Electronics - ScottDotDot

The Wand Company Tricorder – Full Teardown (and Japanese AM/FM Tricorder Radio Ruse!)

By Scott • 2025-07-20 Electronics, Videos

The Wand Company Tricorder - Teardown and Weird AM FM Japanese Tricorder - YouTube Cover Image

I recently got a Star Trek TOS reproduction tricorder from The Wand Company to accompany my cosplay at the upcoming STLV: Trek to Vegas 2025 convention. But, more important to me right now than getting a costume ready is the contents of this device! So in this video I do a full teardown; Though this isn’t a tutorial necessarily, as I shot it whilst figuring things out for myself the first time. My apologies to anyone that would rather I have preserved this NIB. But remember, Lore was disassembled and he turned out fine! Seriously though, as much as I’d love to preserve this in perfect condition, I purchased it to bring it to a con. It’s gonna get banged … Continue reading

Overblown UGREEN Nexode 300W vs. No-Name Garbage “700W” USB PSUs

By Scott • 2025-07-13 Electronics, Reviews, Videos

Overblown UGREEN Nexode 300W vs. No-Name Garbage 700W USB PSUs - YouTube Cover

I needed a USB PSU capable of supplying about 85W @ 20V on three separate ports simultaneously (so 255W total). The UGREEN Nexode 300W GaN “Charger” seemed like a good option, as it would have a decent amount of headroom and has a port labeled “140W”, and two “100W”. However, IMO it’s pure marketing nonsense. First of all, it’s very particular as to what loads you can place on which ports in combination. The only way it can output its rated 300W is if one of those loads is @ 28V. That’s fine, I guess. They can spec it however they want. However, in my testing while loading it with 250W across 4 ports, it started thermally throttling after about … Continue reading

Schaffner Interference Simulator: Posting Spikes on Mains

By Scott • 2025-05-24 Electronics, Videos

Interference Simulator - Cover - v01 - 1980s IS

I got this Schaffner NSG 200E Interference Simulator mainframe with an NSG 223A module a while back to test a device featured in a previous video. That was quite a while ago, but I finally got around to taking a look at it. In this video we’ll check out the device’s internals and power it on for the first time in years. Then test some USB power supplies for interference (spike) pass-through. The USB PSUs were the cheapest I could find for fast delivery from Amazon, at about 4 bucks each. I wanted them to be of questionable quality, but they seemed surprisingly well-made. Though I’m not an expert, I am a fan of ⁨@DiodeGoneWild⁩ and would love to send … Continue reading

LeCroy WaveRunner 64Xi-A-N Oscilloscope Upgrade Attempt

Video

By Scott • 2023-11-03 Electronics, Videos

I got this LeCroy WaveRunner 64Xi-A-N Oscilloscope from eBay because I needed a faster scope than my best 200Mhz Siglent model.

On eBay it looked super clean and in good cosmetic shape, and was shown and claimed to be working. When I received it, it would kinda start up, but the display was blank and overall it was unresponsive. When I went to make this video showing the investigation, it powered right up! Strange.

So I figured I’d just be replacing the RTC battery and upgrading the HDD to an SSD. Turns out it already had an SSD and a new battery. The problem was that it would reboot every time the USB ports were even slightly jostled.

After getting the motherboard out (which is standard-ish mini ITX style), it turns out that the PCB is really badly warped. That’s probably leading to cracked and/or damaged traces, possibly in internal layers. I’d wager that’s the cause of the reboots.

I posted this video more for posterity and in case anyone wanted to see an albeit slow teardown. Apologies for the rambly nature, but this really didn’t go according to plan.