so much time (more than 10 minutes) that my 3 attempts to do that failed for different reasons. Wi-Fi is only usable for a preview of Low-Resolution files (if enabled).  Power consumption is high, but accumulator capacity and charging speed is not.

Update 2018-11-26, after 10 months of use: Too much hangs. Need to push Reset button at least once a week. Dashcam does not allow to go into the menu without the need to first stop recording.

Pros

  • 4K or 1440/60p
  • daylight video quality
  • touchscreen
  • GPS
  • removable CPL filter
  • timelapse and parking mode
  • speedometer screensaver

Cons

  • expensive
  • charging is slow (2h, 5v 0.15A)
  • Wi-Fi is slow
  • video quality at night
  • “NextBase” logo on footage

Technical details:

  • Accumulator 3.7v 280 mAh 1.04Wh
  • SoC (CPU): Ambarella A12S75
  • RAM:  512 MB DDR3L 1866
  • ROM: 256 MB NAND Flash
  • Sensor: SONY EXMOR R CMOS
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Categories
USB meter

UM24C

Yet another USB Tester with PC/MAC connectivity. This time using Bluetooth.

Device
UM24C
PC Software

Application is old-shool and simple. It cannot resize to use full screen, cannot autodetect port to use, cannot show large graphs.

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