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A bag of goodies from China

Ah, yesterday was a great day.

A white van pulled into my driveway and the driver handed over a big white plastic bag filled with all sorts of tech goodies.

Yes, it was another order from the Sino-etail giant AliExpress.

Surprisingly, some of these items took less than two weeks from the time I pressed "buy" to the time I started opening all the little envelopes with glee. Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for the shelving rack I ordered from The Warehouse's website around the same time to be delivered from just a couple of hundred Kms away.

Yeah, the world is a funny place.

But back to the little white envelopes!

I've got quite a few projects planned for the coming months and most of these involve building electronic devices that could be not just fun but very practical and useful.

As I mentioned in a recent column, some of the stuff I received is little more than an electronic kitset designed and packaged by some company or other. I'll be building those things over the next few days and seeing how well they perform.

More interesting is the assortment of little PCBs that are ready-built and perform exceedingly useful functions.

One such PCB is effectively "the guts" of a powerbank, sans battery. This board contains a one-cell lithium battery charger and a boost converter that also provides a good, solidly regulated 5V output at up to 3A. This is really handy if you want to build something which becomes totally self-contained. Simply add a cheap 18650 li-Ion cell and a USB-C connector, throw everything in a 3D-printed case and you have a fully portable device that requires only a regular phone charger to keep topped up.

This is the last bit of functional electronics I've been waiting for to publish my ADSB alarm project so that'll keep me busy for the next couple of weeks.

I also picked up some very bright LEDs (1W and 3W) that I'll be putting on my "Police Drone".

This drone has a night-vision camera and I'm sure it'll look resplendent as it soars across the night sky flashing red and blue. Yeah, that's bound to get me in trouble but these LEDs were so ridiculously cheap I could hardly say no.

One very interesting board is a DSP-based av-band radio receiver. Using an 18650 cell, one of those charge/boost PCBs, a 3D printed case and some tiny speakers I also picked up for a couple of bucks each, this has the potential to be turned into a very small, highly pocketable radio for listening in to local aircraft.

I currently use an old VHF/UHF portable radio scanner but this thing will be just a quarter the size so far more convenient.

Why is size important? (asked no woman ever)

Well I also bought myself a backpack from AliExpress -- but not just any backpack.

This is an "FPV backpack" designed for toting around drones, video goggles, RC transmitters and a host of spars such as propellers and batteries. It's a "must have" if, like myself, you like walking and are happy to hike into otherwise inaccessible places to enjoy flying drones around interesting landscapes or buildings.

To date I've been using just a regular backpack from The Warehouse and it's far from optimal for this role. The one from AliExpress is purpose-built but I was a little disappointed in how small it is. That means there's not really much room for my old scanner so making something smaller will be really handy.

What's the goal with all these bits of electronics?

Well while the CAA, FAA, CASA and other airspace authorities around the world are trying to regulate recreational drones and RC models out of the skies, I'm pushing back by creating some tech that will actually make the hobby safer. It strikes me that most of these regulators would be far better advised to focus on the things that really are placing human life at risk (or costing lives) such as fatal flaws in Boeing's airliners. FYI, just yesterday, a Boeing 757 narrowly avoided disaster when it lost a nose-wheel while taxiing for takeoff in the USA.

This, and the 737 Max 9 door-plug issues, and the Max-8 disasters, are the sort of things that happen when a regulator is too focused on things that don't count -- to the cost of things that really do matter.

My "Drone Safety Tech Kit" is designed to ensure that people flying drones and/or RC models will always be aware of manned aircraft that may be nearby. This will hopefully show these regulators that the drone community is responsible and safety-focused. We don't need their ludicrous over-regulation to reduce the death toll associated with the recreational use of multirotor drones because, after more than a decade of drone use, that number remains a big fat zero.

Carpe Diem folks!

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