Quick and Dirty - SMD LED Tester

I needed an SMD LED tester for my ongoing project. Unfortunately the local parts store puts everything into a single paper bag without designation, so I wasn't able to distinguish between the red and the blue 0603 LEDs.
A Kelvin clip from eBay, two banana plugs, a 330 ohm resistor, some loudspeaker wire, and lots of heatshrink.
The resistor in the wire:

The finished "instrument":

First I thought that the shorter heatshrink on the clip's leg will designate the positive lead but later realized that it would be a great idea to put heatshrink onto the tips and in this small size I had red one also.

Project 2017#1 - ESP8266 Programmer 1.

It's been a while I didn't write anything. It doesn't meen I didn't do anything, just had no time/lust to write.
Here is my first project in this year (to by honest I started it in 2016 but it is the time to finish).
I started to work with ESP8266, and as many of us I bought the NodeMCU 0.9 board (years ago to be honest). This is a great board, to begin with it, but I don't like to put such ready made boards with programmer, regulator integrated to put into my projects. I prefer to have my own regulator, bare chip/module, and some ISP interface.
So I decided to build an ESP8266 ISP based on the NodeMCU board. I chose the original NodeMCU 0.9's programmer on two reasons:

• It use CH340G chip, what is in SO package. The later ones use CP2102 and I still terrified of soldering the QFN package (I will try it once, I promise)
• It has the automatic programming capability (RST, GPIO0 pins), mens I don't need to push buttons when I start the programming sequence

The original programmer use 5V to power the CH340G:

At the time I started to work on this project, it wasn't clear if the ESP8266 is 5V tolerant, so I felt it isn't a good idea to keep it this way. So I redesigned the circuit a slightly.
Here is my version:

I was able to manage to put everything to a single sided board:

and etch, build it at home:

It works like champ with my ESP8266 projects.

Secret Project 2. - Power Supply

Finally the arrived the small power supply for the LEDs (and the whole project):

Secret Project 2.

Two of the boards made during this week is part of my second secret project.
It is based on ESP8266:

As you see I choose the ESP-07 for this, what I've in my parts bin.
I tried to wake up the processor board:

First I loaded the standard Arduino flash test example into it. It was "working", but...
...the result is a massive failure for me:

I bought the ESP-07 modules at the beginning of the ESP8266 era, to play with it. I not even checked the flash size at that time. It has 512K (same as the ESP-01). I changed the flash on the ESP-01, but this has a metal can. Therefore it not worth the effort to change the flash.
Fortunately I've a few ESP-12Es also. So, jumped to my workshop:

Much better:

And ordered a few ESP-07S and ESP-12F.

Electronics - New projects cont...

How the Saturday boards are standing today:

I should write soon, not just taking pictures. :-)

Elektronics - new projects

I'm work on new things:

ESP-01 Surgery

I'm working on ESP8266 projects lately. I wanted to have OTA upgrade working from the beginning. The plan was to upload the new firmware through the web browser into the SPIFFS filesystem (done). Check the upload integrity there (wip). And flash it from there (done). This process require at least the double size of flash than the binary code.
My first working project is ~280K binary. This means that the 512K flash of the ESP-01 module isn't enough.
I was looking around, how can I increase it. I found this blog post:
http://tech.scargill.net/32mb-esp01/
I like the idea of upgrading the flash chip, but I've a few problems with the solution.

• It uses a 208mil wide chip instead of the original 150mil package. I really don't like the bending pin solution
• Few sources said that the Winbond flash chips are not really reliable
• I know it is cheap ($2.08/10pcs) on the eBay, but there is to many fake chips, so I don't like to buy it there (http://www.ebay.com/itm/10pcs-W25Q32FVSSIG-W25Q32FVSIG-25Q32FVSIG-4M-Memory-Flash-SOP-8-SMD-/201098254024)

So I decided to try to find a 150mil wide 4MByte (32Mbit) flash chip from reliable source.
I found it. It is a Cypress (Spansion) S25FL132K0XMFI041 from TME: http://www.tme.eu/en/details/s25fl132k0xmfi041/fram-memories-integrated-circuits/cypress/
It costs more ($0.75/each) but looks more reliable and no pin bending.
The package arrived yesterday from TME, and I done my first surgery tonight:

The original with the 512K Winbond chip on the left, the Spansion 4M chip on the right.
If you fire the Arduino IDE, You can find the CheckFlashConfig sketch for checking the flash size:

The result is reported to the Serial monitor.
Before the surgery:

After the surgery:

A few more modules waiting for the operation. :-)