DIY: Joke's on Me

[Sonik Wiz]

Recently I purchased from Ebay & just recieved today an LED level meter kit. Allthough it is intended for 2 ch I thought with some re-purposing I could get it to display more chs for a surround sound indicator.

See? Pretty cool. I am pretty savvy kit builder & I figured this would come with minimal but usable hook up directions. It came with exactly zero hook up schematic or directions. Besides the ribbon LED strips the main component is a 8A4K32S2A12 chip which is a 8-Bit FLASH 8051 24MHz 2V memory. I have absolutely no experience with this, no way to tell if it is programmed to do something at the factory or if I'm supposed to do something with it. I have found the data sheet but haha it's only in Chinese! On top of that it's a teeny surface mount device with 12 pins on each side. I guess it doesn't matter what I know about it's application because I have to way to solder something that small anyway!

In all fairness to the seller it shipped promptly and the kit was exactly as described, no more, no less. So I'll give some more thought to it but at the worst it's not like I haven't wasted ~$20 before.

If anyone runs across any further info I'd sure appreciate it!

 

[J. PUPSTER]

Recently I purchased from Ebay & just recieved today an LED level meter kit. Allthough it is intended for 2 ch I thought with some re-purposing I could get it to display more chs for a surround sound indicator.
View attachment 45329

See? Pretty cool. I am pretty savvy kit builder & I figured this would come with minimal but usable hook up directions. It came with exactly zero hook up schematic or directions. Besides the ribbon LED strips the main component is a 8A4K32S2A12 chip which is a 8-Bit FLASH 8051 24MHz 2V memory. I have absolutely no experience with this, no way to tell if it is programmed to do something at the factory or if I'm supposed to do something with it. I have found the data sheet but haha it's only in Chinese! On top of that it's a teeny surface mount device with 12 pins on each side. I guess it doesn't matter what I know about it's application because I have to way to solder something that small anyway!

In all fairness to the seller it shipped promptly and the kit was exactly as described, no more, no less. So I'll give some more thought to it but at the worst it's not like I haven't wasted ~$20 before.

If anyone runs across any further info I'd sure appreciate it!

With your know how @Sonik Wiz , could you start from scratch with LEDs and just build your own?

 

[jefe1]

Could you repurpose it to light up when a Viagra add appears on QQ?

 

[~dave~~wave~]

I don't see a problem, you just need more of them to cover all your channels, a pair at a time!
Three of them for 5.1, and go from there.

Man, I remember back in the mid-70s when I was going to trade school, those early LED VU meters looked so cool.

My one-hour lab in soldering used the NASA satellite construction manual as textbook.
The instructor would inspect your work, and as a final test take a pair of long-nose pliers to rip the component you had just installed from the circuit board.
If the component broke before the solder joint gave way, you got a passing grade.

I built a few Craig Anderton signal processing gadgets out of Guitar Player magazine from PAIA kits.
Never did a full-blown Heathkit or Dynaco project.

 

[J. PUPSTER]

I don't see a problem, you just need more of them to cover all your channels, a pair at a time!
Three of them for 5.1, and go from there.

Man, I remember back in the mid-70s when I was going to trade school, those early LED VU meters looked so cool.

My one-hour lab in soldering used the NASA satellite construction manual as textbook.
The instructor would inspect your work, and as a final test take a pair of long-nose pliers to rip the component you had just installed from the circuit board.
If the component broke before the solder joint gave way, you got a passing grade.

I built a few Craig Anderton signal processing gadgets out of Guitar Player magazine from PAIA kits.
Never did a full-blown Heathkit or Dynaco project.

Don't forget the phantom centers

 

[Jim the Oldbie]

Hey Mr. Wiz, if you have some experience with soldering the traditional thru-hole stuff, you might be surprised at what you can do with surface-mount, with a little practice and minimal equipment.

I recently soldered (successfully) a 64-pin flat-pack IC (8-channel asynchronous sample rate converter) with a 0.5mm lead pitch, using only a standard temp-controlled pencil with a modified tip and some very narrow-gauge solder (and a magnifying lamp), having only studied a few YouTube vids on how to do it. I'd post a pic of it, but it's down at my shop across town and it's snowing like a bastard here right now. :/

Anyway - maybe your kit would serve as a good practice project for SMD soldering? Just a thought.

 

[Sonik Wiz]

With your know how @Sonik Wiz , could you start from scratch with LEDs and just build your own?

Well, yes. It can be done using those bar/dot VU driver chips of ancient days. Hook one up for row, the other for column & drive a 10x10 LED matrix display. But that's a whole lotta soldering & I'd have to order all the parts anyway. I also considered getting a factory made 10x10 dot matrix display but those are only ~1" square. I wanted something easier to see a few feet away. Something that competes with Blue Eyed Monster in my room.

 

[Sonik Wiz]

I don't see a problem, you just need more of them to cover all your channels, a pair at a time!
Three of them for 5.1, and go from there.

Man, I remember back in the mid-70s when I was going to trade school, those early LED VU meters looked so cool.

My one-hour lab in soldering used the NASA satellite construction manual as textbook.
The instructor would inspect your work, and as a final test take a pair of long-nose pliers to rip the component you had just installed from the circuit board.
If the component broke before the solder joint gave way, you got a passing grade.

I built a few Craig Anderton signal processing gadgets out of Guitar Player magazine from PAIA kits.
Never did a full-blown Heathkit or Dynaco project.

Well, hey now!
You've got my interest up. Are those pics grabbed on line or have you actually built this thing?

 

[Sonik Wiz]

Hey Mr. Wiz, if you have some experience with soldering the traditional thru-hole stuff, you might be surprised at what you can do with surface-mount, with a little practice and minimal equipment.

I recently soldered (successfully) a 64-pin flat-pack IC (8-channel asynchronous sample rate converter) with a 0.5mm lead pitch, using only a standard temp-controlled pencil with a modified tip and some very narrow-gauge solder (and a magnifying lamp), having only studied a few YouTube vids on how to do it. I'd post a pic of it, but it's down at my shop across town and it's snowing like a bastard here right now. :/

Anyway - maybe your kit would serve as a good practice project for SMD soldering? Just a thought.

Good points & good info, thanks!
I have never thought about checking on Youtube for soldering tutorials that's a good idea. Yes I'd like to see apic of your project when convenient. Befor I have used an electronic prototype shop in town for SMD mods but the minimum cost would be more than the kit!

 

[Jim the Oldbie]

My overall project was never actually completed. It was going to be a hardware SACD ripper, tapping into the internal I2S lines of an HDTV receiver to grab the digital data just after PCM conversion, then into a multichannel USB dongle to the computer.

I soldered the big chip to a DIP adapter so I could get it onto a breadboard, where it passed intitial testing. Right about that time, those now-famous nerds came up with the Oppo/Pioneer SACD ripping mod, so I shelved my somewhat kludgy project and just bought a Pioneer BDP-80FD instead!

Anyway - I may post a pic of the board here when I can. But more importantly, here's a good video that shows how to do it (note there's no audio, but the fine print at the bottom explains what's going on):

 

[winopener]

photo of the back of the board? The side where there are no led.

 

[Sonik Wiz]

photo of the back of the board? The side where there are no led.

Well there it is. There also SMD resistors & caps to solder (those the little perforated white strips) but I can not tell by looking which is which! There also is USB connector to solder on also. I think that is to set the operating mode. But how does that work when you plug it into a PC? This joke gets even funnier as it goes along!

 

[gene_stl]

Still amazing that they can sell such a kit for $15.38
You need a microscope on an extention arm to work on these things.

 

[~dave~~wave~]

Well, hey now!
You've got my interest up. Are those pics grabbed on line or have you actually built this thing?

Nope, right off the E-bay listing.

 

[winopener]

View attachment 45339

Well there it is. There also SMD resistors & caps to solder (those the little perforated white strips) but I can not tell by looking which is which! There also is USB connector to solder on also. I think that is to set the operating mode. But how does that work when you plug it into a PC? This joke gets even funnier as it goes along!

Too small to identify the traces, but having the real thing in front of you it's possible to figure it out.